When we think about dental anxiety, we often think about patients, right?

Of course. It’s obvious. Everyone knows that dentistry causes anxiety for patients. As dentists we put a lot of energy into understanding how we can help alleviate their worries. That’s a wonderful thing. But what about our own anxiety? What about dental anxiety for the dentist?

I speak with a lot of dentists who struggle with anxiety. Although I used to wonder if patients’ anxieties and fears were rubbing off on me as a dental patient (anyone else ever think that?), dental anxiety for dentists is different. For us, the worrying about being perfect, worrying about making everyone else happy, and worrying about all the responsibilities we take on creates our dental anxiety.

I recently spoke with someone who wishes she could quit dentistry because of the anxiety it creates for her. Because she also struggles with general anxiety, changing careers doesn’t feel so easy for her. Her biggest fear is that no matter what career she chooses, she will find a way to make it stressful for herself. She fears that no matter what she does for work, she will have anxiety.

That is a very real fear that I know some of us might experience.

While that may be true for many people, I can’t help but wonder, “What if it’s not true?”

I wonder if someone with general anxiety can find a career that feels better. Maybe I’m a dreamer, but I believe it’s possible.

We are all different and will have different experiences and reactions to life. How do we know if the anxiety is ours or if it comes from an unhappy situation? Because we struggle with anxiety, should we give it the power to hold us stuck in the very situation that makes our anxiety worse?

I know that type of thinking. I’ve been there too.

The good news is we can change our thinking.

One of my biggest fears about leaving dentistry was the fear that the old adage “wherever you go, there you are“ might plague me. I was terrified that I was just running from one problem to the next. Just like the woman who has anxiety, I also had my own proof. In my early years of dental practice, I didn’t really like it, but I rarely paid attention to that. For a few years I thought work was fine because I was focused on finding my life partner. Of all my friends, I was the only single one, and meeting someone was a priority. As I was getting older, I felt obsessed and depressed about it at the same time. I was way too busy trying to solve my dating life problems to worry about how my career was going.

Then my focus changed.

The minute I met my (now) husband, and fixed my big problem, I started noticing how dysfunctional my career was. I suddenly began to pay attention to that, and suddenly became obsessed and depressed about dentistry.

You can imagine the fear that created in me. Here I had this great life on paper, and I watched myself jump from problem to problem. You can also imagine how much it triggered me when a complete stranger judged me for that very thing in his blog post about me.

But I couldn’t let that stop me. I had to hope that I could make my life better for me.

Did I know how it was going to turn out when I started creating change for myself?

I had no idea! It was a leap of faith. And guess what? I feel like a completely different person. My dental anxiety disappeared ever since I let go of the main cause of my anxiety. But it’s not gone just because I ran away from or solved one problem.

My anxiety is gone because in my journey to let go of dentistry, I made myself a better person.

I learned how to think differently, how to dream, and how to appreciate what I do have. All of this work allowed me to stop finding a problem to obsess over fixing, and that is the key. I changed from within.

If we choose to only change our circumstances, we may find that wherever we go, there we are holds true. But I doubt that anyone so entrenched in their dental career will be able to make any leap without doing the real work they need to change. It’s that work that makes us better, which enables us to change both what’s inside and what’s outside.

How about you? Maybe you think it’s true for you too that you’ll always have anxiety, but what if it’s not? What if your career is truly a huge source of your anxiety? Is there a possibility that you can make things a little easier for yourself by letting go of that? What if this existence doesn’t have to be “just the way you are” for the rest of your life?

Imagine the possibility of having no more dental anxiety.

Would you ever regret trying, even if it removed only some of your anxiety? What would you regret more– trying, or not trying?