I finally found a way to cure my fear of the dentist

I’m walking through an olive grove, summer sun shining down on me, red dusty soil crunching under my shoes. Up ahead the trees fall away and there’s a grassy field with a colourful hot air balloon waiting for me. A bucolic scene; a shame it’s not real. In reality, I’m sitting in a dentist’s chair with a stranger’s hand in my mouth.

Though I keep good care of my teeth, I dread visiting the dentist so I’ve signed up to try something new to cure my fear: hypnotherapy.

The stranger in question is Linda Bromage, a dental hygienist who, after noticing just how many people feared being in her chair, decided to do something about it.

Bromage trained in the Navy and worked in dentistry for decades, before doing a degree in clinical hypnotherapy. “If you’d asked me about hypnosis then, I’d have told you it was nonsense,” she confesses. “But I was always very good at relaxing patients and talking them through treatment and I began to think about how I could do that more.”

“Lots of people have childhood trauma relating to the dentist. So when they come to a dentist’s office, their brain is subconsciously being reminded of bad things and they become very anxious,” explains Bromage. “If you’re afraid of planes, you can avoid getting on a plane but everyone needs to go to the dentist, so you can’t avoid that fear.”

According to Bupa Dental, around 44 per cent of adults have some fear of the dentist and 76 per cent of those put off going to the dentist altogether. This matters because tooth decay and dental problems have been gradually on the rise in Britain over the past five years.

Modern dentistry isn’t exactly well-suited to relaxation, Bromage admits. “You have a 15-minute appointment, the dentist is stressed trying to get you in and out and you feel that stress as a patient, you feel you can’t ask for a pause, or ask questions, which makes you more anxious,” she says. “We’re obliged to tell you the bad news, so you’ll never escape that, but a good dentist should find ways of doing that without scaring you.”

“Our job as dentists is to make sure people have healthy mouths – especially now we know gingivitis can lead to everything from cardiovascular disease to dementia – and I’d rather we take extra time to encourage patients and make sure they come back, than only see them once they’re in crisis,” Bromage argues.

My own dislike of the dentist stems from childhood. At 10, I slipped on a wet floor and smashed my two front teeth, exposing the nerve which made every in-breath agony. Even at that young age, I was conscious about how a pair of broken front teeth would affect how people saw me. Thankfully, emergency dental work managed to restore my smile, but it was traumatic as a little boy. A couple of years later, I needed four teeth removed to make space in my mouth for braces to realign things. Then there were the constant visits to the orthodontist to get said braces tightened, followed by days of pain.

As an adult, I loathe visiting the dentist with every fibre of my being. As soon as I enter the room that distinctive, clinical smell puts me on edge. I shudder if I hear a drill from the waiting room and my palms begin to sweat. Even the oral irrigator – a high pressure water jet used by dental hygienists – makes me cringe. Not because of anything it does, but because it sounds like a drill.

Could hypnotherapy help me brave the dentist’s chair? The first step is a questionnaire. I’m asked my dental history, and invited to share my treatment preferences. Would I prefer to have Linda explain to me exactly what she’s doing in my mouth, or should she just get on with it? (The latter, let me know afterwards.) Is there any dental equipment which rattles me and would I like to get more explanation of it before she uses it? (The water flosser – reassurance it isn’t actually a drill despite sounding like one would help.)

Then it’s into the chair where I’m instructed to close my eyes and let my mind wander.

“Focus on your breathing. You’re breathing out your worries,” Bromage instructs. “Now imagine a colour that represents calmness to you.” On cue, a foggy green haze twists into my mind’s eye. Bromage tells me to feel that greenness around me. It feels silly but I obey.

She proposes a staircase, and I duly conjure one up, complete with balustrade and carpeting, as she suggests.

“You’ll notice there are 10 steps, leading gently down. In a moment I want you to walk down those as I count down,” says Bromage. “Each step you will drift deeper into relaxation.”

It’s all starting to feel a bit mystical but I keep going. My mind is so focused on the imaginary staircase, I’ve tuned out everything else.

Bromage guides me down the steps one at a time, then out into that imaginary olive grove. Along the way I’m told to open wide but what happens beyond that I couldn’t precisely tell you. By the time my appointment is over, an hour has passed but it feels like five minutes.

Being hypnotised isn’t quite how the films would have you imagine it. I’m not transformed into a dumb creature blindly following orders. It’s more like lucid dreaming, you’re aware of the world around you, conscious that you could open your eyes at any moment, but you find yourself more invested in your imagination so you choose not to.

“People talk about hypnosis in the wrong way,” thinks Bromage. “I give you prompts, you hypnotise yourself: you’re in control.”

Hypnotherapy, Bromage says, is about quieting down the frontal cortex, the part of the brain responsible for conscious thought and decision making, and allowing the hippocampus, which handles image-processing, memory, and emotions, to come to the fore.

“It’s a form of meditation, you want to quieten your mind,” Bromage explains. “The difference is that with meditation you want your brain to be totally quiet, whereas with hypnotherapy, you’re letting the imagination distract you.”

It certainly worked for me. Admittedly, it took time. I had to see Bromage three times for hypnotherapy sessions, though some people might need more – and it may get expensive at £70 per session. First in the waiting room, then in the chair, and finally during an actual appointment. But by the time Bromage gives me a full hygiene treatment (previously my most hated procedure – all that scraping, and the aforementioned oral irrigator) I’m so relaxed and at ease the time flies by.

Bromage claims this is just the tip of the iceberg. She once had a patient who was so afraid of needles he couldn’t bear being anaesthetised during a tooth extraction, yet had one under hypnosis. Another woman numbed her own gums under hypnosis, imagining an icy cold cooling them, during a root canal.

Thankfully, I’m pleased to say that my history of dentist-dodging hasn’t yet resulted in the need for anything quite so dramatic (I’m still filling-free after 31 years) but I’ve now finally been able to go to the dentist without fear; taking myself off to that olive grove in my mind as soon as I settle into the chair.

Admittedly hypnosis is not a solution available to everybody and it’s unlikely you’ll get it on the NHS. With one in four adults unable to access appointments, most dentists don’t have the time for this style of care.

But equally, hypnotherapy is just one of a suite of ideas which could revolutionise dentistry. “It’s all about bypassing that fear that so many people feel when they step into the waiting room,” says Bromage. “That can be through hypnotherapy, but it could also be just by training dentists to encourage patients to ask questions, or letting them choose some music to play. Whatever it takes to help people relax.”

Linda Bromage is a dental hygienist for BUPA Dental Care with a degree in clinical hypnotherapy, based in West Sussex. She operates The Dental Sanctuary.