3272: (What Your Dentist Knows) About the Secret to Life by Dr. Kelly Flanagan on Resiliency

[00:00:00] This is Optimal Living Daily, Episode 3272. What Your Dentist Knows About the Secret to Life by Dr. Kelly Flanagan of DrKellyFlanagan.com. And I'm Justin Malik, your very own personal narrator today and every day. Me narrating means

[00:00:16] there are no interviews, just a short podcast where we can both improve our lives one day at a time. So with that, let's get right to today's post and start optimizing your life. What Your Dentist Knows About the Secret to Life by Dr. Kelly Flanagan of DrKellyFlanagan.com.

[00:00:39] We think the secret to life is achievement and status and comfort and painlessness, but we're wrong. The secret to life lies elsewhere. I know because my dentist told me until you can completely feel pain again, don't eat anything. Now sitting in the dental chair

[00:01:00] last week, the right side of my face numb and drooping when he said it, when my dentist told me the secret to life. Our pain is the secret to life. We can't even eat unless we're capable

[00:01:13] of feeling it. Yet we're people obsessed with avoiding our pain. The DEA reports sales of prescription painkillers increased 16-fold in the last 10 years. Oxycodone and hydrocodone are the two most popular painkillers. In 2010, pharmacies distributed 111 tons of those pills in the U.S.

[00:01:37] alone. We build our lives around comfort and safety and ease. We feel entitled to painless living, both physically and emotionally. We will go to great lengths to avoid our interior pain, our sadness, grief, powerlessness, fear, despair, shame, and anger. As Carl Jung said,

[00:02:01] people will do anything no matter how absurd in order to avoid facing their own soul. But what is the psychological equivalent of a pain-killing pill? I think we numb our psychological pain with myth. By myth, I mean the ever so slightly deceptive stories we tell ourselves

[00:02:23] about ourselves, about other people, about the world we live in. Our personal myths are the beliefs that protect us from the pain of life. Young men will tell themselves they love the bachelor lifestyle so they don't have to enter into the sweaty-browed risk of real intimacy

[00:02:43] and their own sense of inadequacy. Young women will tell themselves they are in charge and every weekend it's the same bed but a different man so they never have to acknowledge how empty it feels

[00:02:54] when they're finally alone. We put doctors on pedestals so we don't have to fully feel the terror of the disease. People who have given up on this life will survive it by adopting a set of

[00:03:07] rules that will guarantee their place in another life. Perhaps, and this one haunts me, some of us may even write blog posts about redemption and compassion so we can feel satisfied with our

[00:03:20] efforts and avoid some of the painful work of love in our own lives. And our myths protect us against the details of our story that feel too painful to acknowledge. The haunting vacancy in

[00:03:34] the eyes of our parents. The desperate race for worth in a family who dressed up competition as nurturance. The bitter loneliness of the schoolyard taunts. The aching regret about sleeping with that guy freshman year. The nagging emptiness of a paycheck with no meaning or the walking on

[00:03:53] eggshells way of life in a household dominated by one person's anger. Our myths keep the pain of reality at bay and so they sustain us with a false sense of freedom. But what if we're like

[00:04:07] puppies chasing our tails inside the comfort of a grassy yard thinking we're free when we're actually imprisoned? What if our pain is like an invisible electrical fence keeping us penned in

[00:04:20] and depriving us of a vast world and the freedom to fully live in it? What if our personal myths are just kibbles and bits pacifying morsels that keep us from deciding to walk through our pain

[00:04:32] into the freedom of fully living? What would it look like to freely enter into our pain and walk through it? What might a life of freedom look like on the other side of our pain? Earlier this summer, Chicagoland was in the throes of another heat wave. Through thick

[00:04:51] evening air, cicadas protested the end of day and crickets welcomed the night. I was with family celebrating a birthday and I was embroiled in an intense battle. I had the upper hand. My boys had

[00:05:05] water guns but I had the hose. I smugly enjoyed the power as they approached me with their feeble weapons and I drenched them in a cold stinging flood from the hose. I had no intention of getting

[00:05:19] wet and spending the evening in the discomfort of wet clinging attire and the kids were powerless against me. But then something happened. My oldest son started to walk toward me with a different kind

[00:05:34] of look on his face. It was peaceful and determined and somehow knowing. I warned him to step back but he kept walking so I sprayed him. But Aiden just kept walking forward into the jet of water

[00:05:51] throwing his head back and letting loose a maniacal scream. And when he was within range, he raised his water gun and opened fire on me. He was William Wallace with a super soaker. This may sound a little strange but I suddenly felt powerless. Aiden was attached to nothing.

[00:06:12] He had no interest in staying comfortable or painless. He didn't care about the wet, the cold, or the sting. He had welcomed the discomfort and the pain. It no longer controlled him and consequently he had become incredibly powerful. I think the willingness to walk into

[00:06:30] our pain sets us free and I think that kind of freedom makes us a powerful people. In a culture that says we should be working at all costs to numb our pain, the therapeutic experience is a

[00:06:44] place of rebellion. In the paraphrased words of Peter Rollins, it is nothing less than the taking place of the real. It is the incoming of that which cannot be contained in our various mythologies,

[00:06:56] that which ruptures them and calls them into question. I'm always in awe of my clients who for one hour a week choose to question their myths and walk through the pain of it. In the therapeutic

[00:07:09] space people are deciding the tiny comfortable yard of life in which they have been wearing a path is no longer big enough for them. They're insisting there's more to life. They've decided there's a

[00:07:22] vast beautiful world waiting for them, a world they are missing and that is missing them. They've decided to forsake their myths in favor of the real and they're stepping directly into the pain of their invisible fences. And they're learning the pain is intense but it doesn't last.

[00:07:43] If you keep moving into it, keep moving forward, the pain is temporary. And they're stepping onward into the vast freedom of a world completely open to them, a world in which pain is an acceptable

[00:07:56] consequence of fully living. They're learning that people are waiting on the other side of the fence to embrace them and to walk hand in hand with them into the open expanse filled with possibility

[00:08:09] and wonder. They're discovering the power of a people who are not absolved of pain but who are set free from the fear of feeling it. In the end, the secret to life is this. The whole wide world

[00:08:24] is a banquet table and there's a feast waiting for you but you don't get a seat at the table, you can't eat until you can feel your pain completely. And that's what my dentist told me.

[00:08:41] You just listened to the post titled, What Your Dentist Knows About The Secret To Life by Dr. Kelly Flanagan of drkellyflanagan.com and I'll be right back with my commentary. Thank you to Dr. Kelly, a powerful one for this weekend and a good reminder for me, I think.

[00:08:58] I can get pretty anxious about physical symptoms, assuming the worst and or going down the google rabbit holes trying to fix every little ache and pain which is unhelpful at best but at worst could

[00:09:11] be making the issue a lot worse when in fact it could be nothing at all. But I think that comes from this knee-jerk response that many of us have of trying to avoid pain at all costs. And like Dr.

[00:09:25] Kelly said, this could be physical pain of course but also mental or emotional pain too. I think we all have our own ways of avoiding pain. Could be, well really just that, avoidance or another word

[00:09:40] would be withdrawal. But it could be something else like overworking for example. It can show up in our lives in many different ways, some that we might never have thought about. But even just

[00:09:53] noticing this and recognizing it, it's a really good first step I think. It can be helpful so really appreciated this one from Dr. Kelly. Hope it benefits you, this article and this podcast.

[00:10:04] I couldn't be here without you and I'm always open to feedback. You can get in touch at oldpodcast.com Thank you for being here. Have a great weekend and I'll catch you tomorrow where your optimal life awaits.