I just had a lovely message from a client who came to see me for severe dental phobia, so thought I’d write about this common problem.
“I wanted to tell you that I went to the dentist for a filling and didn’t shed one tear! After years of fear and panic and crying! Wow! What a new sensation. Thank you so much.”
A survey by the British Dental Association shows that 25% of people suffer from anxiety about visiting the dentist. Many of these people simply avoid going, which not only compromises dental health but can result in other serious health problems too. When problems don’t get caught early through normal check-ups, the eventual interventions have to be more drastic, often meaning lengthy, expensive surgery.
This particular client – lets call her Sarah – had been terrified of visiting the dentist since she was little, due to some frightening experiences with a dentist as a child. She wanted to keep her teeth, so still went to the dentist, but only when things were really bad, and then only with friends coaxing and reassuring her throughout. She would cry and panic for days beforehand, with sleepless nights, and total quaking, weeping terror on the day.
Of course relaxation makes things hurt less, so the irony is that her tension made any pain there was so much worse. However her fear was too great and too real for those immortal words “just relax” to do anything other than set her off again.
The specific type of hypnotherapy I might use to solve the problem will vary according to the patient, but the good news is that you don’t have to suffer! With Sarah, hypno-analysis was the solution, and she only needed one session. With a 10 year old boy I saw recently, I used a visualisation-based technique and gave him a CD to listened to at bedtime, which helped him re-programme his attitude to the dentist and solved the problem. With other clients I might teach them to use self-hypnosis so that they can numb their mouth, so they no longer have to fear pain.
