#430 - The Secret To Greater Resilience

Feeling your feelings may be the strength you have been missing. In today’s episode, Dr. Tarryn MacCarthy explains why making room for grief, anger, sadness, and other difficult emotions can support healing, resilience, and happiness. For high-achieving women in dentistry and healthcare, work can become an easy way to avoid what hurts. Dr. Tarryn shares personal stories about her daughter’s health scare and her own experiences with loss, while reflecting on the pressure to stay strong, keep going, and move on before we are ready.

She explores how emotions we push aside can stay with us beneath the surface, and why crying, grieving, and accepting support can help us feel more present, peaceful, and connected. If you have been keeping busy through a difficult season, this episode is a gentle reminder that you are allowed to pause and feel what is real.

Show notes:
(3:26) When work becomes a coping tool
(6:41) The pressure to stay strong
(10:03) Why falling apart can help
(13:22) A self-alignment framework to help dentists and healthcare professionals to reconnect with themselves beyond burnout and outside expectations.
(16:15) Personal grief and early motherhood
(20:36) How busyness hides hard emotions
(24:32) Grief, presence, and lasting peace
(26:13) Outro

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Transcript

Dr. Tarryn MacCarthy

(0:01) Welcome to the Business of Happiness podcast. (0:05) It's your host, Dr. Tarryn MacCarthy. (0:08) And this is the podcast where we put happiness first.(0:14) I help high achieving, deeply passionate healthcare professionals like you rediscover their happiness and their freedom. (0:23) Join me in conversations with experts to uncover our unique definition of happiness and answer the question, is there really such a thing as work-life balance? (0:35) If you've heard yourself saying, you know, I'll be happy when?(0:41) Well, my friend, the time is now. (0:44) Time to step out of the busyness of your life and time to step into the business of happiness. (0:54) Hello, welcome to the Business of Happiness podcast.(0:58) I'm your host, Dr. Tarryn MacCarthy. (1:01) And today's going to be such a good day. (1:06) Your permission to feel feelings, to grieve, to get angry, to feel those uncomfortable emotions that we don't like to feel, that we put off, that we avoid is the secret to happiness, secret to fulfillment, secret to connection with others, secret to being present in the moment, secret to finding peace.(1:35) I know. (1:36) And it's completely antithetical to what we have been thinking this whole time or believing or to what we've been told. (1:46) Even your ability to be resilient, to be courageous, to overcome insurmountable challenges, directly related to your ability to feel feelings deeply and authentically and completely.(2:07) It is so fascinating. (2:09) And isn't it so interesting how when you look at yourself as a dental healthcare provider, as a leader, even as a parent, or as a woman who's very busy, constantly creating, constantly doing, many things happening in our life, we leave zero space for processing emotion. (2:33) Okay.(2:34) Example. (2:37) How many women do you know? (2:40) And maybe you don't know many women because we don't seem to talk about this.(2:43) But I will tell you the number of women dentists I meet on a daily basis who have actively pushed aside their feelings and their emotions. (2:54) The number of women who've shown up to my masterclasses and said things like, Tarryn, I had a miscarriage literally that morning and went to work and kept working. (3:06) Or my mother passed and I doubled down on work.(3:10) I kept working. (3:11) Instead of navigating and dealing with it, I decided I didn't want to face it and I worked. (3:17) Or my life was falling apart.(3:21) I was going through a divorce. (3:22) What did I do? (3:24) I worked more.(3:26) I worked harder. (3:27) And yes, I recognize that so many of us use work as a coping mechanism. (3:33) But right now I'm going to share with you why it's so important to process your emotions, especially when it comes to grief and sadness and the other uncomfortable one, anger.(3:50) You know, a couple of weeks ago, my daughter, one day when we were on a, I was away actually speaking at a conference and I was calling on FaceTime to see how she's doing now. (4:03) She's 14 about to go into high school, literally in the next couple of weeks here. (4:09) And she is excited about high school, but she's nervous.(4:13) She's 14. (4:14) You know, she wants to make sure her makeup is like high schoolers do. (4:18) And this summer we've been looking for clothes that are more high school appropriate from middle school.