14 Hacks for Dentist Anxiety

Dental anxiety. It is so common. Did you know that around 20% of people have anxiety going to the dentist? That's what we're going to talk about today. So if you feel like you have dental anxiety, a dental phobia, if you've had any stressful experiences going to the dentist, then this is the video for you. And I want to start this video by telling you my story and why I'm even talking about dental anxiety. And in this video, we're also going to learn about what you can do with dental anxiety. I've been researching this topic for a really long time, and I have some of the best techniques that are out there. And so if you don't catch this whole video, if you're just popping in to say, hey, I'll save this video, it's going to be on my Instagram wall, It's going to be on YouTube. And I actually wrote an entire blog on this. And so make sure that you check that out to find the blog. What you'll do is you'll go to the link up in the bio and then there's a tab that's a button for blog, and you click on that and then it will be in the blog there and you can search for the word dentist, or it will be one of the top blogs, if you're looking right after we release this video. And so I'm going to. I would love for you to put in comments and questions, and I'm going to actually save those to the end so that we can get through the content. And then I'll scroll back through if you have any questions or comments that you want to leave. But today we're talking about dentist anxiety, dental trauma, dental fear. And so we were just talking about how I'm going to share with you my story so that you know why I care about this topic. And I want to tell you that growing up, I only got to pull two of my teeth. You know how when you're little kids and you wiggle your teeth and you pull your teeth out? My dentist pulled all my teeth out except for two. When I was in third grade, I had my first retainer. And I remember particularly being in a bowling alley, of all places, and I had this green sticky candy on a stick and I was sucking on it and it got stuck to my retainer and I ended up ripping my retainer out. And these are some of my earliest memories. And I was at the dentist so often that I started to become resistant to Novocaine. And so I would lose the Novocaine benefit during procedures and start feeling pain. And so you've probably gathered that I've had a lot of dental trauma and dental stress. And I can tell you that these techniques that I'm going to teach you today really work. They really help. And they're non medical, they're non pharmaceutical, which is awesome, because really the standard of care is to give you a benzodiazepine before and for the day of the procedure. And, and then some dentists will have laughing gas or nitrous oxide that you can use. And while that can be really helpful and important in the moment, my goal is to teach you additional or alternative strategies for dental anxiety and dental trauma. So I have notes here. I'm just going to make sure that I don't miss anything. So sometimes you'll see my eyes looking at my notes. But we're going to be talking about what you're going to do about dental trauma. But first, let's start with why somebody may be afraid of going to the dentist. Because I think it's really important to know the why so that we can deal with the what. Right? So whatever could be happening for you, we always want to look at the root cause. Did you have a negative experience in the past, or did you hear about a negative experience with dentistry in the past? Are you afraid of needles? Are you afraid of pain? Does the smell bother you? Or did you see somebody who was having a negative experience and you're just happy as a clam, and then suddenly your world opens up to it could be scary, right? So childhood experiences can cause dental trauma. Fear of needles can cause dental trauma. And what about claustrophobia? It may not be the dentistry, but rather having somebody in your face and feeling scared or dominated or trapped, that could be really scary for people. What about embarrassment for your teeth? I can tell you that when I go in and my hygienist is going to town, like, I'm so hoping that I brushed well enough and that she's not being grossed out by my teeth. Right? And so as you're listening to this, is anyone with me? Have you guys had this experience? If you just got on the video today, we're talking about dentist anxiety, dental fear, dental phobias, dental trauma. And we were just describing some of the main reasons somebody may feel that way. And so while people may feel generally anxious, we want to identify if it's an actual dentistry phobia, because that would mean we treat it a little bit differently. Right? We always want to treat the cause. We want to Know the what so we can do the why. And so some people may feel nervousness or maybe they have a hard time falling asleep, or maybe they're afraid that we have a comment that somebody's afraid. Like what if they drop something in my throat or I choke or I inhale the liquid or something scary is happening with them being in their face. Right? Embarrassment. We have people validating the embarrassment. It's not just me, fear of embarrassment or feeling ashamed. I always feel ashamed of my teeth. And I have fake teeth, you guys. So there's some disclosure there. And so there could