Getting worse before it gets better - is this normal or is it just me?

[carole]

Thank goodness Tink, we can all sigh a breath of relief now, I am very pleased for you

Good luck for Monday, and enjoy the Eurovision, I think even in the US they know about it.

I think it is one of those uncool things that we all have a sneaky peek at but don't want to admit it

 

[Tink]

vicki & Steve in Cleveland: thanks very much for your posts, really appreciated - it's good to see that people get it and I'm not alone in experiencing this! I don't have the energy to reply at length just now, but just so you know you're really helped.



carole: re Eurovision, pfffft, I haven't been cool in a long time. Possibly ever. Just embrace it

 

[vicki]

Glad to be of help and glad that you got the reply you'd hoped for . It's a good opportunity to get things out in the open and hopefully, once you've had the chance to discuss how you feel, things should start to get better .

As for Eurovision, I'll be sat in bed watching it and if my teeth weren't hurting so much at the moment, I'd be stuffing my face full of popcorn too but I think I'll just have to settle for a mug of tea instead !!

 

[kitkat]

Hello -

I'm in the process of trying to deal with a fear of the dentist, but I feel like I'm losing the plot just now - I came on to see whether anybody else on here has found the same thing because I feel like some kind of freak but I'm sure it can't be just me!

A quick history of me & dentists:

Ever since I was a child I've been taught that going to the dentist is unpleasant and painful, but you just have to put up with it. I was taught to shut up and not under any circumstances make a fuss (my parents weren't too good at dentist either, and we had a terrible family dentist). Later on, when I left home, I had more sympathetic dentists who might have had a chance at improving things, but around that time a problem was starting to emerge with the anaesthetics that meant that it was still horrible and painful, so I just kept on trying as best I could and the fear never got any less. Then a couple of years ago I had a very bad experience with an unsympathetic dentist who basically bullied me into having a large filling done without anaesthetic and without proper consent. He cheerfully capitalised on and reinforced my beliefs that I'm a terrible patient and it's all my fault and that I should shut up and not make a fuss.

About a year ago everything changed when I went to a new dentist. For the first time ever, they figured out how to fix the problem with the anaesthetic, ending many years of misery. And that should have been it, problem solved...

But it wasn't. It wasn't just the way they use anaesthetic that was different, everything is different with this new dentist. The dentist (and everybody in the practise) is wonderful - patient, sympathetic, understanding. Everything I thought I knew about dentists has been completely turned upside down, suddenly they've made it OK to be scared, even OK to show it, and they're telling me it's not my fault after all. I learned about how consent works, and how dentist are expected to behave - this led me to make a complaint about my previous dentist, who eventually admitted to not having proper consent and apologised (unconvincingly).

The problem is that now they've made it OK to be afraid, I've finally stopped suppressing all the fear after all these years and I feel completely overwhelmed. It's like I've been just about coping all this time because I had to, and now it's all unravelling. I'm unravelling!

Is this normal? Has anybody else found this?

Hi Tink!

I'm a little late joining this thread but I can relate with so many things that have been said here. Like you, I always accepted that dentistry is very unpleasant and I would "shut down" in the chair and become very quiet, compliant, passive, and submissive. I think sometimes (as in my case) when we find the right dentist and feel safe, "pandora's box" opens and all of the emotions that we have suppressed start to flood out.

When I found the right dentist I immediately expected to feel much more at ease and relaxed at subsequent visits. I was soon extremely disappointed when I became a trembling, shaking, hyperventilating mess at following appointments and wondered why I was so much "worse." But looking back, I don't think I was actually worse. I was just no longer suppressing how I've always felt. I think my dentist's acceptance of my fears helped me learn to be accepting of them myself.