(4:24) She cares about being accepted and belonging. (4:27) I know despite everything her mother teaches, she's a middle school age child. (4:33) She's stepping into high school and this is perfectly appropriate for her age, right?(4:39) Worrying about what other people think about her. (4:41) Well, a few weeks ago I was away at a conference and I FaceTimed her to see how she was doing, just checking in and the entire right side of her face had dropped. (4:54) I said, sweetheart, what's going on?(4:56) And she said, I don't know, mom, I'm drooling out of my face. (4:59) I can't swallow through a straw. (5:02) Look, I can't even close my eye.(5:04) Yep. (5:05) She had Bell's palsy. (5:06) Now we're figuring out what the cause of it is.(5:09) It's most likely Lyme disease because we live in the woods in Maine. (5:14) But that day, in that moment, she had Bell's palsy. (5:20) And so I got my husband to take her to the ER.(5:22) They got her on some doxy and some corticosteroids. (5:26) And we're working through this whole thing. (5:28) We got tick panel.(5:29) We're doing all the things we need to do. (5:32) And I'm away at this conference. (5:35) So I said to my husband, oh, babe, this is after the ER visit.(5:40) I said, sweetheart, can you just check in with her? (5:42) She probably needs a hug. (5:44) She probably needs to cry about this right now.(5:47) How is she doing? (5:47) And my husband, true to a very masculine perspective, said, oh, my gosh. (5:54) She's fine, Tarryn.(5:55) She's handling this like an adult. (5:56) She's totally fine. (5:59) And I said to her, can you please ask her how she's doing?(6:02) And he said, I checked with her already. (6:05) I asked her, and she said, I'm fine, dad. (6:06) I'm fine.(6:07) Thank you. (6:07) I'm fine. (6:10) So interesting because the very next day I called the pediatrician to let her know what had happened, that my husband took her to the ER.(6:18) And I said, gave her the whole, all the details of the medications she was on. (6:24) And the pediatrician said to me, if I know her, she's handling this very well. (6:31) And she's probably being very mature about this whole situation.(6:36) And I thought, isn't that so interesting? (6:41) That the message we give our children at this very formative time of their lives is, I'm so proud of you for not feeling your feelings. (6:52) Look at how adult you are.(6:54) Look how mature you're being. (6:57) I'm so impressed you're handling this, quote, unquote, so well. (7:03) And I'm bringing up this story because I want you to see how in your life, these same messages have been perpetuated over your lifetime.(7:14) Wow. (7:16) I'm so proud of you. (7:18) You didn't fall apart when something sad happened.(7:21) I'm so impressed. (7:23) Maybe people even admire you. (7:25) I don't know how you do it all.(7:27) Something terrible happened in your life and look at you going right back to work. (7:32) I'm so impressed. (7:34) Look at how you've held it all together.(7:37) I'm using my air quotes again. (7:39) Even when your life was falling apart. (7:42) And so we get this message that it's heroic, that it's admirable, that you don't feel your feelings.(7:52) And in that moment, I recognized, and I saw in my daughter, a complete stunting of her processing. (8:00) And this is such a beautiful metaphor to give you because we can all identify with that 14-year-old girl heading off to high school. (8:07) The entire right side of her face is paralyzed.(8:11) And she's Googling. (8:14) She knows what she's doing. (8:16) She's Googling and she's seeing on Google that this could last a lifetime.(8:21) She's seeing that recovery is three to six months. (8:26) She knows her freshman year high school picture is going to show her with a asymmetric smile with her entire right side of her face. (8:35) She's on doxycycline.(8:38) She was told by the ER physician, don't go in the sun for the rest of the summer. (8:44) So no more swimming in the pool. (8:47) She's very aware of all the limitations that this is imposing on her and impacting her social life, her own anxiety.(8:58) This is a big deal in the life of a 14-year-old. (9:02) And she was just praised for bypassing all those emotions. (9:07) Maybe she's feeling them in the quiet of her own room, but I doubt it.(9:13) I am guessing that just like you and me, she is busying herself to avoid feeling the feelings because she's been so praised for the adult quote unquote way of navigating this. (9:28) And the truth is that's not even true either. (9:30) The adult way of processing this is wrong.(9:36) It shouldn't be praised. (9:37) The adult way, what they're implying is to completely ignore your emotions. (9:41) And what happens right there is we stunt the process of resilience.