As i am writing this the clock is ticking off precious seconds till the most horrifying experience known to the human kind - a visit to the dentist.

If you just cringed you share my experiences… But let’s stop and think about it - why are dentists so scary?

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Before the dentist visit

Ok, each of as has a certain trigger which puts him in a panic mode - be it the smell, the sound of the drill, the tactile feeling of gloves, seeing the injection, or (GULP!) opening your mouth

But often we are already psyched out (of our minds) many hours in advance - pounding heart, sweat (literally pouring in streams down my mouse&keyboard), bulging eyes, nausea…
You feel like you are dying yet you are not even at the dentist yet. Expecting the pain and torment puts our minds into overdrive and thus induces the fight or flight response.
But who are we to fight? I can’t punch pain in the face…
And where am i to run? If i avoid the dentist the teeth will in time start to hurt just the same.
So what are we to do but bear it stoically…

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Waiting at the dentist

Can you believe some people enjoy fear? They even pay for haunted houses and to be thrown out of a perfectly good aeroplane (parachuting); well, i guess they are not hardcore enough to go to the dentist…

But seriously, why do some people feel a rush when they are faced with danger and we feel only fear?
Wouldn’t it be nice if you could go to a dentist and be all hyped-up and happy/ecstatic about it… ’YAOU! Last time i was at the dentist MAN(!!!) it was such a DOPE!’
Yeah… i can’t see that happening either…
Though i wonder if taking NALT would help as it would boost dopamine levels and thus theoretically make me less sensitive.

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Someone is

SCREAMING!

in the dentist’s office...

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However i’m not sure i dare to try this as i don’t know if NALT would unfavorably interact with the painkiller or not…
So i’d rather find another way to end the fear. In order to do that i have to ask ‘why do we fear dentists at all?’.
One could argue it’s because of the pain, but pain in itself cannot hurt you. Maybe it is because we have no control over what is happening when the drill is running, but that would mean we are afraid that the dentist will harm us for no reason. We are not that paranoid, are we?
Maybe it is because having a drill creating a hole in your skull unleashes primordial fears and conditioning in us. But if that is the case, do we really have to be an ape about it?

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At the dentist

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At this point i’m already back from the dentist. Surprisingly i still have my face attached and most of my jaw.

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WOW, a drill that wide?...
SHIT! What are you gonna do with a needle that big?? Kill a horse?!?
####INCOMING!!! (the needle) FUCK,FUCK,FUCK!!
Damn! Can you stick it any further…

WOW! WAIT WAIT, I STILL NEED MY FACE!
I said don’t tear it off!
Ohh, i didn’t say that out loud because i’m too busy HANGING ON TO MY JAW!

Damnit, why can’t a visit to the dentist be more like:

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After the dentist

Obviously i survived… so why was i so afraid of the dentist?
I guess we view the dentist as something “eternal” as at one point in our lives our brains “locked-in” an episode of extreme pain. So year after year our brains inflate the intensity and duration of that pain until it feels like to be at the dentist is to be in tartarus - locked in eternal pain and anguish.
But the reality is the pain is quite brief and half less intense than our brain is telling us it is.