be a lot of insecurity that they're going to find something wrong, they're going to find a cavity. There's a lot of insecurity with that. But it can become a phobia for somebody if that fear becomes so extreme and so irrational that it starts to impede your living, it starts to impede your functioning. So I'm going to tell you some top signs that you may be dealing with a dental phobia. Okay? So first of all, significant distress associated with dentist visits or dentist appointments that actually clinically impair you from living your life the way you want to. And this may result in you having panic attacks and it may result in you avoiding going to the dentist. Maybe you need some sort of procedure done and you're just too scared to even think about it, let alone going emotional distress that starts to bleed into your day to day life where don't even talk about the dentist. I can't even hear about the dentist. You see it on TV and it creates a whole lot of distress. Avoidance, nightmares. And so if you're having reoccurring dreams or nightmares, it could be a sign that you're dealing with a dentistry a phobia, right? And also so you could have panic attacks if it's a dentistry phobia. So panic attacks can be really anything. Head to toe, it could be numbness, tingling, nausea. Some people vomit when they get really anxious. It could cause gas or bloating or diarrhea or constipation. It could cause burning of the skin. We call these paresthesias or neuropathies. Sometimes. Some people say my lips feel numb or my face feels numb or I can't feel my feet. Some people will feel this numbness and flatness on one side, some people feel it on both sides. Some people, when they feel really anxious and they're dealing with a dental fear, they may also feel like they're choking or they feel like they can't breathe. Or their heart is racing or they have an elephant on their chest, anything that can happen with panic attack or anxiety can happen. And if you're dealing with dental anxiety or dental phobia. And so let's talk really quickly about some natural solutions for easing dental phobia and dental fear. And again, I'm going to go through quite a lot today and I'll make sure to put it in the blog and we'll save this video. And to find the blog, you're just simply going to go into the link in my bio and then that will be put up within the next week. So you can save it and bookmark it, print it. And if it would be valuable for other people, if you can share it, that would be amazing. At the end of the video, I'm also going to tell you about the Wellness Springboard, which is a free gift to help you get started on the anxiety healing journey, if anxiety is a part of your story. Okay, so easing dental fear, the number one thing is to make sure that you have a good dentist that respects you. It's really important to remember that the dentist is somebody that you are employing to deliver a service. And so that means that they need to be willing to hear you, that they need to be willing to answer your questions. They need to be sensitive to any anxiety or stress that you're feeling. And so as you're interviewing dentists, make sure that they are open to having these kinds of conversations because you are the one in charge of your health and they need to be willing to be a collaborator with you. It shouldn't be a dictatorship. They shouldn't be lording over you because they are not superior to you. Right? So make sure that your dentist is willing to work with you. Questions to ask your dentist is ask them before a procedure what you can expect. Ask them to walk you through every phase of the procedure and what you might experience in terms of sight, sounds, smells. Like the experience of having a cavity done is really different than having a tooth extracted or having a root canal done or just a general cleaning. So sometimes anxiety can often be lessened by feeling informed about what's actually going to be happening and what isn't. Also, you want to make sure that your dentist is willing to work with you in terms of what feels like too much or what feels like too little. I always recommend that you come up with a signal for your dentist if you're feeling overwhelmed, if you need a break, if you're experiencing discomfort. And sometimes just simply raising your hand is a really great way to communicate to them and then making sure that they respect that. Okay, so that's the first is we want to make sure that you are auditing your dentist and you deserve a dentist who's going to hear you and respect you. The second is again to take back control. So ask questions, get the information, and create a plan to make sure that you're comfortable with it. You want to time your dental appointments to when it's a good time for you. And so if dentist office, if you find that your dentist is typically really busy and there's chaos at a certain time of day, that might not be the right time of day for you to go to the dentist, maybe find a time where you're more relaxed generally and a time when the office is less busy and less chaotic. And then also you want to make sure that it's scheduled at a time that's convenient for you if you need to do self care after your dentist appointment. So timing is key. And then prepping ahead of time. There is so much that we can do to prep for success. And so I'm going to share you a couple