(9:47) We congratulate and reward suppressing emotion. (9:52) And we stunt the process of actually working through and processing your emotions and then getting to the other side. (10:03) What she needed was to fall apart.(10:08) Step one. (10:10) Only then could she start feeling into the resilience of it, seeing the positive side of it, admiring and celebrating herself for all the qualities of her that are so much greater than her face. (10:25) But it cannot happen before falling apart.(10:30) We know this from the grieving process. (10:33) There are stages of grief when we lose someone. (10:37) And when we don't process through those stages, we actually stunt our grieving.(10:43) We actually suppress our ability to process through it. (10:47) And, you know, just for a moment, I invite you to think back over your life. (10:50) How many times has this happened to you?(10:53) And no judgment here, by the way. (10:55) Only deep compassion and love for you. (10:59) But looking back over my life, how many times did I not allow myself to fully grieve when I had a deep loss or a disappointment?(11:09) Or how many times did I not allow myself to get angry when something really hurt me? (11:16) So many times in dentistry, maybe even daily. (11:20) And here's the thing.(11:22) When we don't allow for that processing, it creates almost like this emotional bruise so that every time you press on it, I feel it that much more. (11:35) It exacerbates the smaller situations. (11:40) So let's take my daughter, for example.(11:43) Maybe now, let's say she didn't process it, which by the way, when we got back together, I sat down with her and we talked about it. (11:51) And at first she was reticent to feel feelings because she's been praised for it so many times because everyone's told her she's being so adult. (11:58) But after we had some time, by the way, in nature, just the two of us hiking in the woods, she completely fell apart and cried about it.(12:08) I was able to just hold space for her. (12:10) And as I tell you that story, by the way, just feel how good that would feel just for yourself. (12:18) Allow yourself to just feel into being a 14-year-old girl for a moment with regards to anything you've suppressed over time.(12:27) How much would you just appreciate being held in someone's arms and someone saying, oh my gosh, just cry. (12:39) Just cry, my love. (12:41) It makes so much sense that you feel this way.(12:45) Of course you're sad about this. (12:47) Let it all out. (12:50) And then when you've cried and cried and cried and cried, having someone say, do you need to cry a little more?(12:58) Yes, let me cry more. (13:00) Let me not put restrictions on it. (13:03) Let me not put parameters on grief.(13:05) There is no statute of limitations on grief, on loss. (13:11) But there is an absolute stunting of the grieving process when we don't give ourselves permission to do it. (13:23) All right, my friends.(13:25) I am interrupting your episode to bring to you some extremely exciting news because at The Business of Happiness, we are doing something we have never done before because we know that you are doing such amazing things every single day. (13:42) We know you are literally putting smiles on children's faces on a daily basis. (13:47) And you have spent so many years giving and taking care of and serving and holding space for everyone else, not just your patients, but your team and your family.(13:59) And it is exhausting and it is time to come back to what is true to you. (14:06) And that is why we are offering the True2Me method. (14:11) We've never done this before.(14:13) And this is the core, the foundational method, the framework that is at the core of everything we offer is the True2Me method. (14:25) And we're putting it in a beautiful little package, a self-led course for you, a mini four-step course that you can listen to on the way to work. (14:35) It is going to change the way you see yourself.(14:40) It is going to put you back in touch with what is true to you. (14:43) Because what I know is up until this point, what we've been taught in dentistry is to outsource our choices and our decisions to the expectations of everyone around us. (14:57) What do my patients need?(14:58) What does my accountant say I need to do? (15:01) What does my family think? (15:02) What do my colleagues expect of me?(15:04) And this four-step method brings you back to you. (15:10) This is the core of finding fulfillment and freedom and satisfaction and enjoyment and living your life to the fullest. (15:20) So check out True2MeMethod.com.(15:24) Easy to remember. (15:25) True2MeMethod.com. (15:26) And use the code POD10, P-O-D 10, to get a 10% discount as a podcast listener.(15:35) Let me tell you, this is amazing. (15:37) We have already put an enormous savings. (15:40) It's usually 997.