I went to the dentist the other day, and for most of the appointment I did what I've always done - I withdrew into myself, gave polite but very short answers to his attempts at small talk, and obediently sat back and let him do a check-up. He must have thought I was doing really well until suddenly at the end I managed to admit that I wasn't OK really, and the few months since I was last in have been all over the place. I tried to explain but it all came out completely garbled and I couldn't quite manage to explain myself. Now I'm confused and I'm sure he's confused too and it's all a bit of a mess.

I don't even know how to show it or explain it. I'm not physically capable of crying in the surgery or anything like that (although I'll be in floods of tears as soon as I get out the door), it's just not how I work. So half the time they can't even tell if I'm not coping, unless I manage to tell them.

We're working on desensitisation at the moment, I'm going to go in more often and hopefully it will gradually get easier. It's certainly the only way I can think of to tackle this. Sometimes I think I'd prefer to go back to how things were before, but it's like they've inadvertently opened up a great big can of worms and there's no way I can get all the worms back in the can now. I think the only way might be to deal with them.


Ugh, sorry, that was really long and probably doesn't make any sense! Does anybody recognise any of this?

Sometimes it does seem like it would be easier to go back to that place of constant nervous tension and insisting that you're "fine." But I think it is impossible to carry on in that way and move forward to make peace with this. My dentist had to be my voice and my advocate for awhile and I needed a lot of encouragement to tell her when I wasn't "okay" and to use a stop signal. In the beginning, she would end up stopping before I told her to stop and she had to tell me over and over again that I was in control and I could stop her at anytime and that she would not continue. She would stop at every flinch, change of breathing, sometimes just for no reason at all to check in, and when she could tell that I really wasn't coping well as my fight or flight symptoms began to surface and beome more evident from feeling more comfortable and no longer "shutting down." With lots of time, caring gestures, and repetition she really empowered me to communicate how I feel and to not feel ashamed or embarrassed about it. In the beginning, I would almost always go into "shut down" mode. It was what I knew and it was my default coping mechanism to stress. It started where towards the end of appointments, the pressure would build to where it would become apparent I was not coping. Eventually though the walls came down and I would be a hot mess from the very beginning of an appointment and would be calm and settled by the end having got all of the anxiety out of my system early.

I can vividly recall one appointment at my "peak" when those "walls" were crumbling and I actually started shaking and hyperventilating a lot just as she was about to start a filling (she hadn't even touched me yet) and it surprised both of us and was really the first time she confronted me about my fear in the sense that she wanted to have a discussion about what exactly bothered me. This was a few appointments in with her and prior to that she knew I was nervous but never asked specifically what bothered me and sort of just treated everything and anything as fear provoking and was always very reassuring. She stopped and asked if I was nervous and I said yes and I was surprised I said yes. She asked me why but I couldn't really tell her at the time (I was still caught off guard by my own reaction) and I just told her I didn't know. She just quietly sat with me for a few moments and allowed me to get my composure. She also turned to her assistant confused and said "I've never seen her like this before" and I remember thinking this is it..this is the worst that I have ever been and I have a good dentist that I like and trust...I must be beyond help! But in reality I think it was just a safe environment to express all of those pent up emotions from years of suppression that I never had the opportunity to release before and it was very therapeutic.

Slowly though, many, many years later, things have gotten better and my anxiety has mostly stopped or is minimal but it has a been a long process. It has also been very inconsistent. I have had lots of excellent appointments and lots of difficult ones and in no particular order. But overall, things generally got better as time progressed with anxiety becoming less building up to appointments, feeling more confident with communicating with my dentist, and coping during appointments.

I'm so glad you have found a good dentist to work with you through this process and that you received a reply to talk more with him. I think the communication will come with practice and time to get to know each other. With experience, you will build trust and confidence with this person and develop a sense of comfort and security. Phases of transition are always difficult. It challenges us to step out of what is comfortable and familiar and break patterns of behavior that have become automatic so things won't always be a steady and straight path.

 

[Tink]

Gah. I feel like I've reached a big tipping point here.

