Dentophobia: what is it and how to get rid of it?

Beautiful teeth are always great! However, to get them, you must carefully monitor the condition of the oral cavity. Dentists, in other words, dentists help in this. Medicine has gone a long way, and doctors have a lot of tools on hand that can make the treatment painless. But in modern society there are many people who are afraid of dentists before the panic. This condition is called dentophobia.

Research sociologists say that most people on our planet are afraid of dentists. This is a completely natural fear, as dental treatment is associated with the removal of a nerve. And this is not a very pleasant procedure. In addition, before starting any manipulations, the doctor makes an anesthetic injection, which is also called anesthesia. It is this moment that causes horror in many. And such people make up 30% of the total population of the earth.

This condition has an irresistible character and is called dentophobia (stomatophobia, odontofobiya). People who are among those who are experiencing an obsessive state and do not go to the doctor’s office until the body begins to have irreversible processes associated with tooth loss, belong to the group of dentophobes.

It is not uncommon for a person to experience quite severe pain, but he tries to not pay attention to it anyway. Having brought the situation to the point of absurdity, when a healthy tooth that could be cured turns into a zone of serious health risk, the patient decides to visit the dental office. At this point, common sense takes over, and the dentophobe has a fear of losing life, which also overcomes the fear of a dentist.

The person literally forces himself to go to the clinic. The internal struggle leads to a panic state. Therefore, in front of the office where the dentists are located, the patient begins to fear even more. Then he walks into the office on “wadded” feet and sits down in the armchair for examining the oral cavity. At this point, he can begin a real panic attack. This will contribute to the environment and smells that are present in dentistry.

This condition especially develops before tooth extraction. For some people, this fear is due to various reasons. The older generation was forced to treat teeth without anesthesia. Intolerable pain has lodged deep in consciousness, and now it is difficult to overcome. Among dentophobes there are people with an increased pain threshold. This factor also affects the development of fear. In any case, if there is a phobia, it means that it is necessary to get to the bottom of its cause.

Going to the doctor, and, moreover, to the dentist, is always stress. It is caused by the fact that the person is in the unknown of the diagnosis. When something hurts in the body, the individual has concerns about the development of further events and the severity of the disease.

There is a category of people who are very afraid of removing teeth. Each such operation is perceived as a small death or loss of something irrevocable. Because of this, the patient is depressed, which turns into fear. When the fear appears in the patient's mind, the brain begins to draw pictures that look worse than the other.As a result, a person can imagine that the doctor will remove the wrong tooth or leave it completely without teeth.

Then negative fantasies become very large, for example, such: without beautiful and white teeth, a person loses attractiveness. Next - more: to stay as before, you will have to pay a tidy sum, which will allow you to restore your old look. And this is another task that needs to be addressed.

therefore it can be concluded that dentophobia is inherent in a large number of people is not by chance. The reasons for its occurrence are many. For example, a person, while still in childhood, unsuccessfully pulled out a tooth. During the operation it was very painful or after it there was a strong inflammation. Over time, all these unpleasant moments were forgotten, but unpleasant events occurred in life that led to stress. And then the tooth began to ache! As a result of passions, memories of an unsuccessful trip to the dentist surfaced in the mind of a person. All the troubles came together, and anxiety began.

To postpone the unpleasant moment of going to the doctor, the individual began to take pain medicine. But they could not remove the anxiety, since the trip to the dentist was inevitable. And every day waiting for trouble only exacerbated fear. The days of the disease affected the further development of the phobia. As a result, the tooth was removed with complications due to the fact that the treatment process was launched. Thus arose a persistent state of phobia, which may well end in a severe course of the disease. And it will need to be treated with the help of specialists.

Phobias can be divided into three types.

• Imaginable - it occurs in people (mostly in children) who have never been to a dentist’s appointment, but still think they may experience unpleasant feelings from this visit.
• Acquired - This is when an unsuccessful experience in the past makes itself felt. This type is the most common.
• Congenital - the rarest type of phobia. In this case, there is a negative manifestation to absolutely all medical procedures.

The symptoms of all phobias are the same. A person experiences irrational fear when he cannot really explain his origin, and also take control of his emotions. Fear arises from nowhere. Just the imagination draws unpleasant scenes that are very scary, but a person does not stop this state for known reasons. Panic attacks before going to the dentist occur long before visiting a doctor. As soon as a person finds out the exact time and date of admission, he will immediately have a decadent mood.