(15:42) We're bringing it down to 497. (15:44) And with the POD 10% savings, you get another 10% off. (15:48) This is a no-brainer.(15:50) There are CE credits. (15:51) There's community. (15:52) There's a downloadable companion guide.(15:55) There are monthly check-ins. (15:57) This is amazing. (15:58) You cannot afford to miss it.(16:00) Check out the True2MeMethod.com and use the code POD10. (16:05) I am sending you so much love. (16:07) You deserve to remember what is true for you.(16:11) Now, back to the episode. (16:15) I remember I had my first baby was born almost two months early. (16:21) Six and a half weeks premature.(16:23) I call that almost two months early. (16:25) And the amount of grief that I had at the time, we weren't talking about postpartum depression, but the way I see it is, and the way I spoke about it at the time was, I was grieving being pregnant. (16:40) I felt like something had been taken from me.(16:43) My experience of the third trimester. (16:47) By the way, I loved being pregnant. (16:48) For me, it was not an unhappy experience.(16:51) It was a time in my life where I loved my body most. (16:55) I admired my body most. (16:57) I loved the way I felt.(16:58) I loved feeling my baby inside me. (17:01) And when my first baby was born so prematurely, I was grieving deeply. (17:07) Not just because my baby was so ill and in the NICU, and I wasn't allowed to stay with her, but because I wasn't pregnant anymore.(17:17) I was very clear that that was sad for me. (17:20) And giving myself permission to cry about it, even if it didn't make sense to anyone else, was exactly what I needed. (17:32) If that process isn't allowed, now imagine you resist feeling sad.(17:39) You resist. (17:40) You keep showing up as brave. (17:42) You keep showing up as what everybody else feels more comfortable.(17:46) Let's not avoid that very clear point. (17:51) I remember when my brother passed, I was crying and crying and crying, and all my girlfriends gave me a night of just reprieve. (17:59) And so they ordered in dinner, and we watched a funny movie.(18:03) There was nothing more uncomfortable to me. (18:07) I didn't want to laugh at a ridiculous slapstick humor movie. (18:12) I needed to cry more.(18:15) But notice how sometimes the people in our world are uncomfortable with that. (18:20) So we keep getting that messaging. (18:21) Oh my gosh, yes, let me reinforce this little positive bypassing, this toxic positivity.(18:28) You're doing so well. (18:30) Let's give you a little break from grief. (18:34) No, we actually need to feel it all the way through.(18:36) And the only person who knows that is you. (18:40) Because if we don't allow that, we then experience small things as deeply painful. (18:49) For example, imagine now my daughter stubs her toe, and it hurts.(18:57) And she then makes a whole bigger story of, oh my gosh, terrible things are happening to me. (19:04) Why is it me? (19:06) All these awful things keep happening to me.(19:08) Or maybe she doesn't make it onto the volleyball team in her tryouts. (19:15) And this exacerbates her reaction to not making it onto the team. (19:20) Notice there's this little emotional bruising, this little open wound that has never been allowed to fully heal.(19:29) Because what needs to heal is feeling that emotion. (19:33) By the way, that's all that emotion is. (19:36) It's energy in motion.(19:38) And our bodies are designed to process this. (19:43) Isn't it miraculous that we have eyes and tears to let emotion out? (19:52) It's incredible.(19:53) We have these beautiful vessels. (19:56) We forget to honor our bodies in this way. (19:58) You have tears for a reason.(20:01) It's so incredible that we get to feel feelings, and our bodies get to fully allow that emotion to process. (20:10) And it's what's so necessary. (20:12) And, of course, we get all those messages from society, from our parents, from our teachers, from our professors, from social media not to process feelings.(20:25) And it's actually the very core of how to find resilience, how to find happiness, how to find a sense of presence and freedom. (20:36) Because when we are trying to suppress an emotion, one of our go-tos, especially as high-achieving, brilliant women, is to busy ourselves. (20:47) Let me just, instead of feeling this feeling, what emails do I need to answer right now?(20:52) Instead of feeling this feeling, what big project, what chores in the house, what conversations do I need to have? (21:00) How do I need to prepare myself more for next week? (21:04) We're always about preparation.(21:06) How can I get ahead of the game instead of sitting here and feeling this feeling deeply? (21:14) And here's a challenge as high-achieving, very busy women. (21:20) We don't make time for it either.