Got up this morning and I had an email from the dentist, he's very busy, can I put it in an email and can we talk at my next appointment? (which is a 5 minute appointment! How can I manage that in 5 minutes?!). I think I've completely failed to communicate how bad things are. My husband made me send back a reply that basically said "help!". I'm not sure what happens next, this might be one of those moments where it's make or break

 

[carole]

Hang on in there Tink, you are doing so well. Good for your husband, and to you for sending the reply. You cannot put it any clearer than you have so the dentist will just have to either make time for a talk sometime, or make your next appointment longer than 5 minutes. Heck you barely have time to say good day in that time.

Stick with it, you will get there. He may well be busy and I understand this, but he must understand that you need them to understand exactly how you feel. It will do you both good in the end.

Keep us posted, good luck

 

[Patti]

Hi Tink,

Oh, you are not alone in your fears. I was in my 40's the FIRST TIME I walked into a dentist's office. My parents never took me because in their mind, you only went to the dentist when you had pain (not true--you go to avoid it) and for them, their trips meant dentures--so I was PETRIFIED! So in my 40's I went for 2 fillings and quit there. Last year, I went for what I thought would just be a couple more fillings and to my horror, they said root canal and crown. I opted to get the tooth pulled--but the dentist said she saw "other issues" that needed to be addressed. She was completely vague about what she saw, and she was not a dentist that would put up with me and my fear. I got another dentist (an old family friend, actually) who was patient with me. I was scared stiff of what the diagnosis would be but it wasn't as bad as I thought and no crown either! It was, however, a 3 month dental visit marathon with a visit a week for fillings to get me caught up--and 2 wisdom teeth (what was left of them) removed. I faced my fear, and I thought that would be that, but I'm still scared to go back. Even though NOTHING HURT. Nothing! I love my dentist & his staff. I guess (now at almost 50) all those years of fear are ingrained in me. Logically, I know the fear is worse than anything else--and now days it's irrational fear--but it's still there.

Good luck on your journey. I'm sure you'll do great!

 

[Tink]

Well, at the request of my dentist, I've just sent a very long, emotional and messy email that was basically the same as a lot of what I said in this thread. I'll let you know what happens in the end.

 

[vicki]

Sorry to hear things haven't worked out quite as planned; particularly as the initial reply you received sounded so promising. Is this an NHS dentist that you're going to see?

I used to go to an NHS practice where the routine checkup appointments were 10 minutes, although in reality the actual appointment itself was probably only about 5 minutes because the rest of the time was taken up with clearing up between each appointment and preparing for the next patient. Time was a real issue and as Carole has said, there was barely time to say hello before the appointment was finished. It made it really difficult to communicate anything other than the absolute bare minimum before the appointment was over and I was walking back out the door again.

I used to think that the 10 minute appointment slots were a great idea because the less time I spent in there, the better. But what I didn't realise, is that it also puts a real strain on communications between you and your dentist and any hope of having a reasonable conversation about your teeth, your fears or anything else, more or less goes out of the window because they're in so much of a rush to keep to schedule. Whilst I was a patient at the NHS place, the dentists never used to stay there very long and so I would see a different dentist every 18 months to 2 years and that really didn't help either. Most of them barely had enough time to do a quick checkup appointment, let alone the pleasantries of any chit chat. Then of course, some of them weren't interested in trying to help nervous (or terrified!) patients anyway, so that didn't help either.

After seeing several different dentists, I started seeing yet another one who I think had been at the practice about a year before I started seeing him. Here we go again, I thought, another newly qualified dentist who's not sure what they're doing and who will try and make me feel bad for being scared. But he wasn't like that at all; when I walked into his room, he smiled, introduced himself, said hello and was generally very chatty and pleasant. I had a better gut feeling that things might be alright and although I was still terrified, I felt more reassured that I wouldn't have a bad experience because he seemed to instinctively know what to say to make things feel better.