of options. One is you can actually do self hypnosis. And I'm going to give you a reference from an actual dentistry website where they tell you how to do this. There are dental hypnosis and self hypnosis videos that you can find on apps. I did a quick YouTube search. There's some on there. And that can work really well. In fact, some people, I have a clinical hypnotherapist I work with, and some people go to her because they can't tolerate epinephrine or novocaine or procainamide or anything like that. They can't tolerate it. So they have to use hypnosis for pain management. And for a lot of people, it can work really well. Hypnosis can bring down anxiety, it can help manage pain, it can help amplify the good things that you're doing. If you're taking a medication, it can help the medication work better. Just gets you in the right space. Okay. So another way to prepare ahead of time is using medications and supplements wisely. We want to chase the anxiety, kind of like how we would chase a headache. You know, how if you notice a headache coming on, if you just address it right then and there, it will work a lot better versus if you wait till the headache is 10 out of 10, worst it's ever been. We want to do that with anxiety. We want to be proactive. And so some dentists will Write you a prescription for an anxiety medication. And there are also natural anti anxiety supports that you can use that work really well. So let me share some of those with you now. Okay. My favorite is increasing gaba. We know that things like just straight up gaba like pharma GABA and other forms of gaba, they're not very, they don't cross the blood brain barrier very well because the molecule size is a little bit large. And so you're probably not gonna feel as much benefit from Pharmagaba as you would a prescription like Xanax or Ativan or Valium or something like that. But we have a workaround for that and it's using amino acids that actually helps your body to make its own gaba. Gaba will help you feel less anxious, it will help you relax, it will help reduce anxiety, it will help with the heart pounding and the numbness and tingling and the nausea, all of those physical symptoms that come with panic and phobias. It will help increase GABA and it will help reduce anxiety. I use all sorts of amino acids. My favorite are in Happy sleepy powder which you can find at the link in the shop in our bio up above and will I. So Happy sleepy powder is my favorite way to increase gaba. If you don't want to use amino acids, you want to give herbs a try. Two of my favorites are passiflora and kava kava. Passiflora has been used for a long time to help kids and elderly and adults alike for anxiety. It's a very gentle herb. It's sweet to the taste. Passiflora will work better over time. And kava kava on the other hand, can work really quickly. And kava kava has been studied in in comparison to benzodiazepines and it is an effective alternative to those habit forming drugs. You can get kava kava at any health food store. My favorite brands where I have no affiliation, but my favorite would be Wise Woman Herbals Herb Pharm Gaia Kava kava is awesome. It kicks in within about 15 minutes. I like the tincture. I think that works faster. You can put it in your mouth under your tongue and it will make your tongue tingle a little bit. That means it's working and then it's great because it won't sedate you and knock you out so that after your dental appointment you can go back to your life. You can go back to your day. I used kava kava a lot when I was in medical school, when I was learning Phlebotomy. And I was really stressed. Kava was really helpful for that. So another hack is to bring headphones. There's lots of goofy sounds at the dentist. There's drills, there's suction, there's water. And so having music or a book or some sort of guided imagery, something like that, can really make a big difference. I have a panic pack, you guys. And I have all of these things that we're talking about in the panic pack. So you can just straight up hook your panic pack onto your abdomen. Mine's a glittery fanny pack. And then you have the headphones, you have the earplugs, you have all of the things in there that you might need. And so if you don't like music or things are overstimulating, then put in a pair of earplugs. So bring headphones, bring earplugs, bring a buddy. If you have somebody that can drive you there, drive you home, support you while you're there, make you laugh, help you be distracted, if that's what's best for you. Bringing a buddy can make a really big impact. I love getting comfy for dentist visits. I just feel like if I'm feeling comfy in my clothing, then I'll feel less uncomfy in the dentist chair. My dentist gives me a heated blanket, which is so, so nice and so comforting. So if you like to be cuddly and cozy at the dentist, then ask for a blanket or bring your own. If you're on the other hand, you get hot and claustrophobic, then maybe wear cool clothes. The next is essential oils, which we actually have somebody making a comment here about that. That's great timing. You read my mind. Essential oils are amazing for stress, phobias, anxiety, and it can be great for dental anxiety. There's a couple of ways that you can use essential oils, and the clinical literature supports all of these. One is via inhalation, so you can