Overcoming
Fear
By Tony Magee, MS, MBA
The Destiny Doctor®
Going to
the dentist was a big psychological problem for
me. I come from a family of “dental chickens.”
With rare exception, I can’t recall anyone in my
family going to the dentist every six months for
regular checkups. Instead of going to prevent
dental caries from occurring, most of my
relatives would only visit the dentist’s office
if they needed some major work done — like
getting a tooth pulled. Why? While money was
an issue, it was mostly because of fear. For
example, my mom was very afraid of going to the
dentist. I learned my fear from her. If it was
too scary for my mama, then it was too scary for
me too — because I loved my mama. The fear
within my family either originated from some
painful personal experiences or it was simply
passed down through the generations.
As a
young adult, I realized that if I didn’t risk
change and overcome this fear of dental work, I
was going to end up with a “yuck mouth” smile
like a whole lot of older people that I knew.
In my heart, I wanted to break out of this
perpetual cycle of fear and give my future smile
a chance. What I needed was a great dentist,
one who was also a great psychologist. I needed
someone who could rehabilitate dental chickens.
Then I met a man named Greg Rubin, DDS. Through
this wonderful dentist, I learned as William
James once said, “Your belief at the
beginning of a doubtful undertaking is the one
thing that insures the successful outcome of
your venture.” With Dr. Rubin’s help, I
overcame my fear of dentistry and have excellent
dental health today.
Here’s
how I overcame my fear. It was through these
four basic steps:
Step 1.
I identified exactly what I feared the most.
Step 2.
I wrote down everything that could possibly go
wrong if I did what I was afraid of.
Step 3.
I outlined specific ways to overcome my fear.
Step 4.
I used the V.I.P.E.R. methodology:
a.
Verbalizing
my fear of visiting the dentist aloud.
b.
Imagining
myself relaxing in Dr. Rubin’s dentistry chair
as he worked on my teeth.
c.
Practicing
the whole event in my mind, thoroughly — with a
positive mental attitude.
d.
Experiencing
the whole process by breaking my fears into
easier parts to handle.
e.
Relaxing,
relaxing, relaxing through every step of the
process.
As I
was growing up, encountering fear was painful at
times. Although I had a strong obsessive drive
to succeed in life, simultaneously I was
hindered by an equally strong self-doubt. Often
I encountered feelings of meagerness and
possessed perhaps the largest inferiority
complex in the world (or at least this was my
belief). I learned early on that others truly
do appraise you at the level of your own
self-respect, self-confidence, and self-image.
It has
been said that self-knowledge is the dawn of
wisdom. Often it is also the first phase of a
remedy to abnormal fear. But, to remove fear,
more is required. Chiefly, old fears must be
replaced with something positive — a strong
faith — otherwise, they will either recur or new
fears will take their place.
“You
gotta love yourself, Baby. You gotta love
yourself so much that when you walk down the
street—- you can smell the same kind of love on
other people.”
~ Jill Scott
©
2003-2008 Tony Magee, MS, MBA and PlatinumStar®
Life-Strategies
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