How to Reduce Fear and Stress around Dental Visits
Nobody likes to floss.
We do it because we have to.
To those that don’t do it regularly, incorporating it into your daily routine can be an enormous hassle. Most view flossing as a pain-in-the-butt we simply have to deal with as adults, but with these tips and tricks; you can take the headache out of flossing and enjoy all the benefits of top-quality oral health.
1) Reward Yourself To Ingrain the Habit
Human beings are great at forming habits, but we’re just as likely to form bad ones as we are good ones.
If you don’t floss, chances are you’ve unknowingly been rewarding your brain for not flossing. Even something small like time in the morning/evening saved by skipping flossing, after a long enough period of consistently doing so, will act as a reward to your brain leading it to establish a bad habit with potentially significant ramifications. To you, the minor reward that pleases the habit-forming centres of the brain is barely noticeable, but uncomfortable dental procedures certainly are!
But by incorporating an equivalent reward, even a minor one, after each and every floss; you can trick the habit-forming structures in the brain into completely automating the task of flossing. Something as small as choosing to perform your favourite morning and evening routine tasks only after you’ve flossed can be all it takes to establish a habit that will last for life! If you enjoy shaving, use it as a reward for flossing!
2) Make it a Part of A Different Routine
Right after we wake up, we have the least amount of cognitive energy we’ll have throughout the day. While we’re ‘up’, we’re not always ‘awake’ right away, so summoning the willpower to perform a task we don’t want to perform can be a struggle.
One way around this is to simply bypass summoning the willpower, and waiting until later in the day.
Flossing before brushing is always best, but flossing after brushing is better than not doing it at all! Consider having floss available at the office, in the car, your lunchbox, etc. so that whenever the thought strikes you, you can floss then and there!
3) Buy the Flossing Product That Works For You
I
f you don’t like flossing and you don’t like your floss, you can make things easier on yourself by buying a flossing product you don’t mind using! Maybe waxed or mint floss would be better than plain-jane floss. Maybe you find floss picks more convenient. Whatever it is, taking any struggle out of the task of flossing goes a long way to making it easier to get in the habit of caring for your oral health!
4) Learn Clever Ways to Work Around Oral Equipment
Oral equipment can make flossing difficult, but finding clever ways around the barriers they impose can make things easy again! There is a wide variety of flossing products on the market specifically designed for individuals with oral equipment, and your dentists at Triadent can help you find the ones that are right for you! All you’ve got to do is ask!
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