S
stoptheobsession
Junior member
- Joined
- Nov 5, 2024
- Messages
- 4
- Location
- Idaho USA
Hey all, I just want to say that if you are still really fearful/anxious/phobic of the dentist, for any reason (or more likely many reasons that you may not entirely understand), I see you. I have been where you are and am still on the journey, and probably will be for life. Give yourself grace and compassion, celebrate every win (even little ones), and forgive yourself for setbacks and struggles; they are part of every journey. Ultimately the goal is to be happy and have peace, whatever that looks like for you.
Above all, I think the first step to overcoming any fear or phobia is to try to not be ashamed for being afraid, to learn to accept that you are afraid and that it is ok. Only when we view things with curiosity and compassion rather than shame and avoidance can we begin to address them in productive ways.
Talk about it with someone you trust with your feelings; bring it out of the shadows. Even though our feelings can be really painful sometimes, they are our friends, and fear and anxiety are signs that our brains are trying to protect us from something we have coded as dangerous in the past for some reason. That's nothing to be ashamed of. It means your nervous system is working right, it's just that maybe in reality the dentist isn't the threat equivalent of a saber-toothed tiger--and you know this logically, but your brain's fight or flight response doesn't. In these situations, we can eventually learn to say, "Thank you, brain, for trying to protect me." And instead of fighting, which might look like going down the internet dental rabbit hole (what I used to do all the time in the weeks before and after appointments...trust me, I've seen ALLL the YouTube), or fleeing (avoiding, distracting yourself from difficult thoughts and feelings, cancelling your appointments...all things that have also done)...feel your feelings down to the bottom.
I'm here to tell you...feeling those feelings SUCKS. It is intensely painful and uncomfortable. But for me, it worked, and actually a lot more quickly than I ever would have dreamed.
There are a lot of reasons to fear the dentist, and all of them are legitimate, whether we think they are "good" reasons or not. We might read horror stories here or elsewhere, etc. and think "Well I don't have any objectively traumatic experience like that! What is my problem?!" Here's the truth I've recently learned in my own dental fear journey: we do not get to decide what our nervous system/brains code as threats or trauma! Things that happen to us, particularly when we're young and don't understand things the same way we do as adults, can have huge impacts on us even if they don't seem like a big deal looking back.
For me the person I decided to talk to about my dental anxiety was my mental health counselor (therapist), and talking to her, especially initially, was a really, really difficult thing for me to do, because not only is the dentist and dental anxiety a subject that makes me anxious anyway, I was also very ashamed that I was so afraid of it and couldn't seem to get over it. I didn't feel like I had any "right" to be afraid because I didn't have any objectively "bad" experiences like a lot of physical pain during a procedure, a lot of really big, invasive procedures etc. (although I might argue that dentistry, by its very nature, is invasive, even stuff like cleanings and fillings that are considered "routine"). But it's not what happens, it's how you feel about it, and your nervous system remembers how you felt and processed the experience at the time (when you were 5 years old, for example), not the way you judge it now as an adult. So when you feel "childish" for being afraid...well, very possibly it actually is your inner child that is afraid. But the feelings and physiological effects are legitimate and very real now, however old you are.
It was my therapist who told me that, when I become anxious about this, I just need to feel it for as long as it lasts. I need to not avoid it or try to soothe it in any way. I just need to sit in it. So I did. As formerly mentioned, it sucked. Like so, so, so bad. The first time I went through this exercise, the debilitating anxiety didn't subside for more than an hour, but at the end of that hour guess what I had learned? I had remembered multiple experiences throughout my life, which I had always just tried to push off as "no big deal" before, that, thanks to my therapist, I now had the tools and words to recognize as trauma. And that was a turning point for me.
Basically, I realized that I was afraid, what I thought was irrationally, because I was traumatized. Full stop. Having a physiological reaction to trauma is does not mean you are crazy, broken, or irrational: it means you are human, and that your nervous system is doing its job trying to keep you safe! And, of course, trauma comes in all shapes and sizes and depths of the wounds it can cause. You can't compare your traumas to someone else's, and just because a trauma seems small or minor doesn't mean you should just be able to "get over it" or that it doesn't need to be worked through. These are things that are coded deep into our brains, and they are painful, so our brains don't like us to think about them.
In my case, I was able to entertain thoughts about my trauma fairly soon after I recognized it, and begin to put it into words and cognitively separate it from my current (adult brain) feelings about the dentist. In other words, as my appointment approached (which was the reason I decided to talk to my therapist to begin with, because I was beginning to suffer), I still felt anxiety, but each time it would come up I could say to myself, "You are not in danger. You just think you are because you have trauma." And in that manner I was able to begin to associate a lot of my negative, anxious feelings about the dentist with these long-past experiences, instead of projecting them onto future ones. I had my appointment this morning, and I was the calmest both before, during, and after that I ever remember being. And it went really well.
