August is a relatively quiet month for me - it seems that potential clients are too busy enjoying their holidays to worry about their anxiety, stress, bad habits, weight, self-esteem or confidence. Quite right too. I myself am off for a very long weekend with friends in the Ardennes in a couple of days.
Going Dental
I’ve had time between clients to extend my knowledge of an area of great interest to me – the use of hypnotherapy in dentistry. Indeed I have teamed up with a like minded colleague, Helen Johnstone, and we are preparing training material and articles for distribution through dental CPD (Continuous Professional Development) providers. We are starting off with some obvious applications in the area of anxiety and specifically needle phobia based on applying tried and tested evidence based hypnotherapy techniques.
Sideways Wisdom
Nowadays, and in fact generally through my life, going to the dentist was not a huge problem for me. I don’t think anyone really enjoys the dentist and some of the aspects are unpleasant, but like most of the population it only causes me mild anxiety. It is a necessary part of taking care of myself and in fact I rarely need any actual treatment nowadays.
But there was a time when it did. In my late twenties, over a number of years my dentists started tutting over my jaw x-rays; my wisdom teeth were causing concern. Finally a dentist decided that the time to act was now - my wisdom teeth were badly impacted on the adjacent teeth, one of them was almost horizontal in my jaw like a torpedo. Removing them was going to be a problem, the dentist told me, beyond his surgical skills. His exact words were ‘hospital jobbie’.
The Worry
At this point I started to worry. Research revealed that the operation was probably going to be painful with stories of breaking jaw bone to remove the impacted teeth. The operation was in two weeks time at my local hospital’s maxillofacial unit. My anxiety increased on a daily basis, with sleepless nights of worry. How much would it hurt? Would they really have to break my jaw? For how long would I look like an oversized hamster?
Worse still I would have to go through this twice – a separate op for the two wisdom teeth each side of my jaw; as they wouldn’t do both sides at the same time.
The Walk of Shame
The day of my first operation arrived and I needed a competent adult to accompany me. After a long search, a friend from the village volunteered and we set off to the hospital. I was quiet, subdued in a state that some would call ‘in my head’. Busy and fully occupied with my anxiety and worry, I strode down the corridor towards the surgical unit determined not to let it show and was brought to a halt by a gasp and a cry from behind me.
My friend from the village was some 8 years younger than me and was gasping for breath. He suffered from the horrible disease of Cystic Fibrosis, a terminal illness that affects and causes progressive damage to the lungs. Sufferers grow up weak and prone to lung disease and rarely in those days reached their 30th birthday. In my self-absorbed state of worry I hadn’t walked at the steady pace that his damaged lungs and body could cope with and he was out of breath.
I stopped and walked back, in an instant the anxiety that had so absorbed me was put aside. We waited for my friend to regain his breath, me mentally comparing his plight with my now relatively insignificant and medically routine problem. Inwardly cursing my stupidity and lack of awareness, we resumed our walk to the unit at a more measured pace.
Reality
I was prepped for the op; the staff and surgeon were friendly and professional. Mindful of my experience on the corridor I was determined to remain calm and relaxed. I had chosen a local anaesthetic over being knocked out – knowing that the recovery would be better but I would obviously be aware of every tug and crack. The team set to work.
The first tooth took a long 45 minutes to remove, the second a matter of minutes. As they started to clear up a nurse entered the room and announced that the next patient had not arrived. The surgeon asked, half jokingly, ‘Shall we do the other side then?’
Remembering the anxiety and anguish I put myself through waiting for this first op, I thought for a second and said ‘Yes!’
The surgeon said ‘Really?!’
‘Yes!’
The surgeon rubbed his hands together and said ‘Right team, we’re doing the other side.’ Half an hour later I had no wisdom teeth and after a period of recovery was on my way home, hugely relieved.
Reflection
Settled down back I home I reflected on my experience. It certainly wasn’t a pleasant experience but by far the worst aspect of it was the stuff I was doing to myself in the weeks before the op. The operation was actually not that unpleasant. I think I had done such a good job of unnerving myself it was unlikely that the experience would match my negative anticipation. Though the op took longer than anticipated due to my ‘torpedo’ tooth there were no complications, no post op pain or bleeding. Even no sign of the hamster cheeks that are typical after wisdom teeth removal.
I recalled the sleepless nights, the worry and was struck by the pointlessness of it all and how I did it all to myself.
Reflection Now
I know am on the other side of the fence – helping people to understand and deal with this kind of worry. Reminding them of the real purpose of worry as a message to be prepared and take care. Worry is a rational response to many situations in life, yet is a solution to none of them.
How can hypnosis help
Anxiety can be dealt with in a number of ways. People in anxiety tend to lose perspective and be prone to thinking errors. Errors like assuming the worst, overestimating the possibility of things going wrong whilst at the same time underestimating their ability and the capability of those involved, to deal with any issues. Just learning to stop and making a point to re-assesses these things, looking for evidence, is a useful interrupt to the mind’s anxiety loop.
Anxiety blinkers your focus, meaning that you notice things and think things that support the anxiety. The little voice in your head can be heard to vocalise your concerns thus fuelling the anxiety fire. You can control your focus and self-talk to counteract these things.
Using hypnosis we can expose someone to the situation they are anxious about in a safe manner under their complete control ‘in vitro’ using their imagination. We use the phenomena of habituation, meaning that if you stand and face the fear and wait, it will naturally diminish.
Hypnosis is associated with deep relaxation which is another weapon in our anti-anxiety toolbox – it is just not possible to be anxious and profoundly relaxed at the same time – so we can rehearse and learn to become progressively more relaxed in the face of our worry.
Years ago I trained and qualified in a field of therapy called NLP or Neuro Linguistic Programming which is very popular in the business and success arenas. Whilst I have moved on to other more advanced approaches nowadays I still recall the maxim of one of my teachers when discussing therapy – suffering is optional. Whilst there are obviously exceptions, with the right tools and ideas it is surprisingly easy to diminish or extinguish feelings of anxiety having made sure we have acknowledged the message and taken appropriate action.