After chatting with Patma this morning, I feel like I should explain that Chödrön's thoughts on paying attention to your feelings, training your mind to relax around those feelings, and noticing the effects of doing so, did actually help me through my dentist appointment yesterday. I say this because I feel like my issues with being angry and frustrated with the dentist were released after I realized they were just making me feel worse, and I believe it ended up making the entire experience more successful (even if it was still traumatic).

Thinking about Chödrön's guidance didn't get rid of my anxieties once I was sitting in the dentist chair. However, it did facilitate communication and understanding between myself and the dentist, and this made things easier. He realized my trust in him had been broken and he admitted he needed to regain my confidence in him. I needed to hear this, to know that he understood how my anxieties had come about.

More significantly, I felt that he listened to me, and accepted some responsibility in his role as a dentist. He told me that he wouldn't any longer tell patients that it is safe to eat with a partially numb mouth (since, assumably, that's how I ended up cracking my tooth, on his advice that it was safe). From this exchange (and from coming into the appointment without the anger I had previously felt), I no longer imagined I was against the dentist (or he against me). It allowed me to see that he was trying his best to make me comfortable, to pacify my fears (by giving me reading information about the procedure), and I no longer felt that he was mishandling my treatment.

And now that's enough about the dentist, and my dramatic tales of cracked teeth!

Onto the great responsibility :-) (and joy) of working at OBR: bagging organic, fresh-roasted coffee to get people through their own harrowing adventures!