Overcoming dental phobia

Mitchel Friedman knows the deal. Just the other day, the Lincroft dentist got an email from a prospective patient who was skittish about making an appointment. The person was too uncomfortable to even pick up the phone and call.

“Often times I’ll have someone who is in their 70s or 80s, and they’re scared to death (of dentistry) from one event they had as a child,” said Friedman, who owns Newman Springs Dental Care. “That never goes away.”

One reluctant 34-year-old patient recently came in with “all of his top teeth and bottom molars rotted to the gum line,” Friedman said. “He told me he was in pain every day of his life for the past 10 years. We gave him help to get out of the pain. We gave him hope that he could smile again.”

Dental phobia is believed to affect about 10 percent of the population. We’re talking about a fear stronger than the garden-variety trepidation experienced by a majority of patients. Those with dental phobia avoid getting their teeth treated, which obviously has bad long-term repercussions.

Friedman, who does outreach with innovative promotions such as a post-Halloween candy exchange for kids and free dentistry days, tries to impress the importance of bedside manner on the young dentists he trains at Monmouth Medical Center.

“You can’t try to dismiss (dental phobia) and say ‘suck it up, it’s not that bad,’ ” he said. “To that person, it is. If you discount it, and all you care about is getting out of the office so you can go hit some golf balls, that’s very sad.”

Empathy is important, but how to actually help someone overcome such fear? Dara Gasior has an idea.

Coping tactics

Gasior, a doctor of psychology who works as clinical director at High Focus Centers inFreehold, explained two major techniques for dealing with such phobias.

The first is systematic desensitization.

“You slowly introduce what the person is afraid of in small increments,” she said. “The first step might be just calling a dentist. The next step might be watching a video of dentistry. The next step might be going to a waiting room. Instead of flooding somebody, making them do something they’re afraid of all at once, you do it in pieces.”

For some people, that works well. For others, she said, further coping skills must be utilized. Gasior advises what she calls mindfulness and meditating exercises.

“What you want them to do is be able to control their thoughts when they’re not at the dentist, so they can control them when they are at the dentist,” she said. “Focus on something rather than what they’re scared of.”

For example: “A child might have a favorite blanket or favorite stuffed animal,” Gasior said. “So when they’re sitting in the dentist’s chair and they have that with them, they can focus on what’s in their hands and not anything else.”

This tactic must be practiced routinely so it works when the pressure’s on.

“For a lot of people, if they’re anxious about anything, whether it’s a phobia or general anxiety, doing these types of exercises for five minutes every day is unbelievably helpful,” Gasior said. “Then you can use those skills any time you start to feel anxious or concerned.”

Don’t argue with phobia

There’s one more thing.

“A lot of what causes phobias are irrational thoughts, but telling somebody their thought is irrational isn’t really helpful because they believe it’s rational,” Gasior said. “The mistake people make is spending energy to convince someone their fear isn’t true. To them it’s real, so if you don’t believe them, that doesn’t bring comfort. You don’t want to argue with phobia.”

Friedman understands, which is why he offered to ship a package to the skittish person who emailed him.

“It’s a welcome package that has a CD that many of our patients have agreed to be interviewed for,” he said. “We probably have 100 videos online. Watch them, and you’ll find pretty quickly someone where you can say, ‘That’s exactly what I’m going through.’ That can be very disarming for someone.’”

Source: http://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/story/life/2015/11/04/overcoming-dental-phobia/75189950/

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