Help Overcome Fear Of The Dentist

I visited my dentist last week and the first thing he said was, "Lovely to see you". Whilst I appreciate the fact that it is polite to respond in kind I found myself wondering how many of his patients really mean what they say in reply!

During my "sessio
" in the dentists' chair, my musings continued about what the average patient thinks and feels whilst sitting in that same seat. The dentist or hygienist inevitably poke and prod around in your mouth with various types of equipment, some of which are sharp and pointy. Then a suction tube gets inserted from time to time. It's not easy to feel either elegant or comfortable in such a situation.

All the while you are lying there with your mouth prized wide open and your friendly dentist starts asking questions or chatting as if you were sitting in a café sharing a pot of coffee. All you can do is gaze back and make expressions with eyes, hands or shoulders and a few muffled grunts. Your dentist does his or her level best (usually) to put you at ease, but when the chips are down I suspect that everyone feels that this is a rather uphill battle.

Patients do not usually visit the dentist because they love to go and have a friendly chat. We go because of necessity. We want to keep our teeth in as good a shape as we possibly can and guard against gum disease, cavities, and so on. We like our teeth to be as strong, straight and as white as possible. In pursuit of this goal we inevitably have to go and sit in the dentists' chair from time to time.

For most of us we perceive it as a task that needs to be done and get on and do it. It's not a favorite task, but neither is it one that is particularly difficult or unusually uncomfortable. For some people however, merely the thought of a visit to the dentist strikes them with a sharp feeling of fear that makes their heart beat ninety to the dozen, raises their blood pressure and makes them freeze all at the same time.

This type of fear is not normal and the person who experiences it knows logically that they should not really feel in this way. But no matter how much positive self-talk they attempt to apply, the fear overrides this pep talk. Fear is something that is just there. You feel it. It is instinctive and automatic.

So the question to apply your mind to is how do you overcome a fear of the dentist that it is ingrained, instinctive and automatic? It is as much a part of you as your accent and the language that you speak.

This fear, like the language you speak and also your accent, is a learned fear, a learned response. You were not born with it. No matter what you have learned through earlier experience, your brain has a natural plasticity that allows you to learn new things or think about things in different ways.

Your first language might be English, but you can still learn to speak French, Italian or Dutch. In a similar manner you can release old patterns of thought and replace them with new, so long as you know how to set about this task.

Whenever a thought or behavior pattern is produced automatically and instinctively it is triggered from within your subconscious mind. Thus you need to access your subconscious to be able to change it. Hypnosis allows you to do just this, easily, naturally and expediently.

With hypnosis you can access your subconscious mind and make suggestions to release unnecessary fears about the dentist (or anything else for that matter) and also pave the way for new and more appropriate patterns of thought and behavior. You can even do this in your own home by listening to a hypnosis mp3 download.