I like to imagine the dentist (she is female) and the dental nurses wearing black pvc gowns. Instead of novocane they just tie you to the chair and drill into your unanesphetized teeth.
I valiantly struggle to get enough narcotics into my system that rational thought is no longer an option.
If that fails, I concentrate on not peeing myself in front of the doc.
Phobic, me?
It depends. If they give me nitrous, then I just watch the dust motes floating in the air, or stare at the ceiling. If they don’t, I try to think of previous times when I did have it. I above all avoid thinking of what they might be doing. My philosophy is the more vague they are, the happier I am. Especially if it involves needles and scraping under the gumline.
Another vote for the hot hygienist distraction.
I’m busy looking into her big blue eyes, and at her big blue No! you idiot, they’re big but not blue umm-what EVER!
Dentist: We need to drill a half inch hole in your head and fill it with radioactive isotopes.
Me: Sure-what EVER.
The dentist is no big deal to me. In fact, since I wore a retainer/braces for the better part of seven years, and had monthly visits the whole time, my dentist’s office is almost like a second home.
And I LOVE the chair! If I could find a way to get it out of the dentist’s office and into my living room, it’d be there in a flash!
If it wasn’t for nitrous, I’d never go.
I need to go. I’m broke and chicken, so I haven’t yet.
Lord I hate going to the dentist. Even nice ones. My last dentist was a great guy, but the fact that he was wielding the implements of torture meant that I couldn’t like him much. Better than the asshole once who said, after a filling, in the most patronizing way possible, “That wasn’t so bad now was it?” How the hell would YOU know, jerk?
I have a gag reflex that is fairly easily triggered by things being put in my mouth, and I must admit that kept me from going to a dentist for years. In the relatively recent past I finally forced myself to go and was reintroduced to the gagging. (I think the worst triggers for me for this reflex are the things that are put in the mouth for x-ray purposes.)
So, to answer the OP’s question, when a situation comes up that I know might cause me to start gagging, I just occupy myself totally with concentrating on NOT gagging! Otherwise, I just let my mind drift about nothing in particular.
I’ve never had a problem with dentists.
I’d like my dentist to wear some kind of miniature TV camera on her forhead so I can watch what she’s doing in my mouth when I wear VR goggles.
Ah…using a pneumatic drill to bore into the exposed parts of my skeletal system…and fill up the holes with a compound containing the toxic heavy metal Mercury.
:eek: