Tips to Manage Dental Anxiety and Stress
Not many people are excited to pay their dentist a visit. Even when people have been practicing the right oral care procedures, they may still feel anxious. If you have found yourself having such dental anxiety, then you should feel relieved to know that you are not alone. In Canada, for instance, 40% of the people who visit a dentist usually have dental anxiety. That said, however, there are ways in which you can manage this fear, and actually have an easy time while at your dentist's clinic.
Talk to Your Dentist
This is probably the best way to handle the situation. If you feel that the anxiety is becoming too difficult to handle, you should get such concerns off your chest. You will be surprised by how well the dentist and any of his or her assistants will respond to your concerns to make you feel at ease. You can actually bring it up at the time you are making the call to book your appointment. Once you arrive at the clinic, you should remind the dentist, so that he or she can take their time to ensure that you understand everything that is going to be happening during the check-up, and to ease your anxiety.
Use Mindfulness Techniques
There are times when you will need to simply enter into a state of relaxation in order to make the examination process bearable. Breathing exercises are an effective approach to this. By inhaling and exhaling slowly for a number of times, say five times, you will begin to feel calm right away.
Another way to achieve the much-needed calmness is to do a body scan, in which you concentrate on relaxing your muscles from the head to the toes. This helps you ease tension gradually, thus helping out with dental anxiety and stress.
Take Control Over Some of the Examination Procedures
Could be you don’t like the way your dentist reclines the examination chair. You can politely ask him or her to adjust it to a more upright position so that you can be in a position to communicate whenever you feel something is wrong. Such is an example of something that you can do to feel that you have some control over the examination. This is one of the most effective ways to handle dental anxiety and stress.
Dental examinations are not that exciting, and it is possible that you will develop some fear when you simply think about them. Two main things that you should remember are:
1) you are not alone
2) dental anxiety is manageable
Talking to your dentist, possibly asking a loved one to accompany you, using mindfulness techniques, and taking control over some of the dental examination procedures are the best ways you through which you can manage the dental anxiety or stress.
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