I've never really liked the dentist as an adult, but never thought much about it. But recently, I had a dentist appointment scheduled, and, as the day went on, something kept nagging at me. After a few hours, the nervousness had become straight-up fear. "It's just the dentist! What are you so scared of?" I kept asking myself throughout the morning as the appointment grew closer. I could not put my finger on it. As I grew more and more fearful, I started to feel like my younger self, the one who found herself in an environment where she was not always safe. This realization caused me to stop what I was doing, find a quiet space, and try to understand what my younger self was trying to tell me. Over the years, I've learned to listen to her and to approach this feeling with curiosity instead of judgment. It doesn't happen often anymore, but, when it does, I listen.
I started to think through the dentist appointment step by step to see if I could pinpoint where the fear was coming from. I thought about walking into the dentist's office and being ushered back to the individual exam room. That didn't seem to be it. Next step, you lay down in the dentist's chair. It felt like I was playing the game of "hot and cold" with my memories and thinking of this step made me feel like I was getting warmer. "OK, you lay down in the dentist's chair, then what happens?" I thought. "Then...a stranger...puts their fingers in your mouth." Ding ding ding. I'd found it, the memory that my brain had felt safe enough to bring forward after all this time: 16 years ago, when I experienced an attempted gang rape, one of the attackers shoved his........