When I first recognized that I was fearful because I was traumatized, my shame alarms were going off loud: "You can't tell anyone about this! It's not a big deal, it's so stupid, you're just being a baby!" But that's part of it too. Trauma often has a lot to do with shame...a lot of times we become traumatized because we were too ashamed, or didn't have the tools, to process difficult experiences at the time they happened. So shame gets all tied up in the trauma knots too. As I continued to practice sitting with these difficult memories and emotions, though, I felt more and more ready to share my experiences. I started writing them down. And so when I talked to my therapist again, I told her about them. And it was still really hard and took a lot of courage on my part, but honestly, it was easier than when I first admitted my fear of the dentist to her...because shame causes a lot of pain, but when we take the terrifying leap of telling someone (and a therapist is a great person to tell, because it's their job to listen without judgement and to try to help you), shame very, very quickly loses its power, and a lot of pain can be almost immediately relieved. You can only work on healing wounds after you've treated the infection of shame, and a lot of times you might find that the shame infection is a lot more painful to clear up than the wound itself.
Another interesting part about my particular experience is that one of the memories/traumas that came up while I was exploring my dental fear had nothing to do with the dentist at all. But my brain, at some point, must have decided it did. I won't go into detail, but I was sexually assaulted as a preteen, and I had decided that since it wasn't as awful as what you might usually think of as sexual assault, it was nothing that needed to be addressed. But the trauma from those kinds of things can come out in ways that you might least expect...so that's why it's good not to ignore them once you know they're there. Even though it sucks.
Is this the solution to everything? No. I think overcoming fear about anything is a long journey of self acceptance and healing, and maybe not being afraid or anxious at all isn't a reasonable goal. I mean, going to the dentist sucks, and I don't think many people like it much. So it's not my goal to like...look forward to it or something. It's mostly just my goal to not obsess and lose sleep over it and feel a lot of shame for 8 weeks a year around dentist time.
Thanks to my therapist, I feel like I'm now well on my way to that goal, and I wish you all well on your own journeys.
Above all, remember to be kind to yourselves and move at your own pace. Your feelings are painful and legitimate, and it's only through love and acceptance that they can be overcome.
Above all, I think the first step to overcoming any fear or phobia is to try to not be ashamed for being afraid, to learn to accept that you are afraid and that it is ok. Only when we view things with curiosity and compassion rather than shame and avoidance can we begin to address them in productive ways.
Talk about it with someone you trust with your feelings; bring it out of the shadows. Even though our feelings can be really painful sometimes, they are our friends, and fear and anxiety are signs that our brains are trying to protect us from something we have coded as dangerous in the past for some reason. That's nothing to be ashamed of. It means your nervous system is working right, it's just that maybe in reality the dentist isn't the threat equivalent of a saber-toothed tiger--and you know this logically, but your brain's fight or flight response doesn't. In these situations, we can eventually learn to say, "Thank you, brain, for trying to protect me." And instead of fighting, which might look like going down the internet dental rabbit hole (what I used to do all the time in the weeks before and after appointments...trust me, I've seen ALLL the YouTube), or fleeing (avoiding, distracting yourself from difficult thoughts and feelings, cancelling your appointments...all things that have also done)...feel your feelings down to the bottom.
I'm here to tell you...feeling those feelings SUCKS. It is intensely painful and uncomfortable. But for me, it worked, and actually a lot more quickly than I ever would have dreamed.
There are a lot of reasons to fear the dentist, and all of them are legitimate, whether we think they are "good" reasons or not. We might read horror stories here or elsewhere, etc. and think "Well I don't have any objectively traumatic experience like that! What is my problem?!" Here's the truth I've recently learned in my own dental fear journey: we do not get to decide what our nervous system/brains code as threats or trauma! Things that happen to us, particularly when we're young and don't understand things the same way we do as adults, can have huge impacts on us even if they don't seem like a big deal looking back.