Any sensible person understands that he needs to go to the doctor, and he begins to persuade himself. A positive patient is encouraging himself that he will soon get rid of the pain and the problem as a whole. Dentophobic, on the contrary, draws such plots where all the treatment will end up with the emergence of a new pain and new problems. Some people think that they will have an allergic reaction from anesthesia, and they will die within a few minutes in the dentist’s chair. From such obsessive thoughts, the person’s condition worsens as the date of the visit to the doctor approaches.

Experienced dentists have learned to distinguish between the main signs of stomatophobia, which run counter to the patient's simple excitement. So, we list them:

• refusal to contact a doctor;
• very strong muscle tension;
• panic anxiety;
• a person cannot control his actions and cannot perform simple movements;
• sudden headache;
• the urge to vomit;
• violation of cardiac activity (sudden change in pressure, respiratory failure, vascular spasms);
• frequent urination;
• fainting or faint;
• increased sweating;
• discoloration of the skin.

All these symptoms suggest that the patient is experiencing a very strong phobia. From this state, his whole body begins to work with failures, which lead to the onset of more serious diseases. Any doctor will say that it is necessary to get rid of these manifestations as soon as possible.

You can overcome dentophobia yourself. Strong-spirited personalities and people who experience frequent positive emotions rarely think about the fact that they will have to endure unpleasant moments. They see a visit to the doctor as an appropriate moment, which you just need to go through without unnecessary emotions.

Others, on the contrary, begin to wind themselves up and fight their “I.” Their fears are not groundless, but now there are a lot of clinics that have changed the approach to treating people. A top-notch dentist must have human qualities: to calm the patient in time and help get rid of fear.

In order to identify the cause of fear, the dentist will definitely find contact with the patient. Trusting relationships will help overcome the problem. To overcome the fear of a doctor in children and adults, it is necessary to work on the problem in a comprehensive manner.

In more severe cases, specialists such as a psychologist or psychotherapist can help overcome the phobia. Psychologists work with methods of persuasion, and psychotherapists use more radical measures. But before proceeding to the methods, it is necessary for the other specialist to identify the cause of the fear. With the right approach, this can be done fairly quickly, and with timely treatment, the duration of treatment will be significantly reduced. To remedy the situation using certain methods.

The psychotherapeutic method helps to realize the essence of the obsessive state and to find methods for getting out of a difficult situation. It is necessary for a person to realize that the experiences associated with going to the doctor is a natural process. It is necessary to learn how to take control. The implementation of the recommendations will require a lot of effort from both the patient and the specialist.

It is necessary to conduct conversations with the patient, using certain arguments. For example, to tell him that dentistry has made great strides forward, and the methods of treatment have changed. Now less and less people experience pain and discomfort during dental treatment. Anesthesia has become less dangerous and more effective.

If the situation has become more severe, then it is necessary to connect the dentist and even the therapist to the process of getting rid of the phobia. The dentist must ensure that the patient experiences as little pain as possible. It is enough to treat the injection site with an anesthetic solution, and the injection will become less sensitive. Moreover, today there is anesthesia, which is provided by a computer device.

The psychotherapist will offer a variety of techniques related to both convictions and drug treatment. If the patient has a persistent fear of visiting the dentist, then premedication is used, which consists in taking sedatives or stabilizing agents. In more severe cases, antidepressants are prescribed to the patient. They help restore active production and regulation of serotonin metabolism in the brain. As a result, anxiety decreases and comes a stable state of rest.

Before proceeding with useful advice, you need to know that earlier people who suffered from stomathobia were denied a number of procedures. Prosthetics were not recommended for those who could not overcome their fear of pain. As a result, people remained toothless for the rest of their lives. With the advent of modern anesthesia and the expansion of dental services, this problem has been eliminated.

However, studies have shown that of a hundred people, approximately 2% have never visited a dentist, and every tenth patient experiences anxiety when visiting a dentist. Women suffer from stomathophobia the most.

In order not to be afraid of visiting the dentist, it is necessary to listen to the following recommendations.

• Choose only proven and highly qualified specialists. Then your trip to the doctor will not be complicated by unnecessary worries and pain.
• The dentist’s office should inspire peace of mind. A good specialist will exclude a large queue where people with unstable mentality will be located. A large crowd of people always causes anxiety.
• We must remember that dental treatment is your beautiful smile and good health.
• If your doctor treats your work responsibly and you are satisfied with his work, then only visit him.

Simple tips will help you maintain peace of mind. You will stop experiencing anxiety. And, probably, and at all will forget about the unreasonable fears.

See the next video for more on how to overcome dentophobia.