ask your dentist if they'd be up for using a diffuser. You can put essential oils in the bowl of your ear. So don't put it in the ear canal, but in the bowl of the ear right here. And that will help absorb into the area where it can stimulate your vagus nerve, Your vagus nerve. It controls and regulates your nervous system. We call that the autonomic nervous system. And when that's turned up, we feel more anxious. And then using essential oils like lavender or citrus vetiver, Ylang. Ylang can help really bring that down. It can help reduce anxiety and the stress. But if your dentist is in a scent free office or if they won't let you use oils, you can still get the benefit of oils. And my hack for that is to actually put essential oils on your feet, on your toes, the soles of your toes, and the soles of your feet. Vetiver works like a charm this way. When I was working in the med center, I had a lot of stress, but we were in a scent free med center. There are scents everywhere. Let's be real, you guys. But having a way that I could get that benefit from the oils without having to have everybody else sniffing them was awesome. So put the oils on the soles of your feet, the soles of your toes. Your body will absorb that and you should get the great antianxiety benefits. Okay, so we've been talking about dentist anxiety, and the last tip I want to give you today is homeopathy for dental anxiety. Homeopathy can work really well. And homeopathy works best if you individualize the prescription. But I'm going to give you my top favorite remedies that you can give a try. There's a website called ABC Homeopathy where you can read more about these remedies. And I have some blogs buried deep in my website. If you go to drnicolecane.com and just type in homeopathy, you'll find a ton of content there. But my favorite remedies number one is Arsenicum album. I've used this in kids, I've used it in myself, I've used it in adults. And Arsenicum album is good for this specific form of anxiety that's usually accompanied with restlessness, the desire for consolation. You can't hold still. You want somebody there. You want to get up and move around feeling chilly, wanting the warm blanket, and just feeling overall anxiety that something bad could happen to you. So that's our Senecum album again. You can get all homeopathy at a health food store and it's like eight bucks. That's amazing, right? Another homeopathic remedy that I love is Argentum nitricum. Argentum is particularly good if you feel claustrophobic at the dentist. If you have heat and you're worse with heat and argentum, they feel like they need to just get out. Like get out of my face. It's too much. I'm hot. I need to just go outside and get into open air. And so argentum may be good if you have those symptoms and you're anxious. Another remedy that's great for anxiety at the dentist is pulsatilla. Pulsatilla is probably what I needed as a kid. I would sit in that dentist chair and I would just weep. I would just want my parents. I would want just someone to hug me and console me and reassure me. I didn't want any water. I was hot. A warm blanket would have been too much. And so if your anxiety is. If you feel weepy and needy and you just really need to be reassured and comforted and consoled, pulsatillin might be the remedy for you. And the last one is aconite. And aconite is really good for hysterical anxiety, where it's just like panic attack, hysteria, restless agitation, company doesn't help. It's just like sheer doom. Something terrible is happening or something terrible is going to happen. So just a little love before you go is that the dentist is a necessary part of being healthy. Your teeth are so close to your brain and your teeth have direct innervations into your nervous system. And we know that dentistry is related to the health of your heart, the health of your body. So going to the dentist, you should be doing that, my love. And if anxiety and stress and panic and phobias and or traumas are holding you back, then try these things. You are worth it. If anxiety is a big part of your story, then let's work on your anxiety. If you've had a huge dental trauma, like I've had lots of micro traumas at the dentist, then let's heal those parts. Let's heal those wounds. Because now it's time to write a new chapter. You're no longer where you were. You are here. It is now. And you can write a new story. Okay, I have some free goodies for you. I promised I'd share with you. Is the Anxiety Wellness Springboard. You can get the link in the bio. It's totally free and it tells you more about tips that I use to help with anxiety and stress. So go and download it. Click on it. You're going to love it. So check out that and then also check out the blog. The blog is going to go live hopefully in the next week or so, and that's going to have all this information on here. All right, as promised, I'm going to answer a couple of questions, but if you guys need to pop off, thank you so much for being here. This has been Dr. Nicole and I am so honored. Thank you so much for watching. All right, so a couple of questions. One is, have you tried St. John's Wort? I love St. John's Wort. The other name for St. John's Wort is hypericum. And hypericum is a great herb for anxiety and depression. She's a little bit gentle and slow getting started. So using hypericum