• 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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need help making the dreaded appointment

E

eve

Junior member
Joined
Apr 26, 2012
Messages
2
I am so ashamed of myself for putting off going to the dentist.It's been 12 years since my last visit and prior to that it was 18 years. Needless to say my experiences with dentists havent been good. Dental care growing up was not provided until I was 12. By then I needed to have 2 of my front teeth removed and a partial put in. I've spent my whole life not being able to smile. I always have to cover my mouth and needless to say there are no photos of me. By the time I was 27,all my upper teeth were gone. Over the years I had the lower teeth fixed with veners,but now they have become so loose that I'm afraid to eat.
I still need to find the courage to find a dentist and make the dreaded appointment. I know time is running out before they all fall out and I need to get my act together. Any help would be so appreciated!
 
Hello eve and welcome

I am sorry to read your story. You do not say if you have anyone who is aware of how you feel or that could help you? Do you have family or friends who can recommend a dentist, or have you looked around on the internet?

This first step will be the most difficult, but once you have taken it, things will fall into place for you, and you will be on the road to dental recovery.

I hope you find someone who is able to help you get there.

Take care.

Kim
 
Thankyou Kim. I was able to find a dentist on the interent that had very good ratings. It's just getting the courage to pick up the phone and call. I am so grateful to have found this site. I dont feel quite so alone anymore.
It's amazing how dental phobea controls and effects ones life. It's time to overcome this battle and take back my life.
 
Good luck, eve, you're on the right track! :welcome:

Like you, I stayed away from the dentist for many years, then managed to go back and have lots of work done, then fell right back into avoidance for another almost two decades. You can read my journal if it helps.

Posting here and sharing your story, and finding a friendly dentist, are both very good positive steps. I think that making the appointment, and then actually showing up, are the hardest parts. I think it's an individual thing, how you work up the courage to do these. Some people need to do it on their own; others find it useful to have a sympathetic partner or friend help out. But either way, it's something you somehow have to start, even though it's scary.

I will say, that if you've found a dentist who is well-reviewed as being friendly, it's extremely likely that the dentist and staff will be kind and compassionate, and will treat you with respect and dignity. However bad your teeth are, they will work with you to figure out a treatment plan, and let you decide how you want to proceed.

When I first went back to the dentist this past spring, I was amazed at how kind and calm everyone was. For me, it felt like marching into death, but everyone was very friendly and non-judgy. Probably the best thing I can say to help you make that decision is, it felt so good just to get through the exam (the exam itself was a piece of cake!) and know that I could go to the dentist and that I had a plan. All those years of getting terrified watching dental commercials and worrying about The Day just melted away, after The Day turned out to be such a non-event.

I hope you're able to make that appointment soon, and move on to the next part of your life.

Good luck!
 
Hi Eve,

it is wonderful that you are determined to do something about your dental anxiety and achieving the dental health you deserve.
The biggest problem with dental phobia is the vicious circle between the anxiety and the avoidance behavior: the anxiety causes the person to avoid going to the dentist and years of avoidance not only nourish the anxiety, but also make the anxiety more and more rooted in, to the degree that it is part of this person's life. I suggest first concentrating on how to change the avoidance.
Stopping this avoidance does not necessarily mean first getting treated by the dentist. It means making an appointment knowing that you will not get treated, the purpose of this appointment is stopping avoiding the dentist, so you can come to the dental office, talk to the dentist, get to know him/her, and that's it.
In fact, I make an agreement with my patients that if they can not be treated on the day of the scheduled appointment due to their anxiety (hard to sleep, too much anxiety, too much uncertainty) they still must come to the dental office and tell me: "I can't get treated today because of... " and than we make an easy treatment (like superficial cleaning) or we simply make a new appointment (and no money is charged). This arrangement is made to stop with avoidance behavior.
If you find this idea too difficult, you can meet the dentist for a cup of coffee and not in the dental office. This way you will stop avoiding the dentist but in a more gradual way.
Meeting and talking with the dentist will allow the possibility of developing a trustful relationship. If this trust is achieved, most likely (99% certainty :)) that you will manage to lessen your fear tremendously.

Keep on updating us how you are doing. :thumbsup:
 
Good job on just thinking about going. I know even the thinking about it was hard for me for a while.
Do you have a friend who could help you and make the call for you, or even to sit with you while you make the call? Is there someone you would trust with that? I don't have someone call for me, but I have an arrangement with a friend, if I don't make the call, he just kind of pesters me until I do it. He would call for me if I really wouldn't do it, but I avoid that because the way I arranged it, I have to pay him if I don't call and he has to do it for me.
 
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