We never really talked about what had happened in my past or what might have helped, mainly because of the time constraints but it didn't appear to be a problem because I seemed to be coping OK with things... until I started having real problems with my teeth and I started needing more and more treatment. I started to become really scared during my appointments and although the dentist was really lovely, I could see that he was also getting a bit frustrated because despite his best efforts, I was still terrified. In the end, I decided to write everything down including a bit about what had happened in the past, what I was scared of and what might help and I put it in my bag, hoping to hand it over when I went for an urgent appointment to fix toothache in one of my lower molars.

I was that terrified during the appointment because it looked like I was going to need a root canal and the urgent appointment ended up being to place a sedative dressing in preparation for a root canal at a later date. After I'd had the injections and was asked to go back to the waiting room whilst things went numb (and whilst they squeezed another patient in), the dentist said something along the lines of "Go and read a magazine and try not to think about it; I know you're nervous". For some reason, it felt as though it would be OK to hand the letter over that I'd written, so I just handed it over and said "You might as well read this, it should explain everything" as though it was nothing out of the ordinary.

For the next 10 minutes, I was absolutely terrified sat in the waiting room, wondering whether I'd done the right thing and worrying about what the dentist would say because I'd be too much hassle for them. I could've quite easily run out of the waiting room at that point and never returned, but then my name was called again and it was too late; I had to go and face the dentist. Handing the letter over turned out to be the best thing I could've done and although I could hardly speak when I went back in there, he was really nice about everything and didn't make me feel bad at all. He never mentioned anything about the letter and I was glad because I was a bit embarrassed at handing it over, but he did everything that I'd asked for (including stopping to give me regular breaks because I find it very difficult to give a stop signal) and things were a lot better once the air had been 'cleared'.

I'm hoping that things will work out the same for you and that the email you sent has the desired effect. Five minutes isn't really long enough to discuss what you need to; so it's up to them to give you the time that you need. If they are interested in helping you, then as Carole said; your email will do you both good.

When is your next appointment? I'm keeping my fingers crossed for you .

 

[Tink]

Well, I sent the long email on Monday afternoon, no reply yet, and at about 6.30 this morning I finally cracked and decided I couldn't stand it any more. I phoned up this morning and asked if there were any cancellations available today (there weren't), managed to somehow convey to the receptionist how bad things are and got an appointment for late Friday afternoon.

I hadn't necessarily expected any reply to my email yet, because he had already said he was flat out until at least tomorrow, but I just couldn't deal with the uncertainty any longer. I don't know if I've done the right thing and I hope he won't be angry that I've sort of forced the issue. I'd got it into my head (probably completely wrongly) that his intention was to do nothing at all about it until that 5-minute appointment rolled around in 3 weeks time.

This will either clear everything up, or break it completely.

Hang on in there Tink, you are doing so well. Good for your husband, and to you for sending the reply. You cannot put it any clearer than you have so the dentist will just have to either make time for a talk sometime, or make your next appointment longer than 5 minutes. Heck you barely have time to say good day in that time.

Stick with it, you will get there. He may well be busy and I understand this, but he must understand that you need them to understand exactly how you feel. It will do you both good in the end.

To be fair, before that long email on Monday I don't think I did make it all that clear. I found it so difficult to stick my neck out and ask for help at all that I was far too timid about it, I even said in the original message "there's no rush" when what I meant was "aaaaaargh, I'm falling apart, I need help now!". Then when he asked if I could put it in an email, he did say "if that's ok", so of course I said it was OK rather than "no, not really, I need to talk to you!"

I can hardly blame him if he takes what I said literally.

It's quite a high-end practice too, I wonder if they're used to patients who have high expectations and make big demands, rather than people like me who wouldn't say boo to a goose and certainly wouldn't ask for anything unless they really had to.

Sorry to hear things haven't worked out quite as planned; particularly as the initial reply you received sounded so promising. Is this an NHS dentist that you're going to see?

