Dentist Fear
Thousands of people are afraid of the dentist. Most have no idea that Fear of Dentist can be treated. But it can.
We live in the 21st century, and psychologists have learned how to deal with many emotional problems. Your dental phobia is psychological. It can be cleared permanently.
What is it with Fear of Dentist?
Not all dentist fears are the same.
You should get your teeth checked regularly. Neglecting your teeth doesn't just affect your looks and your breath. Bad teeth are a potential source of infection. Showing obvious bad teeth can have a serious effect on your mental well-being too. You might find it hard get dates, get passed over for promotion, or feel socially out of it.
There are several genuine reasonable reasons why you might not want to go to the dentist.
- Dentistry is expensive, maybe once you have started you won't be able to afford it?
- Maybe you are ashamed of your teeth and the dentist will criticize you for poor hygiene?
- Or are you afraid of the needles, drills and pliers lying on the tray?
- Do you have an excessive gag reflex? Some people can not bear to have anything in their mouth.
But some people have really extreme dental fear reactions. They will endure pain for years. Pain that stops them sleeping. Pain on every bite when they eat. They only make an appointment when it becomes a real emergency. And it feels like going to your own execution.
Dentists rank your discomfort as
- Stress - feeling uncomfortable as you wait for your turn.
- Anxiety - worrying, fidgeting, pacing, distracting yourself.
- Fear - pounding pulse, sweating, wanting to run away.
- Phobia - totally unable to even make an appointment.
Manage the fear by yourself - some dental visit tips:
1. Stress If the dentist just causes you stress, then it can be treated like any other stressful situation.
- Try to stop it building up. In the waiting room, or even before that, you can practice deep breathing, meditation, mindfulness, or other calming techniques.
- You can distract yourself from thinking about it by online games, or a good book.
- You can bring along a support person.
- You can talk to the dentist before your appointment. Talk about what actually frightens you most.
- If it is the drill that is the problem, you can bring ear plugs, or headphones.
- Agree a signal for the dentist to stop. That way you have some control, and can order a break during the procedure. Agree with the dentist if is there is slightest pain, you signal, and don't go on until you get more anesthetic. There is absolutely no reason why you should feel any pain, even from the initial injection. Dentists know how to avoid that too.
2. Anxiety is the fear of something that hasn't happened yet. 
Your anxiety is based upon what you think is going to happen. Or rather, what you fear is going to happen. Your mind builds up images of pain, of feeling trapped, of losing control.
But these are just images, they are not real. Nothing has happened yet. And if they're not real then you can learn to change them. You can learn mental exercises to deal with any kind of anxiety.
3. Pain Your dentist can make it entirely painless.
Dentists are highly trained professionals and want to do everything they can to help you through the experience. They may go as far as giving you an anaesthetic to knock you out for the procedure.
In severe cases you might need get tranquillizer pills from your doctor.
These are effective, but carry the risk of side effects. And of course, you will need to repeat them every time.
4. Dentist phobia
Extreme dental resistence, fear of drilling, needles and all the rest of it is a phobia, just like any other phobia.
Phobias are easily removed with hypnosis. I deal with phobias every week.
A phobia is a fear that is out of proportion to the actual threat. Needles can hurt. Dentistry can be uncomfortable. But in a phobic person, the reaction and fear is way out of line. For some people, even having their teeth cleaned professionally involves gripping the arm rests, ankles crossed, heart pounding.
The fear is very real. It is in the same class as Public Speaking and Fear of Flying. It can be crippling, and is made worse when other people make fun of it. And on top of that, it gets stronger over time.
Where does dental phobia come from?
Phobias are created when something dramatic happens to you, that makes you experience an overwhelming and sudden fear.
Your unconscious mind creates a powerful association between the event and that fear. And forever after, your unconscious mind does everything possible to keep you away from that situation, or anything similar to that situation.
If it means that your unconscious gives you a terrifying fear of dentists, then it works tirelessly to keep you away from them. Your unconscious mind is doing what it is designed to do – keep you safe.
The good news is, you can overcome your fear of the dentist. You probably won't enjoy it, but you don't have to have that dental fear any more. Your fear is not about the dentist. It is actually about a different fear, something from your childhood.
What causes dental fears?
I have dealt successfully with many people with the fear of dentist. Dental fear is usually not just a fear of needles. In the worst cases it is a generalized fear of being near a dentist at all. I knew a man who could not walk along the street his dentist's office was in. He knew he should book in, but avoided it.
When looking for the causes of dental avoidance, it can often be traced back to a specific incident in childhood.
Usually the client does remember something from childhood. They were taken to the dentist and for some reason got spooked. It might have been fear of a strange place, or picking up on the mother's anxiety, just the pain while sitting in the waiting room.