For me the person I decided to talk to about my dental anxiety was my mental health counselor (therapist), and talking to her, especially initially, was a really, really difficult thing for me to do, because not only is the dentist and dental anxiety a subject that makes me anxious anyway, I was also very ashamed that I was so afraid of it and couldn't seem to get over it. I didn't feel like I had any "right" to be afraid because I didn't have any objectively "bad" experiences like a lot of physical pain during a procedure, a lot of really big, invasive procedures etc. (although I might argue that dentistry, by its very nature, is invasive, even stuff like cleanings and fillings that are considered "routine"). But it's not what happens, it's how you feel about it, and your nervous system remembers how you felt and processed the experience at the time (when you were 5 years old, for example), not the way you judge it now as an adult. So when you feel "childish" for being afraid...well, very possibly it actually is your inner child that is afraid. But the feelings and physiological effects are legitimate and very real now, however old you are.
It was my therapist who told me that, when I become anxious about this, I just need to feel it for as long as it lasts. I need to not avoid it or try to soothe it in any way. I just need to sit in it. So I did. As formerly mentioned, it sucked. Like so, so, so bad. The first time I went through this exercise, the debilitating anxiety didn't subside for more than an hour, but at the end of that hour guess what I had learned? I had remembered multiple experiences throughout my life, which I had always just tried to push off as "no big deal" before, that, thanks to my therapist, I now had the tools and words to recognize as trauma. And that was a turning point for me.
Basically, I realized that I was afraid, what I thought was irrationally, because I was traumatized. Full stop. Having a physiological reaction to trauma is does not mean you are crazy, broken, or irrational: it means you are human, and that your nervous system is doing its job trying to keep you safe! And, of course, trauma comes in all shapes and sizes and depths of the wounds it can cause. You can't compare your traumas to someone else's, and just because a trauma seems small or minor doesn't mean you should just be able to "get over it" or that it doesn't need to be worked through. These are things that are coded deep into our brains, and they are painful, so our brains don't like us to think about them.
In my case, I was able to entertain thoughts about my trauma fairly soon after I recognized it, and begin to put it into words and cognitively separate it from my current (adult brain) feelings about the dentist. In other words, as my appointment approached (which was the reason I decided to talk to my therapist to begin with, because I was beginning to suffer), I still felt anxiety, but each time it would come up I could say to myself, "You are not in danger. You just think you are because you have trauma." And in that manner I was able to begin to associate a lot of my negative, anxious feelings about the dentist with these long-past experiences, instead of projecting them onto future ones. I had my appointment this morning, and I was the calmest both before, during, and after that I ever remember being. And it went really well.
When I first recognized that I was fearful because I was traumatized, my shame alarms were going off loud: "You can't tell anyone about this! It's not a big deal, it's so stupid, you're just being a baby!" But that's part of it too. Trauma often has a lot to do with shame...a lot of times we become traumatized because we were too ashamed, or didn't have the tools, to process difficult experiences at the time they happened. So shame gets all tied up in the trauma knots too. As I continued to practice sitting with these difficult memories and emotions, though, I felt more and more ready to share my experiences. I started writing them down. And so when I talked to my therapist again, I told her about them. And it was still really hard and took a lot of courage on my part, but honestly, it was easier than when I first admitted my fear of the dentist to her...because shame causes a lot of pain, but when we take the terrifying leap of telling someone (and a therapist is a great person to tell, because it's their job to listen without judgement and to try to help you), shame very, very quickly loses its power, and a lot of pain can be almost immediately relieved. You can only work on healing wounds after you've treated the infection of shame, and a lot of times you might find that the shame infection is a lot more painful to clear up than the wound itself.
Another interesting part about my particular experience is that one of the memories/traumas that came up while I was exploring my dental fear had nothing to do with the dentist at all. But my brain, at some point, must have decided it did. I won't go into detail, but I was sexually assaulted as a preteen, and I had decided that since it wasn't as awful as what you might usually think of as sexual assault, it was nothing that needed to be addressed. But the trauma from those kinds of things can come out in ways that you might least expect...so that's why it's good not to ignore them once you know they're there. Even though it sucks.
Is this the solution to everything? No. I think overcoming fear about anything is a long journey of self acceptance and healing, and maybe not being afraid or anxious at all isn't a reasonable goal. I mean, going to the dentist sucks, and I don't think many people like it much. So it's not my goal to like...look forward to it or something. It's mostly just my goal to not obsess and lose sleep over it and feel a lot of shame for 8 weeks a year around dentist time.
Thanks to my therapist, I feel like I'm now well on my way to that goal, and I wish you all well on your own journeys.
Above all, remember to be kind to yourselves and move at your own pace. Your feelings are painful and legitimate, and it's only through love and acceptance that they can be overcome.
Thank you for taking the time to describe your experience in such a depth and particularly thank you for allowing us to dive into your experience with therapy and how helpful it was for you. 
Many people who had experience like you struggle with dental fear and as you pointed out, very often they are not even aware of the connection.
