Dental dreams (or should that be nightmares?!)

[spanna]

Tbh I'm surprised there was not already a thread about this as I'm sure it's not just me who has them! (If there is already a thread that I missed I apologise and admins feel free to move/delete this.)

I have the strangest/most vivid dreams anyway and last night I had a dental dream. Thankfully they are no longer nightmares for me as I now have a fab dentist who has helped me overcome my phobia.

In last nights dream I arrived for an appointment to be greeted by a different dentist. (That would be a nightmare!) When I asked where my usual dentist was I was told he was still there but couldn't do my treatment as his permit had expired. I have no idea what permit! So I asked to speak to him, when he came in I told him I didn't care about any permits and would only let him do my treatment. He said he couldn't without this permit and tried to convince me to let the other dentist treat me and he would stay and watch. I wouldn't agree and said I would wait until he had his permit again and then I left! And that was pretty much it, very strange!

Anyway I have an appointment next week so I hope he's got his permit is up to date! That's one dream I do not want to come true!

Anyone else had any dental dreams recently?

 

[carole]

Hi I have often had dental nightmares and I would not even tell them on here, they are that scary and could not possibly happen. I think when we are stressed we also seem to have a furtive imagination that just doesn't know where to stop.

I don't know if there is a thread about this anywhere else, but there is one now. I would think that plenty of people have experienced this. I have also had dreams and re-lived treatment after some appointments too.

Good topic and good luck with your appointment.

Dentists do have to register with the GDC to practice which costs them, I would think that they renew it well before it is due. I hope your dentist is there when you go.

Do let us know how you get on

 

[spanna]

I did think yesterday after posting this that I hope no-one posts details of nightmares! I know they are only dreams and not real in any way but I don't want to upset anyone with this thread! I'm pretty sure everyone would use common sense but just in case - Please don't post any details other may find scary or upsetting- Thank you!

I have relived appointment in dreams too but I tend to have most dental dreams in the days leading up to appointments now, I think its because although I'm not really scared now the appointment is still very much on my mind! Luckily these are on longer nightmares like I used to have before I started facing my phobia, my mind used to think up all sort of horrible things and it really didn't help. At least when you do face your phobia you realise it is no where near as bad as your mind has been dreaming up!

 

[carole]

This is so true. Even Stephen King couldn't write the horror in my nightmares. Lucky for me I with the help of three very good dentists have also got to a stage where the nerves are under control now for me.

 

[kitkat]

I have dental dreams (and nightmares) too. I never had them til I really started making progress towards overcoming my phobia with a good dentist. I think I was just suppressing all of my dental thoughts before then! Most dental dreams I have actually have nothing to do with my dentist even though she is in a lot of them (most of my dreams are about teeth just teeth falling out randomly! Once I had a dream that I had dentures! I know lots of people have dentures but it was very disturbing to me at the time as I have all of my own teeth in waking life! ). I have had a few dreams of just non-eventful appointments too but either way I dislike dental visits while awake let alone while asleep! I had a lot of dental dreams just before my last cleaning appointment for some reason...way more than usual and then none before my filling appointment just two weeks after so there is not much rhyme or reason to them.

 

[Tink]

I have dental dreams (and nightmares) too. I never had them til I really started making progress towards overcoming my phobia with a good dentist. I think I was just suppressing all of my dental thoughts before then!

Hah, I found exactly the same thing!

Very occasionally I get (what I'm told are) night terrors - they're not quite the same thing as nightmares, more akin to sleepwalking. I will leap out of bed, still asleep, and run away from non-existent spiders. My husband needs to put the light on and prove that there aren't any spiders then I will quite happily go back to sleep leaving him more freaked out than me!

99 times out of 100 it's spiders in the bed - it always seems to be whatever it is that scares you most (my Dad used to get them with fires & floods, Mum would be woken up by him trying to put her out and she would patiently explain that she wasn't on fire) - but once I had a dentist version.

Night terrors also differ from normal dreams in that they are always set in the actual setting I'm in for real, so it is hard to snap out of until I wake up properly. (That's hard to explain clearly! What I mean is, I'll dream that I'm in bed, but there are spiders in the bed. I leap up to get away from the spiders. The thing that usually helps me to understand that it was a dream is when my husband points out that it's dark so I couldn't possibly *see* the spiders so it couldn't have been real.)

I can't remember exactly what was going on in the dentist dream/hallucination but it was extremely unpleasant because, unlike the usual version where I would leap up and run away, waking myself up in the process & eventually breaking the spell, I stayed where I was until I eventually woke up clinging to my husband. It was horrible! That was a new and unwelcome development, but I'm pleased to report it only happened once.

I think it's hard for my brain to work dentists into a dream that starts with "I'm in my bed" so that's why it hasn't done that too often, thank goodness! The time it did happen was an odd sort of meta-dream where I did dream that I was in my bed, but I was dreaming that I was dreaming about dentists (or thinking about dentists maybe? I don't know!) and I got sort of stuck in it and couldn't get out.


Hope that made sense! It's hard to explain because it's so very weird!

 

[gamergirl123]

happened to me last night. *SHUDDER*

i'm currently still trying to get past the issue of actually getting up the courage to even talk to mom about wanting to see a dentist.

dream was thankfully super short(never thought i'd be thankful for a "gotta pee!" induced wake up). It was just a dentist starting to come towards me and i think he was trying to say "ok, now open your mouth" and i immediately began jumping up to bolt out of the room.

 

[christel]

I have dental nightmares for almost 30 years now........I can FEEL my teeth falling out.....one after another and another till I wake up.......and it feels so real, I have to put my fingers in my mouth to check if I still have any teeth........seen a dentist for the first time in 30 years now, and have surgical extraction in 2 weeks under deep sedation.......now I'm dreaming that I am first peacefully asleep, and in the middle of it I wake up and try to fight the dentist.......I felt sorry for my husband and actually sleep on the couch right now ( if I sleep at all)........because it was actually my husband I started beating on in the middle of the night.........

 

[Cat12]

I've had quite a few dental dreams (but only one nightmare that I remember when I was little which I probably wouldn't find that scary now.) I used to get dreams every now and then before I started facing my phobia, usually just that I was at appointments. Then I would wake up and wish it had been real and I didn't have a phobia... I remember a dream where there was a dental chair in one of the science labs at my old secondary school . I had quite a lot of dreams before my first appointment that I'd had in a while, but haven't had so many recently.

 

[ScaredyCat22]

I don't dream about appointments or dentists but I do dream that my teeth fall out, or break off, or that there are big deep holes in them. I think those are common nightmares and usually happen during times of stress.