regularly will get you the best results and give her about three weeks before you assess how you like this plant. Hypericum loves to be combined with companion herbs. And I actually teach you in the Anxiety Breakthrough program how to make your own custom herbal tinctures, which is so cool. And just a couple of tips for that is try to mix no more than four herbs in a mixture and then always include a driver. And so you'll learn more about that if you do the Anxiety Breakthrough Challenge. But yes, I love St. John's Wort. And then we have a comment here that black seed oil is good for illnesses. My favorite use of black seed oil, there's this product called honeyderm and I don't know if it's a Michigan thing, but my family, we love honey derm and it has black seed oil in it. And so anytime that I get a skin related affectation, I use honey germ as black seed oil and it is amazing. So Sully. Yes, I love that. If you guys just jumped on the live here, we've been talking about dentist anxiety and dental trauma. This video will be saved. And so right now we're just doing a Q and A. And so if you have any questions. I do have a couple minutes here. We had Mohit was mentioning the essential oils, perfumes. I love essential oils. Essential oils can be used by inhalation and you can also use them topically. I love to use them to stimulate the vagus nerve. The bowl of the ear, not in the ear canal, you don't want to put things in your ear, but the bowl of the ear. So you kind of imagine it drips down right in here into the bowl and that can go in and stimulate the vagus nerve. And so then we have OM Sports Injury Center. I'm so happy you're here. It's been fun to see you on the live. So if you have any questions for your clients, ask me here. I'm just scrolling up Wolfsback 74 moments of fear that something could get stuck in my throat and you can't breathe. I've had that fear a lot. In fact, I had that fear when I was getting a mold taken and pieces were breaking off and he was like pulling out the clay or whatever it was that they were using and I was afraid going to choke too. And so doing some work on that would be really powerful. I think hypnosis would be really good. And then asking your dentist to kind of reassure you during the process to make sure that you're safe and that you're not going to choke. A couple of other questions here. We have somebody that said, what do you do? They sent me a message somewhere else. They said, what do you do if you have a panic attack in the dental chair? And this is an opportunity where having that signal is really key, where you raise your hand or whatever. It is the signal you agree on with your dentist. Because you have the right to communicate to your dentist when you need a break and when you need to stop. You have every right to do that. So one of the tips that we talked about in this live today is to make sure that you communicate with your dentist, your boundaries, and what is going to work for you. Any other questions, any other thoughts? It could be related to dental anxiety or it could be related to phobias or really anything else that you want to hear about. I shared in the beginning my strategies for dealing with dental anxiety. And really what helps me is I like to control the stimuli going into my nervous system. I find that the stimuli in a dental office can be really bothersome. For example, the smell of Novocaine is really stressful for me. So I use essential oils. I'll put a little bit of citrus. I feel like citrus can often block out other smells. I'll just put a dab in the base of each nostril. Also, the sounds really bother me. So I always have music in one ear, but then I like to listen with the other ear just to make sure that nothing's going on. I use Happy Sleepy Powder and kava kava. Those are my jam. They make a huge, huge impact and it helps me not need the medications. Any other thoughts or questions? Thank you so much for being on this live. If you have dental anxiety, if you have panic attacks seeing a dentist, if you're wondering if you have a dental phobia, then check out this video. We'll make sure that we save it here on the Instagram. And then we're here every week. And so if there are any other topics that would be interesting to you, let us know. We're going to be doing a live on the vagus nerve at the request of some of the watchers, some of our listeners. And so stay tuned for that. And again, if there are any other topics, then let me know. Check out the Wellness Springboard. Go to the link in the bio. It's free. It's amazing. I made it for you. All right, I just want to do a shout out right here. So Brooke Zimmerman just joined this live and I want to just point you guys to this amazing hero of mine. Brooke is one of the people that helps me keep the ship afloat. So we respond to every single comment, we respond to all of our DMs and Brooke is the person who's helping run all of that for me. And so if you end up sending us a dm, Brooke is going to be the beautiful soul that's going to be helping us out and so definitely want to shout out to Brooke and also I got a shout out to my girl Haley. Haley is amazing. I couldn't do this without you. And so if you guys ever see Haley in here, just make sure you give her a little bit of love. All right, this has been Dr. Nicole. Thank you so much for watching. I will see see you soon.