By Carrie Mauterer, D.D.S., CDA Editor, From the Summer 2024 Journal of the
Colorado Dental Association
I was saddened to learn that we lost two young promising colleagues recently. My condolences go out to their families, friends and all loved ones. We are a small Colorado community and I hope that once again we can support each other with regular check-ins of love, encouragement and help. I could hear the pain of loss in our community’s social media as this news flowed through our feeds. If any of us at the CDA can help you, please reach out; I also want to remind you that the Colorado Dental Association offers free confidential therapy sessions (among many other wellness benefits) through Mines and Associates (visit cdaonline.org/wellness).
As I drove to the mountains to check on my mom in Estes Park last weekend, I was feeling a bit melancholy, worried about our dental community. I was drawn to one of my favorite podcasts hosted by Mel Robbins and I thought I might share some poignant lessons I learned. During this episode, she had a guest named Dr. Tal Ben-Shahar who has dedicated his life and career to learning and teaching about the pursuit of happiness.
What I appreciated most about his lessons was this: happiness is not a state of being but rather a spectrum. You can never “be happy” because no one can truly define what that means. You can, however, increase or decrease your happiness during your life’s journey. He recommends beginning a quest to be 1% happier. As a person who recently emerged from a particularly difficult year with more small traumas than I typically face, this suggestion of trying to gain 1% happiness really rang true to me. Dr. Ben-Shahar gives a helpful road map to achieve an uptick of 1% more happiness during the remainder of the podcast.
My position on the happiness scale slipped backwards in 2023. I would like to share my year with you in the hopes that we can all open up and feel comfortable sharing our hardships. My small traumas included sending my firstborn to college (an experience that should be joyous but for me brought an unexpected round of grief and loss), losing my dad to cancer (leaving me to unpack a confusing and inconsistent relationship), tearing my ACL and MCL (removing the ability to relieve my stress and anxiety through my regular exercise), and the sprinkling of a difficult year at the office with margin compressions and the team anxiety that comes with that stress.
When you think back about your past year in dentistry, I’m sure you could make a similar list of your own. There was a beautiful moment in Mel Robbins’ podcast when Dr. Ben-Shahar teaches us about the two directions trauma can take us. We all know about Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) as the negative direction that trauma can take us. However, most of us have never heard of Post Traumatic Growth (PTG) as the positive direction. Oftentimes, trauma makes us stronger, better, more appreciative, and (yes!) happier. Dr. Ben-Shahar reminds us that sometimes just knowing that PTG exists so prolifically is enough to help us through tough times.
