• Dental Phobia Support

    Welcome! This is an online support group for anyone who is has a severe fear of the dentist or dental treatment. Please note that this is NOT a general dental problems or health anxiety forum! You can find a list of them here.

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fighting back against my phobia, success!

Z

zombiegroupie

Well-known member
Joined
Mar 27, 2014
Messages
391
I've always had a dental phobia. After some truly awful experiences as a child (bordering on assault by a dentist) and then another horrific experience as a 20 year old (wisdom teeth) I didn't ever go unless I had to and it would haunt me for ages.

After the birth of my daughter by emergency c section in 2012 my health anxiety and phobias were triggered so badly.

I had been to the dentist on and off for cleanings and such but hadn't done too much dental work since hte horrible wisdom tooth experience in 2003.

In March of 2013 two of my teeth chipped suddently and I started having horrific toothaches.

Went to my current dentist at the time and he said I needed a root canal or extraction of this upper molar. I just panicked. Made some appointments and then cancelled. suffered the horrible pain

my other tooth that had chipped started hurting even more. I was rolling around in a ball crying with an ice pack. Couldn't even hold my daughter because my pain was so bad.

I kept makign appointments with different dentists, trying to find one who would listen to my fears instead of just trying to convince me to do $10,000+ worth of work on my crooked teeth and weird bite.

I found a dentist who is for phobics. He's also a licensed therapist. He understood what my phobias were and didn't try to laugh off my trauma or specific fears.

He told me what I needed. THen I made an appointment. Again, let the fear take over and kept cancelling.

Suffered pain all through the holidays.

This year, I kept suffering toothaches intermittently and trying to just ignore things

After another spring and summer had passed, I really decided I needed to get the work done or my teeth would kill me. Either the stress or the pain.

I went back to the therapy dentist. He said that my severely broken top tooth would require an oral surgeon. Cue the panic, again.

I got the nerve to make an appointment with this guy and had the root tip removal. It wasn't as bad as I had expected. Nothing pleasant, but i felt so accomplished when I got it done. this was in June.

Then when that was healing, I went to the therapy dentist again. He said I needed fillings and some more extractions.

I had 3 fillings done on my lower right jaw in July. I cried, felt like I needed to leave. Just made myself sit there and get through it.

The next month, I had 3 fillings on the top of my jaw. Same thing. I was very nervous but made myself sit there and just do it!

On Wednesday last week I had 2 extractions. A broken back molar and a front tooth that was takig up too much space. I was so so frightened. At one point I did start to feel some pain when he was working on the front tooth and I made a face and made a noise and he stopped immediately and numbed me again. He didn't complain, didn't judge. Just stopped and made sure I was comfortable again.

I am so proud of myself from having done this work and making my mouth healhty again.

i'm still afraid but I know that I can get in there and do it when I need to

I hope this story can help someone else get their work done too
 
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