Grow Your Confidence With These Tips To Beat Dental Phobia

Grow Your Confidence With These Tips To Beat Dental Phobia

21st December 2022

How a dental practice treats patients with dental anxiety can speak volumes about the overall service it offers. Here at Innovadent, supporting nervous patients and nurturing their confidence is something we take extremely seriously. In fact, it’s one of the most important aspects of what we do. If you’re reading this and you’re someone who has struggled to make it into the dentist due to nerves, the following tips for nervous dental patients will hopefully really help to give you that volition to take the first step and make an appointment. Just remember, you’re not alone – according to the British Dental Association, an estimated 10 million people in the U.K have experienced feeling anxious when thinking about the dentist or visiting the dentist.

Communicate openly with your dentist

We completely understand that this is easier said than done. Part of feeling nervous about visiting the dentist (or indeed anything at all) is having the ability to talk transparently about your fear. Open communication gives us excellent insight into how to help you, as understanding the origin of your dental phobia is key to finding the right way to proceed. In the vast majority of cases, it’s negative and traumatic past experiences with a dentist that give rise to chronic nerves. We can help you pave over these experiences and reassure you that you will not have a repeat experience whilst you’re in the hands of our compassionate and skilful dentists here at Innovadent. Ever.

Schedule a consultation in advance

Consultations appointments are a great step you can take before committing to actually having your teeth examined. During your consultation, simply just meeting Innovadent’s Clinical Director, Dr Zaeem and his lovely team can help you to feel reassured that you have people in front of you that really care about your welfare. During these appointments, we can give you a tour of the practice and answer all of your questions prior to a clinical appointment.

Bring music or practice breathing or relaxation techniques

Music can have such a powerful influence on how you perceive your surroundings and your mood in a given situation. If there is a certain artist or band that calms you down, let us know! We’re more than happy to play it for you whilst you sit in the dentist’s chair. Breathing and relaxation techniques can also significantly calm you down, and there is absolutely no rush if you need to practice these prior to a dental check-up. We recommend deep, slow breaths and concentrating on inhaling and exhaling, which are proven to reduce stress by increasing oxygen exchange. In turn, this reduces your blood pressure and relieves tension in the abdomen.  

Bring a friend or family member with you

Moral support from a friend or family member goes a long way. As the saying goes, “no man (or woman!) is an island”, so make sure you talk to someone and express that you could perhaps do with someone to support you in person at your appointment. Your chaperone is very welcome to accompany you into the clinical spaces of the practice and to wait in the waiting room – we’re all about you doing you.

Ask as many questions as you feel you need to

We encourage all of our patients to be as inquisitive as they feel they wish to be when they come in to see us. Nervous patients in particular can benefit from asking plenty of questions about what’s involved with their treatment and about the experience of the dentist in front of them. To us, there’s no such thing as a silly question when it comes to something as important as your smile. So please, ask away!  

Take a look at past testimonials

At the end of the day, you can only really grasp the reputation of a dental practice by looking at what their patients have to say about them. When you’re looking through the patient testimonials on a dental practice’s website, look for evidence of that fact that:

–       The clinical staff are good listeners.

–       That the reception team were attentive, warm and efficient from the moment you arrived.

–       That the dentists are highly skilled and good at reducing complex information into layman’s terms anxious patients can understand.

–       That the practice environment is a pleasant one.

We’re very proud to say that these are all assets that can be found when reading our very own testimonials here at Innovadent.

 Why you shouldn’t put off visiting the dentist

If you can take the first step to address your dental phobia by following these helpful tips, you should be able to have greater control over your emotions surrounding the notion of visiting the dentist. Long-term avoidance of the dentist and lack of treatment can lead to problems like heart disease, pain, anxiety levels increasing and reducing the need for complex procedures in the future. Many patients we have treated over the years now feel completely content with visiting us, having gained confidence in the dental chair. dental treatment shouldn’t have to feel like a stressful experience, and we will do everything we can to make dental procedures

Here to get you smiling again

If your teeth need some aesthetic and functional TLC, we can create a fully-tailored treatment plan to address what it is you’re unhappy about with your smile. It might be that you’ve been living with missing teeth, extreme tooth sensitivity and pain, or your teeth have become severely discoloured. We have an answer to issues such as these and more, as well as state-of-the-art technology to make your experience seamless and discomfort-free. Contact us to book an initial consultation or dental appointment with us, and we can help to build up your confidence and self-esteem at a pace that suits you, and support you as a nervous patient.