I used to go to an NHS practice where the routine checkup appointments were 10 minutes, although in reality the actual appointment itself was probably only about 5 minutes because the rest of the time was taken up with clearing up between each appointment and preparing for the next patient. Time was a real issue and as Carole has said, there was barely time to say hello before the appointment was finished. It made it really difficult to communicate anything other than the absolute bare minimum before the appointment was over and I was walking back out the door again.

Nope, it's private, very high-end.

To be fair to them, I should explain the 5-minute thing; it wasn't a normal checkup appointment, those are usually for 15 minutes (maybe even 20? I'm not sure), and I have never, ever felt rushed during an appointment, even when they're running very late. When you're in there they will give you the time you need even if it's longer than what you have booked.

The 5-minute appointment was supposed to be part of a process of desensitisation to help with the anxiety. The idea was to pop in, have a very quick look at my teeth and put some stuff on a couple of them where the gums have been receeding a bit, just so that I've been in to see the dentist and it's not so long between appointments.

What I think happened was that he saw my email, thought "gah, busy!" then looked at his appointment book and realised I was coming in quite soon anyway so we could discuss it then. I suspect he didn't look at the duration of the appointment at all.



What I think is really going on here is that he's well-meaning and actually wants to help but is very, very busy. When he said back in January that he could help with this, and that I should call/email if I needed to, I think he really meant it. (At least, that's what I think in my calmer, more rational moments)

Whether he's out of his depth and making promises he can't deliver remains to be seen.

I also feel like I'm being far too demanding. I can't tell whether that's because I hate asking for anything, or because I actually am being too demanding and I'm that annoying person they really hope will go away!

 

[carole]

Hi Tink, I really like your chosen name. You aren't being annoying or demanding you are doing your best to help him understand how you feel and what you may need. I think you will find that he has been very happy to receive your email.

I think he will read it when he has time to sit comfortably with a nice cuppa and take it all in. Rather than rush reading it and missing something. I think we as patients think we are being difficult or a bother, when we really aren't. We just need a bit of patience and understanding.

Once we feel we are understood and build up a trust with a dentist it gets much easier to get treatment done. I think the fact he has made you an appointment just to try and help you shows a lot. If he didn't want to understand and help you he would not have made this 5 minute appointment.

He sounds lovely, I think you are going to be fine, try not to worry. Of course we will be waiting with bated breath to hear how you got on

 

[Tink]

Well, I just got a reply to my email, he's read it - so as soon as he actually had some time available he did get to it and even replied. We'll talk about it when I see him tomorrow.


I think it's going to be OK.

(If I say that often enough will it become true eventually?)




Sorry about all my wibbling & insecurity on here, it seems to have become my place to vent.

 

[vicki]

That's great news ! I hope it works out for you and that you manage to talk about everything that you need to. Let us know how it goes .

No need to apologise about insecurity and wibbling... most of us are insecure wibblers, it's just that some people hide it better than others .

 

[carole]

Well from one fellow insecure wibbler to another, WELL DONE you I think things are going to be perfectly fine now. Good for you

I and a lot of others use this forum as a sounding board as well as a support place. We all moan, vent and even have a right old laugh about things and they say it helps to talk (type) and a problem shared and all that

Do let us know how you get on, I can hardly wait

 

[Tink]

Hello folks, just an update - I saw the dentist this afternoon, and the outcome couldn't have been better. Despite all my doubts and wibbling, it turns out he was actually waiting until he had the time to really read my email, think about it properly and come up with a plan for what to do about it. He definitely gets it now.

We've agreed that we definitely need to do something about this, so he's referring me to a very good phobia specialist he knows to address the underlying stuff and we'll carry on moving very slowly with the desensitisation.


Thanks for all your support the last few days, it's been a bit rough. I'll let you know how things pan out.

Think I might go to bed and sleep for about a week now...

 

[carole]

Yeah