Fear of the Dentist

My daughter is 11 years old and not a fan of tapping. She would say it was stupid and it didn’t work for her.

She was extremely afraid of visiting the dentist and would sob in the dentist chair.

We had several sessions before going over the specific aspects of visiting the dentist—smell of the office, keeping her mouth open, dentist’s hand approaching her mouth. In those sessions, the SUD level went down to almost 0, but when she went to the dentist, it didn’t go well.

Before the session I’m writing about here, we watched a video in which a mother did EFT with her daughter about the same age as my daughter. We also watched a video in which a woman tapped on her dog (we also have a dog).

We started with the body sensations and she said she only felt the fear in her head, at SUD 10. We did a round of the Basic Recipe on fear, beginning with “Even though I am afraid of going to the dentist and I feel this fear in my head, I am OK.” We used “I am OK” instead of “I love and accept myself.”

The Reminder Phrase was: “this fear I feel, fear in my head.”

Nothing much changed. The fear was still there in her head at SUD 9. She rolled her eyes, telling me this was not going to work. It occurred to me to address her resistance and the fact that she didn’t think it was going to work for her.

We didn’t measure the SUD on that but just started sneaking up on it, doing the Basic Recipe. The Setup Statement this time was: “Even though I am afraid of going to the dentist and this will never go away, and I will be afraid of going to the dentist’s forever, I am OK.”

The Reminder Phrase was: “I will always be afraid, this will never go away, this is not helping me, this doesn’t work for me.”

After this, the SUD on fear went down to 7. We continued using the same words and the SUD went down to 5.

Then we changed the Setup: “Even though I feel a bit less afraid, it was 10/10 and now it is 5/10, but I still don’t think this is helping and there is nothing that can work for me, I am OK.”

The Reminder Phrase was: “It was 10/10 and now it is 5/10, nothing can work for me, there is nothing to help me with this, I will always be afraid, going to the dentist is scary, nothing can change that, I might die in the chair.” The SUD on fear was 3.

I suggested she take a plush toy with her so the toy could keep the fear for her. We changed the Setup again: “Even though this might be a bit helpful, and I am a little less afraid, but I will always feel fear of going to the dentist, and now I also have my toy with me, I am OK.”

The Reminder Phrase was: “I will always be afraid, I have my toy, this doesn’t help me, this helps me a bit.” The SUD was 0.5 and that was the end.

The session lasted for about half an hour. She visited the dentist’s office twice after this session and it went better than ever. She didn’t cry and she felt much better. On the last visit, she had her tooth taken out and another tooth taken care of which otherwise would have taken two to three visits each.