Have you ever felt like you didn’t fit in with your dental community?

I felt that a lot throughout my decade in practice. Whenever I showed up to local CE or dental society events, I felt invisible. It was hard to genuinely connect with other dentists within the community, and I didn’t think I had much in common with most of the people I met.

So I slowly pulled away from the social aspects of the dental community. After all, I wasn’t getting much satisfaction from it. Plus, I felt tired of eating, sleeping, breathing, and discussing dentistry all the time. I wanted to create more diversity in my life.

I thought that separation would free me up to invest my energy in interests outside of dentistry, but that’s not what happened. Instead, I still felt a huge devotion to my career. Even though I was unhappy in practice and it created a lot of pain for me, I still made dentistry my whole world. The only problem was, I was on an island, and I became more and more isolated.

Because of that isolation, I had no one to validate the stress and challenges I experienced as a dentist.

That made me feel worse about dentistry and myself.

I spent years feeling like a failure. The stress of dentistry created a lot of anxiety and even depression. I had no idea that my response to the stress was normal, and instead I constantly asked myself what was wrong with me. Why couldn’t I handle the stress of dentistry like others could? Why couldn’t I like it the way others did?

It wasn’t until I had to quit dentistry that I ended up finding many others who felt just like I did.

But we were all scattered, living in silence. It turned out, none of us had a community who understood our pains. We didn’t have a community where we could safely discuss the truth about how we felt in our careers.

The community most of us knew and avoided had a hive mind that dismissed and invalidated our experiences and feelings.

It still happens to this day. A decade ago, whenever I tried to share my clinical practice pains, it confused other dentists. Most of them meant well and wanted me to like it, but they couldn’t imagine how or why I didn’t love the perks and the money that came with dentistry.

And then there are the means ones… today you can find most of them online, and they love to get everyone to see how great dentistry is. I think they mean well too, but their tactics don’t work and end up shaming others. They just don’t get it.

The great thing about life in dentistry now is that we have such a diversity of communities. The creatives and the innovators in dentistry have decided to create their own communities, each with a different message. Dentist Side Gigs is one of them. Ten years ago, I accidentally created a community with my blog, and today we have a thriving private group on Facebook.

With all the communities available today, it’s easy to find the right hive mind.

Find a community of like-minded people who can support your dreams and your goals, and that will change everything.

Instead of joining a community where you have to hide your true self, the key is to find a community where you can shine.

One such community is the DeWLife Community. If you haven’t heard of DeW, that’s Dental Entrepreneur Women, a great community for all women in dentistry. I recently wrote a guest post on their blog titled The Importance of Community. You don’t have to be a woman to read the blog, so go check it out and get to know another positive community!