4 tips to Minimize your Dental Anxiety and Fear at the Dentist

If you are like most people having fearful of visiting the dentist or Dental Anxiety, let me give you a few tips that have worked for my patients. To start with I am not going to tell you that we will remove all your fears and anxiety. Let us be realistic and work with minimizing the "fear factor" as a first step to ensure a more pleasant visit. And eventually over a few visits, you too will overcome your dental anxiety like most of our patients in others in our practice.

Tip 1 : Punctuality

Arrive early for your appointment and take that few minutes to calm yourself and practice your relaxation technique.

Tip 2 : Relaxation Technique on the Dental Chair

Learn a relaxation technique and practice the technique while undergoing treatment keeping the focus on your relaxation technique. I normally recommend a simple deep breathing exercise where you a take a deep breath and breathe out very, very slowly. Breathing out should be so slow that it takes more than 10 seconds to release all the air from your lungs before you inhale again. While undergoing treatment, you should focus on achieving this repeatedly during the duration of treatment. Or you can do ‘chanting’ but it must be done very slowly and obviously non-vocal but mentally (in your mind). Pick a mantra or a religious chant you are familiar with and chant very slowly ....so slow that you are dragging the words. The key is it is chanted mentally very very slowly. This to will have the same effect as the above prescribed breathing exercise.

Tip 3 : Trust Your Dentist

Once you have picked a dentist you are comfortable with then you must trust your dentist and let go. You may have trust issues with previous dentist but it's time to focus your thoughts and make a conscious decision to trust this dentist. If you still cannot trust this dentist then search online again or ask a friend for a referral. Try not to ask and deal with the details of the treatment - unless the dentist requires you to make a decision. Too much information will only make your mind more fearful. Trust your dentist and just let go and put yourself in the hands of the dentist and focus on your breathing and relaxation technique.

Tip 4. : After the Dental Treatment

Once treatment is over, sit quietly in the waiting room and reflect back on the experience. Identify key moments like when the injection was administered and put specific words to describe it as well as measure the pain in your own estimation from a score of 1 to 10. A good example would be the injection felt like a 'bee sting' and measured about 2/10 on your scale. Like wise do it for the drilling etc. This will help you relearn the experience of dental treatment and in future your fears will get less and less and eventually disappear.

Practice these 4 tips and soon your Dental Fear will reduce and in due time completely disappear. Bear in mind your past experiences may have been traumatic but rest assured this will not be the same as Dentist are much more equipped to handle dental anxiety while dental techniques and materials have improved a lot! Choose a good dentist and trust him/her to do the treatment painlessly.