Some children get wound up by their friends, and by the time they get to the dentist they have been convinced that they are going to be in a torture chamber.
A frightened child just wants to go home. The child does not want some stranger poking round his mouth, sticking needles in, giving him pain, whatever. The child just wanted to get out of there and go home with his mother.
But what actually happened next was that the child was made to stay, while every nerve in his body was screaming for him to get away. Nobody wants to hurt him, But he must have the operation. So he is forcibly restrained, held down and operated on. The result was a child who is now traumatized. He was frightened by a strange situation, by strange people, by the pain and the knowledge that he can't get away. It is the "can't get away" part which is most important.
Dental phobia is a combination of feeling trapped and knowing that you are going to get hurt. Your mind predicts what is going to happen, and so it does everything possible to stop you getting near that situation again.
And from then on, the two fears are linked. Anytime you think about the dentist, it brings out that fear. That is what you are feeling.
Your intelligence knows that the needle is not really dangerous. But your unconscious believes that you must never go near that chair again, because you will be catapulted back to feeling like a terrified child again. And your mind just will not allow that.
Your mind's job is to protect you, to make sure you don't re-experience the fear. So it does anything, anything, to stop to you ever going back the dentist. That way you will be safe. And the more you try to override it, the stronger your mind tries to make you avoid it.
Dental Anxiety Success
Fear of Needles
Mrs. Maitland told me that she had been advised by her dentist to consult a hypnotherapist regarding her daughter’s (Alana) fear of needles. It appears that Alana was terrified of needles to the extent that it was interfering with her normal medical treatments.
Mrs. Maitland brought Alana to see me at my office. Mrs. Maitland was present during the entire consultation.
Alana seemed a charming girl of about 12. She behaved normally during our interaction. She seemed a little shy but otherwise a happy child. Her mother described her behavior at her last dentist visit.
Apparently Alana was uncontrollably terrified of some proposed procedure and could not be persuaded to allow anyone to touch her. She asked me to try to help Alana overcome this fear.
Procedure:
I asked her mother stay in the background and I asked a few questions to get to know Alana. She seemed quite confident and willing to talk about her problem with needles. I decided to use a psychological technique called Metaphor Therapy.
I asked Alana to imagine that I had a needle, and I was going to use it on her. I asked her how that idea made her feel. She said that she got a feeling in her stomach. I asked her to close her eyes and pay attention to the feeling in her stomach.
The technique consists of getting Alana to visualize the feeling as an object, and then enable her to transform that object into something she can deal with and remove.
I gradually got her to describe the feeling in more and more detail. The words she used were - big, silver, round, shiny, sharp, cold, smooth. As I got Alana to focus on the images she became entirely immersed in experiencing her own inner representation of the feeling.
The next stage is to establish a link between removing the object, and changing her behaviour. I asked her “What would you like to have happen to that thing?” “Go away”, she said. “And when it goes away, what would that mean for you?” “I could be happy.” “And when it goes away and you can be happy, what can you do then?” “I can be OK.”
The next step is to convince the client she has control of the feeling. “Can you imagine that cold, hard, silver thing getting a bit bigger?” I walked her through imagining it bigger, and then bigger still, and even bigger.
Then I reversed the process and got her to imagine it becoming smaller and smaller. I then told her “You can make it bigger, and you can make it smaller. This means that you have control of that thing. That’s good, isn’t it?”
She agreed that she was in control. I then told her to imagine it getting smaller and smaller, and simply notice how it was changing as it got smaller. This is an indirect hypnotic suggestion of change.
I then waited a few minutes to give her time to make the changes and asked “what does that thing look like now?” She said “It is like a bug.” It was “harmful, white”. I asked her “What would you like to do to it?” She said “Squash it!”
I then got her to describe how she would squash it, and invited her to do it, and describe what she was doing. The bug ended up a smear on the ground under her shoe.
The technique requires total removal of the ‘thing’, so I suggested she could get a tissue from her mum, wipe it away, and throw it in the bin.
I got her to open her eyes again and come back to the present.
I asked her to think about injections again, and asked “How does that seem to you now?”. She said. “Ok, I suppose.” I then tested her reaction. I told her I was going to get a needle out of my drawer and get her to hold it.
As I opened the drawer she made no reaction, other than exhibiting a mild curiosity about what might be in my drawer. There was no reaction to the idea of a needle at all.
The whole procedure took about ten minutes.
Outcome:
Two days after the consultation I got an email from her mother: I can see already the needles fear is gone, thank you!
Her mother brought Alana to see me again on a different matter, and both confirmed that the needle phobia and fear of dentist had gone completely.
