For me, it’s the fact that I have a very strong gag reflex. I start gagging as soon as the dentist gets a single tool or finger in my mouth. I can suppress it, but it’s uncomfortable and I can’t always hold back a gag for very long.
This is going to sound like a cliche from a bad movie, but when I was a kid, I was (physically) abused by a dentist. Which resulted in a huge fear of going to the dentist, to say the least. Through the rest of my childhood and teen years, my mom made me go (to another dentist, obviously), but as soon as I hit college, I refused to go for many years. I would even do things like get up the nerve to make an appointment, and then when the day would come, call up and cancel in a panic. Someone once asked if the dentists ever billed me for cancellation on short notice, and the only thing I can figure is that I sounded like a complete sociopath on the phone and the dental office decided they were better off rid of me entirely.
Anyway, when I was in my mid-20s, I had a dental situation that I let get so bad that I had to go to a dentist and thank heavens I ended up with a great dentist who was recommended by several people and I told him the whole story. He was very supportive and came up with what I call the dental plan for lunatics, which included things like seeing me afterhours so that I wouldn’t have to wait in the reception area, nor would I hear “dental sounds” from other exam rooms. He also broke up the dental procedures into the shortest possible segments, so he would do a few minutes of dental work, and then I would get up from the chair and walk around for a little bit. After about a year or two of this, I ended up feeling like I was taking advantage of him – here is this nice guy trying to help me out, and here I am taking up 5x the amount of his time, so I felt I owed it to him to try to act like a normal person, and 10 years later, I can usually pass as an average patient in his office.
He is probably about five years away from retirement, and I’m honestly not sure what is going to happen then.
I was lied to by a dentist, and I haven’t forgiven the profession as a whole yet. When I was about 12, they wanted me to have braces. I asked if I would need to wear one of those god-awful retainers after the braces came off. “No, no. Not a chance, no” says the dentist. So I agree to the braces. For over a year I had to put up with those damn things. When the last appointment was being scheduled, I asked again if I would need to wear a retainer. “No, this appointment will be your last one” he tells me.
I am put under for the proceedure of removing the braces. When I wake up, I find that the dentist has cemented in a piece of metal behind my bottom front teeth. He informs me that this is permanent and that the retainer for my top teeth should be in in about a week. I said a few choice words and told him to take the damn thing out of my mouth, I had not agreed to this. He refused, citing that I was only 13 and didn’t know what was best for me. The parents weren’t any help either. They are the type that agree with anything a medical professional says, because apparently patient consent isn’t important.
I still have scrape marks on my teeth from where I had to pry that bar off with a butter knife while doping myself on Nyquil for the pain. Fucking dentists.
All these people going in for “quarterly cleanings” …Is that an American thing? If so, it hasn’t been adopted by the Netherlands yet, because we do everything thirty years later then you guys. Dutch standard dental advise is to go once every six months for inspection. The dentist cleaning your teeth isn’t standard i Holland. Everybody is supposed to clean their own teeth, except people who can’t do it. For instance because they have crooked teeth with inaccessible parts or because they aren’t physically capable of brushing.
Dentistry, like any other commercial profession, does seem eager to create a regular “demand” it can provide. When I was a kid, getting your teeth bathed in a fluoride gel every year was the thing one " should" do. Haven’t heard of that since I was nine years old, so perhaps that was one of the coming and going fads. Like the unnecessary tonsillectomy in kids in the seventies.
I am also mostly immune to local anesthetic. It seems to be genetic, my mom’s is the same way. I had various dentists and other medical people tell me that it was patently impossible for it to not work. This gave them an excuse to ignore my pain and made the dentist an extremely traumatic experience. It culminated in a “I’m not numb!” “Yes you are, I’m going to start” root canal as a teenager that involved screaming and sobbing in the chair. I didn’t go to the dentist for ten years after that.
It started as fear, and as my fear was reinforced with more pain, more dismissal, it turned into a phobia. I feared going to the dentist more than anything in the world, and it took that above shoddy, incomplete root canal to become infected and abscess to get me to. I waited a month, too. The pain of the tooth was better than the fear. It was the sleep deprivation that got to me, I was getting very. . . weird. It’s hard to describe the depth of this fear. When I think about that root canal it makes my hands shake and my heart pound, and I had nightmares for months afterward (and in the days leading up to any dental appointment, even to this day).
When someone is in your face, inflicting pain upon you and not stopping when you ask them too, your reaction can be much more visceral. I was in more physical pain (and for much longer) after my recent ankle surgery that that root canal, but I have no negative associations with the surgeon-- he’s been nothing but helpful, and I wasn’t awake and suffering while he was drilling in my bones.
My dentist that I go to (who’s awesome) had to dose me up with ativan and then do the procedure via IV sedation.
I was born in 1955 and lived in a rural area of Kentucky. My parents weren’t “dentally-aware” at all and what they really needed was a medieval tooth-drawer. Anyway, I never saw a dentist until I was 19 and joined the Navy. I spent the entire 9 weeks of boot camp going to the dentist every day and having something done. The dentists were students or retired torturers and I generally came away hurting.
I’ll always go to the dentist but it’s not something I’m ever going to be eager for.
Testy
Irrational fear of getting my teeth pulled out. With me, I’ve never experience a lot of pain. Perhaps I just react well to the drugs and shots.
