Fear Tricks Us Into Leading A Boring Life.

25 / 05 / 2023

Fear Tricks Us Into Leading A Boring Life.

As we return from our Coasteering trip I reflect on the day and how the Absolute team managed the various challenges.

We are in a profession that sees more than its fair share of people who arrive feeling worried, scared, and anxious. It is our job to offer reassurance, time and a greater understanding to help them manage their thoughts which often are so overwhelming that they choose to live with dental pain or choose to not smile for fear they will offend someone.

We still see new patients who arrive to see us as a last resort having not had any dental care for many, many years due to their perception of what might happen or a bad experience many, many years ago. I am delighted to say that we nearly always manage to nurture them back to dental health and get a great amount of satisfaction when we hear they finally do not treat a visit to us with anxiety.

So at that moment when we are standing on a jagged cliff edge surrounded by water and the option of an undignified climb back down or a 30 foot jump in the sea and whatever lies below us, it is a good reminder of what fear can do to us. When you consider what life could be like if we conquered some of our fears would it be very different? We so often cannot actually articulate what we are fearful off and I am certain that all the team here return to Absolute with just a little more empathy with those patients we look after.

As a team we supported each other throughout the afternoon, much as we try to do for those we see on a clinical basis, but it was a good reminder that what one person can see as a huge challenge others can see as an adventure, and both feel they have achieved once they have completed. We were encouraged during our trip by Scott and Chris of Adventure South, who did a very good job of including humour, kindness and patience in their instructions to us.

There are, I now realise, two dates in the calendar Nothing to Fear Day May 27th and Face your Fears Day 8th October 2019 confirming that so many of us have fears of one sort or another.

“It’s okay to be afraid. Just don’t let it get the best of you. If you do, it will slowly creep inside you until you’re completely paralyzed. Fear has that effect, unless you bravely face it head-on. When you accept fear, it actually makes you stronger.”
― Kevin J. Donaldson