I’ve gone through several bouts of anxiety which I find very enlightening these last few weeks. I wanted to focus on a particular one that is still subtly echoing through my mind: It has to do with my teeth.
About a week ago, I looked at my teeth and had a very particular thought come into my mind, “What if I have problems with my teeth and I’ve put it off? What if I have cavities and other issues I won’t address because I’m frightened?” I started hyper-focusing on how my jaw felt, what my teeth looked like in certain lights, and how much I flossed or brushed. Before long, I felt so overwhelmed with feelings of fear and anxiety I called and made an appointment with the dentist.
I only needed to wait two days before they could see me at the dentist. But that felt like an eternity. I had trouble sleeping, wondering how bad the problem was, if there was a problem, if I needed to have my fillings redone, if there were cavities UNDER these fillings again, and how foolish I had been not going in sooner.
If I could describe the look of these feelings I’d say it was like a jagged blip, like in the Into the Spiderverse franchise. I put on a face of normalcy, but inside I felt insecure and afraid of what I had or hadn’t done.
I went to the dentist, a bundle of anxiety and fears. I actually felt like crying several times, but I told myself to wait to see what was going to happen before I freaked out.
I sat in the chair and waited with bated breath. The nurse came in and said she needed to do a few tests and procedures.
She took my blood pressure and remarked, “Huh, your blood pressure is a little high. Do you have problems with it normally?” I thought to myself, “With the amount of anxiety I’m feeling, it’s no wonder it’s a little high.”
She took A LOT of pictures and said in surprise, “Wow, you have a lot of fillings.”
She looked at my gums and noticed how well they were being taken care of.
She commented on how clean my teeth were considering I hadn’t been to the dentist since 2021.
Once she was done, she said the dentist would be there shortly. I felt my blood pounding and I wondered for the millionth time how bad the news was going to be.
Now, this story has a somewhat anticlimactic ending. He came in, looked at everything, and said casually, “Your teeth are in great condition. The only problems we have are with two filling in the front where I tiny bit of decay crept in outside the fillings where you can’t reach. We’ll get these fixed in a few months.”
Once he was gone, the nurse who cleaned my teeth went through the motions but didn’t remark on anything bad she saw or noticed.
In other words, I really had nothing to worry about. I had done all the right things, would be in to get some minor issues fixed, and should be proud of how well I had taken care of my teeth.
This is not a huge issue. It is easily addressed in a normal setting and as a child, it wasn’t a big part of my life. However, time changed me and I’m constantly aware of my dental hygiene. This is because of specific traumatic events I faced because of poor choices in my past. You might say, I’ve become keenly aware of my dental health because of this trauma.
When I was twenty-one, I would have laughed and said worrying about this was unnecessary. I didn’t quite have enough experiences under my belt to truly understand one simple truth: We live with our choices, whether good or bad, throughout our lives. Consequences are inevitable.
I was also too young to fully understand that not everything we feel and think is actually founded on truth. But that is what anxiety is like. It eats away at the mind and pushes us to doubt the good things we’ve done in favor of more “logical” explanations.
It reminds me of a scene in the Adventure Time episode “Puhoy”, where Finn fears Flame Princess didn’t really like him anymore because she didn’t laugh at his joke. On the forefront, it seems like a nonissue. But to Finn, it had shaken his world because he felt insecure dating someone and he didn’t know how to face unknown factors in a relationship. In response to Finn’s fears, Jake says something that really stuck out to me.
You’re getting all hung up, all hung up on imaginary problems. You gotta focus on what’s real, man.
“Puhoy”, 2013
From the outside, Finn’s thought process does seem naive and silly. But that isn’t how anxiety works. My younger self would have also been ashamed of how negatively I reacted and how my anxiety seemed to so deeply affect me. Now, I think it is better to look at these types of experiences in a different light.
Here are some lessons that I wanted to highlight from this experience.
- It’s okay to not be okay. Sometimes, we have fears that seem overwhelming and negative emotions that need to be addressed.
- Belief in ourselves is one of the hardest things to accomplish and balance in our lives.
- We need to be careful and not let imaginary problems shut us away from what is genuine and real.
- Find someone you trust to voice these anxieties and fears with. They can give you important insight that can alleviate many of these negative emotions. In other words, see with eyes unclouded by anxiety and fear.
I know many people suffer from anxiety and live with a lot of fear. I understand how you feel. This incident with my teeth is just one of many examples of the different types of anxiety I deal with almost daily. These include but are not limited to:
- My fear of never getting married because of who I am or where I live.
- Working in a job I genuinely enjoy and that is stable.
- What I eat and how much I exercise.
- My age, and how that affects my relationships with different people.
- Feeling lonely and isolated.
- Feeling uncomfortable and strange when I am NOT constantly busy.
- Doing the right thing all the time.
- Not having a good relationship with all my siblings.
What is important isn’t being devoid of these types of feelings. If we never experienced these feelings or thoughts we would not be able to truly understand genuine joy. It is vital to understand we have the power to decide how we react to these feelings and thoughts when they come.
Someday I want to explore positive ways to react to feelings of fear and anxiety, but for today I wanted to end this post by saying I’m glad for this opportunity to positively look back at a hard experience and learn from it.
I hope whoever reads this has a wonderful day, and finds joy in small and beautiful things.
From the Perspective of an Old Soul 