I brush regularly, floss most of the time (I’m not perfect), and gargle the mouth wash. I take care of my mouth, but I still have that irrational fear that the dentist will discover a huge mistake I was somehow making and take all of my teeth out.
Getting a lecture by the dentist kind of suck too. I think I take care of my teeth, and yet I am told that I don’t do enough - even though my visits go well. It’s like nothing is good enough.
I haven’t been to the dentist in two years for insurance reasons, but when I was insured, I went every 6 months even though I was a little afraid every time.
The ham-handed dentist I had as a kid is the reason we have stayed with the one we have now, even though he wasn’t on the PPO list for our insurance. They still covered quite a bit, but we got the note every time that “you could have saved money by choosing a Preferred Provider.” He has a technique for giving a shot that I think comes from acupuncture or something, but it really hurts very little, if at all. And that’s coming from somebody who was more afraid of the shots than of the fillings when we started with him. He waits until things are numb before he starts anything, he will take time to explain things, and he’s very aware of any indication of pain. The worst of any visit with him is the absolutely terrible jokes. I probably ought to print out some of the joke threads from here to help him out.
It’s partly because dental insurance tends to be shite, if available at all, compared to health insurance.
My Dad hates going to the dentist because of going in the 50’s and 60’s.
I hated going to the dentist because of my experiences in the 80’s.
Recently, a miracle must have occurred. I hated hated hated hated hated the shots, and it felt like every time I went, they found a cavity.
The last few times I’ve had shots from my dentists…beautiful! No pain! And he explains everything to me!
I think dental technology has advanced in the past 10-20 years.
It’s the judgement. I feel the dentist is going to judge me for my bad teeth.
I find cleanings to be relaxing too!
I have commented to my dentist that they should incorporate chair massages into their practice. 
Someone here said they needed a valium for a cleaning :dubious:
I am thankful for my healthy teeth and gums, my kids’ too - 11 & 9 yo with no cavities!!!
TM what?
That’s not unheard of, actually. When I called my dentist a couple weeks ago for a routine cleaning, the receptionist asked if I would need to be medicated for the cleaning. I was surprised - I mean, I’ve got pretty severe phobia but it’s not that bad. She said that there are indeed people who need help even for a cleaning.
Every six months is standard here, too. It’s the schedule that most dental insurance plans allow for. Quarterly seems a bit over the top, to me, unless your teeth get seriously plaque-y between cleanings. 
From Wikipedia: “Temporomandibular joint is the jaw joint and is frequently referred to as TMJ. There are two TMJs, one on either side, working in unison. Pain or dysfunction of the temporomandibular joint is commonly referred to as ‘TMJ’, when in fact, TMJ is really the name of the joint, and Temporomandibular joint disorder (or dysfunction) is abbreviated TMD .”
I swear my mother sent me to the worst dentist in the history of dentistry He did ot know what he was doing. The pain and the terror stayed with me.
I found a good dentist who also handled my divorce, and all my siblings ended up going to him for teeth repair. We all had extensive damage from our childhoods.
When I moved to New Jersey, I was again dentist-less. I finally had to go, and found Dr. Stern, the best dentist on the planet. He totally fixed me up, and always praised me for coming in and getting work done. I had the first, most extensive work done before I gave up drinking. I had to have the appointments in the early morning so I could arrive sober. Then I would hit the liquor store, and often had to quaff the first wine cooler in the park, not being able to wait till I got home.
Poor Dr. Stern had to retire when he developed cateracts, but I still see his replacement Dr. G twice a year.
I don’t think most people know about the psychological and physical damage a bad dentist can do to a person.
No, that six months is for inspection for cavities only. Dutch dentists don’t offer to clean and no-one asks them to. It seems weird to me that in America something like cleaning is standard that Dutch teeth can go without. Is there any research on-line whetether having your teeth cleaned has any advantages? If there isn’t, it seems to me American dentistry has tricked the public into a costly, but totally unnecessary expense every six months.
Like other posters, it’s not fear, just unnecessary pain. It’s a pain to take a day off of work so that I can pay to see a dentist two hours after my appointment to have my mouth raped. As long as I’m not having problems with my teeth, I’ll stay the hell away from the dentist.
Don’t you guys have the tartar and scale removed from your teeth? tartar buildup (under the gum line) is responsible for recession of the gums and much denatl disease. A 6-month cleanup/scaling is cheap insurance against periodontal disease.
My traumatic dentist experience as a kid was akin to this. In the bad old days before flossing and when one was still told to “swish and spit,” if my gums bled during a cleaning, my dentist told my mother, in a tone that communicated his utter disgust, that I had “trench mouth,” which he apparently thought was a sign of moral turpitude.
I also had a dentist as an adult who was so rough that my teeth and jaws would ache for a day or so after her cleaning.
With the advent of really good electric toothbrushes and regular flossing, I no longer fear the dentist. (Unless I have to have something more than cleaning…)
No. That’s what struck me about it. I wondered if there’s any research periodontal disease is more common here. From what I hear/see in friends and family, I don’t get the impression that it is. We do get instructed on flossing, though, but the whole “getting your teeth cleaned regurlarly by a professional” hasn’t taken hold here.