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Love Your Practice


Jan 21, 2020

Welcome to the landmark 10th episode of Feeling Good! I’ve got another interview lined up, and this one is extra special for #10. Kelly Hanlin McCormick is a fellow life coach who specializes in anxiety. Life is stressful enough, but dentistry adds a unique layer of stress on our lives that can be a little harder to deal with. That’s why Kelly is here - to share with us her strategies for battling anxiety. 

Therapy is amazing and can really help us process our emotions and feelings, but what happens when we lack the tools to apply all that we’re learning in therapy? That’s the question Kelly sought to answer for herself. She knew her own panic attacks couldn’t be the right way to handle her emotions, and she went looking for a new way to handle stress. What she learned is that anxiety is not just an emotion, it’s a physical response that can send our thoughts and emotions on a rollercoaster ride.

Kelly shares the meta-cognition techniques she learned to help us all deal with the rollercoaster of stress and anxiety in our own lives. There are ways to look at your stress and your triggers and use introspection to keep track of all those runaway thoughts that can make our anxiety worse. Runaway thoughts and emotions like disappointment and embarrassment can send our stress spiraling, and Kelly has tricks to help us keep those thoughts in check.

The biggest takeaway from today’s podcast is that anxiety is actually a cover for those uglier emotions, like disappointment. As dentists, if we’re disappointed in our performance or we made a mistake with a patient, we might get anxious about how to deal with it. Rather than deal with it, we focus on the anxiety and let it get the better of us. But not today! After hearing Kelly share her own anxieties and how she battles them, you will be inspired to take a new, refreshing look at your own anxiety. Once you accept that you can’t be perfect all of the time, you’ll notice your stress levels drop and start recognizing the ways you can stop those anxious thoughts right in their tracks.

In This Episode You Will Learn:

  • What inspired Kelly to pursue life coaching 2:42
  • The process and training that goes into becoming a life coach 6:30
  • How to look at anxiety as a messenger rather than an attack 13:40
  • Where anxiety comes from, including different triggers  17:34
  • The options your brain gives you when it comes to anxious situations 24:10
  • The personal mission Kelly is taking on with her clients 30:20

Some Questions We Discuss:

  • What are my clients saying about my podcast? 1:13
  • How does Kelly apply her life coaching to her own anxiety attacks? 10:00
  • What does a typical life coach appointment with Kelly look like? 15:20
  • Why does anxiety show up as a cover emotion? 20:11
  • How can we stop feeling so anxious as dentists? 27:30
  • What is the Fierce Calm Project? 36:05

Resources:

Check out Kelly’s favorite book: Finding Your Own North Star by Martha Beck