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do you fear going to the dentist?

do you fear dentists?
Do you try to avoid visiting a dentist at all costs?
Do you only go to the dentist when your dental problems become so complicated to be ignored?

If your answers were yes then don’t worry, after reading this article you will find the next visit to the dentist much more easier.

Dental anxiety or dental phobia

Fear of dentists is something that is normal, the majority of people don’t like to see someone drilling into their teeth, but when this fear becomes so intense so that it prevents you from seeing a dentist even if your tooth started to decay then you are suffering of dental phobia.

what causes dental phobia

The following are two major possible causes for dental phobia

• just like any normal phobia forms, dental phobia may be the result of a traumatic childhood experience with dentists. The problem is that many of the normal visits to dentist are considered a traumatic experience in the mind of the child, maybe if you haven’t visited a dentist as a child you would have not had that fear as an adult.
• subconscious beliefs are another cause, as you know that subconscious mind gets programmed by suggestions, the more you receive a certain suggestion the more it turns to become a belief, now look at the situation with the dentist, how many times have been told that going to the dentist is a painful experience? Actually people never speak of dentists except when they mention pain, over the years those suggestions got accumulated in your mind and formed a belief that going to the dentist is the most Fearful Experience ever.
• your imagination is another very strong cause for being afraid of the dentist’s tools, your mind just visualizes pictures of tools penetrating your teeth in a way that may be far from reality , your mind exaggerates the reality of those tools, and if you want a proof on that just close your eyes while visiting the dentist and notice if your fears were less, actually when you see the tools you start to become more and more afraid because of the images you visualize in your mind for them.
• the smell!!, yes dont wonder, just notice how do you feel while waiting for your turn and then notice how will your fears increase as soon as the door gets opened and the smell of the room gets out to you, simply this smell is anchored in your mind with bad experience, and thats why you unconsciously recall the bad experience and so become afraid.

how to deal with dental fear

Now onto how to deal with this fear, the following are actions that could provide a great help on making the next visit to the dentist much easier.

• stop visualizing the dental tools in your mind, the more you visualize those tools in a fearful form the more your fear will increase, you can close your eyes when being there, this will help you not to form those unrealistic images in your mind, NLP can help you much changing the mental image your have in your mind for those tools and so make your fear of them less intense
• the next time you go to the dentist forget about all of your beliefs about the tools and just fairly rate the pain, and am sure that you will find that the pain was much less than what you have imagined, know that 2 out of 10 of the pain is real and the other 8 are just in your mind!! Your created them!!
• think of dental pain as a normal pain that is not related to a tool,probably you have felt somekind of pain anywhere in your life,maybe when you fell on the ground or maybe when you did work out, just know that you have felt pain many times before and that this is going to be just like any one of them

did that help?

yes, but tell me what is NLP

yes, but i have got other fears, tell me how to deal with them

yes but i have got other phobias,other than this one

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