(21:23) We don't make time for it. (21:25) And that is one of the reasons why it's so important to make time for yourself. (21:32) To allow yourself to feel feelings.(21:36) Making time for yourself, and I mean without anybody else around, unless you need that person like a therapist or a good friend who's very good at holding space for you while you're crying. (21:49) And this is important because I think many of us say, I don't need a therapist, I don't need a coach, because I have really good friends who really get me and understand me. (21:58) And I think there's a lot of value in that.(22:00) Truly, I really do. (22:03) And I'm going to invite you to just recognize, is your friend good at holding space for you while you grieve? (22:09) Because by the way, that is a very coveted friendship.(22:14) That is a very special person. (22:17) Notice even in yourself, how comfortable are you to hold space for someone who's just grieving and not feeling the need to jump in and make them feel better? (22:30) Or jump in and make them stop crying?(22:34) Or be the hero? (22:36) Be the one that solves or has those words of inspiration or those magical words that just make them feel better all of a sudden. (22:47) Notice how hard it is as a friend to actually let your friend just cry and cry, be unhappy, just sit in her misery for a little bit.(22:59) We get uncomfortable with it, don't we? (23:01) And yet it's exactly what we need. (23:04) Even in the small things.(23:06) Maybe it's, my patient said she doesn't trust me. (23:12) And maybe that's something you've been working on for your entire career. (23:16) In fact, maybe you pride yourself on being extremely integrous, very trustworthy.(23:21) And your patient says something that really hurts because that's a part of your core value system. (23:28) It's something you work towards every day. (23:30) Giving yourself permission to cry about it is so important.(23:34) Not to jump in and fix it. (23:38) Ha-ha. (23:38) Not to jump in and find another course on communication or resolve or solve this problem that I'm not a good enough practitioner, good enough dentist, good enough healthcare provider, good enough empath or leader or communicator.(23:54) Insert any word you've been feeling. (23:57) Anything you've been searching for. (23:59) I'm inviting you right now to consider are you not giving yourself space to feel the depth of it?(24:07) The anger. (24:08) Maybe you're mad at that patient. (24:09) How dare you?(24:10) I've gone out of my way for you. (24:13) I've done absolutely everything I know a hundred other dentists wouldn't do. (24:18) That processing of anger is important.(24:21) Because if you don't, then someone's going to say something really small and that wound is going to be pressed on again and you're going to feel it even more. (24:32) Allowing yourself to grieve is such a critical component of happiness. (24:39) Such a critical component of presence.(24:43) Being present. (24:45) Think about the last time you allowed yourself to just cry a good cry. (24:49) And at the end of it, you feel exhausted, yes.(24:52) But you also feel release. (24:56) That is what that is. (24:57) It is a release.(24:59) And when we're holding too much of it in, there's no room for presence. (25:04) There's no room for calm. (25:06) It's like a boiling pot that we've stuffed a lid on top of that we're not allowing to release.(25:18) And it starts at such a young, precious age when we get that message to not feel feelings. (25:25) So huge forgiveness and love and grace and compassion and understanding for yourself right now. (25:31) Because not if.(25:33) It's an absolute. (25:35) This is what we are learning to do as grown women is how to love ourselves enough to let ourselves feel our feelings. (25:45) And maybe this podcast today, this episode, has just given you permission to make the space and time, because it does require that, to create the safety in which to feel and process feelings.(26:00) So maybe as I've been talking to you today, you realized, oh my gosh, yeah, I've not given myself that permission. (26:07) Maybe this episode is just giving you that permission now. (26:10) Because you deserve to feel good.(26:13) And when you feel good, that's when you can do good. (26:17) Bye-bye. (26:19) Thank you for listening to the Business of Happiness podcast.(26:22) If this episode brought you new perspective and value, I invite you to subscribe so that you catch all upcoming episodes and leave us a review. (26:32) And if you know of a friend or colleague who could benefit from this perspective, share this episode with them and empower their day. (26:40) For more information about the Business of Happiness and the Radical Happiness for Practitioners course, find me on www.thebizofhappiness.com.(26:51) See you there.