Health & Wellness

Face life with a smile Easing Dental Fear with Princess Dental

If you fear going to the dentist, you are not alone. Dental phobia leaves people panic stricken, and while they are aware of the fear and feel that it is irrational, they are unable to do much about it. This can lead to classic avoidance, as they will do everything possible to avoid any visits with the dentists and only, hesitantly, go when they are in extreme pain.

Why are people afraid to go to the dentist?

There are many reasons why people have dental anxiety and fears. Some of the common reasons may include:

• Fear of Pain – This can stem from a previous unpleasant or painful experience, or even a story told by others

• Fear of Injections – many people have a fear of needles, especially when the thought of the needles being injected in their mouths. From the pain of the needle to the fear that the anesthetic won’t take and will feel pain during the procedure.

• Fear of Side Effects – Some people fear the potential aftereffects such as dizziness, nausea or feeling faint.

How to eliminate fear.

The most significant factor in reducing dental fear is the ability of the dentist and staff to quickly develop a connection with each patient. With a connected relationship the patient feels understood, and as safe as he or she can. Knowing how to ask the patient what he or she is thinking, what they are feeling or want is crucial to developing a connection.

What is conscious sedation?

Conscious sedation allows you to be relaxed enough to be comfortable and unaware of the treatment, as

if you were sleeping. Sedation during dental procedures can help you if you have sensitive teeth, a fear of dentists, have a bad gag reflex, hate needles, or have limited time to spend on dental care at the dentist.

Since you are completely comfortable and relaxed your dentist can do years of dental treatments in typically one or two dental visits. With sedation your dentist can perform extensive dental work quickly and comfortably. NitrousOxide

Sometimes called Laughing Gas, Nitrous Oxide Gas is the oldest and most tested form of sedation for dentistry. The effects are completely reversed at the end of the appointment allowing the patient to drive themselves home. When you use Nitrous Oxide you are awake and you can converse with your dentist during your dental visit.

Oral Sedation

This sedative medication is taken at the start of your appointment and takes effect quickly and will allow you to feel very calm, relaxed and drowsy. Occasionally, people will actually fall asleep.

IV Sedation

I.V. sedation is the most predictable form of conscious sedation available and our level of sedation is 100% controlled and immediate. Your vital signs are constantly being monitored to provide for a safe environment and, like a visit to the oral surgeon to have your wisdom teeth removed, you typically don’t remember a thing.

Sedation may be the greatest advance ever made towards truly anxiety-free dentistry. Dental treatment can create an enormous amount of fear for many people. Minimize the fear and tension associated with your dental care needs. Sedation dentistry can even be used for routine procedures such as teeth cleaning and check-ups. 

Princess Dental 3409 Victoria Ave Brandon MB 204-727-0440 info@princessdental.com www. princessdental.com

CONFIDENCE

is an inside game BY KIM RAAIJMAKERS

Have you ever found yourself tongue-tied having this great idea that you wanted to share in a meeting and you just couldn’t find the words?

You may have told yourself – the idea wasn’t that good.

Or that you didn’t want to interrupt your colleague or manager. And if it isn’t at work, you might find yourself saying ‘yes’ instead of ‘no. How often have you been doing things for your family, friends and others that you did out of guilt or a sense of obligation?

Don’t get me wrong, in small amounts, this is all ok. The problem is often we allow our own internal doubts leads us to overdoing it and doing too many of these obligatory activities.

So why is feeling and being confident so hard to do? The majority of the time you are acting from fear. Your brain is wired for safety, comfort & community. So if at anytime your brain sees a risk to one of those areas, it will send fear signals throughout your mind and body.

So when you are looking to be more confident, more secure in who you are and what you’re doing, most people look to control their external world.

You may feel confident because of your job title, the responsibilities you have at work or the clothes you wear. It could be by your accomplishments; think of the degrees you may hold, all the training courses you’ve completed or the projects you’ve achieved.

All this continues to ignore your more powerful opportunity to increase your growth potential – mastering your internal confidence! Here’s the thing, you were already born with all the confidence that you seek. Let me explain.

Can you remember the last time you’ve been with a baby or toddler? They believe that to their core that they can do anything, be anything. A baby is born with all the confidence and trust they could ever want in themselves. Babies also have no set language preference or skills. They learn everything over time from their parents, siblings, schools, community, etc.

So if you were born confident, then you have access to it now. And this is why confidence in an inside game. But mastering your internal confidence does not happen through what others may have told you: positive thinking, reading self help books, or ‘faking it until you make it’.

Or the one that comes up most often in performance reviews - a new course or training you need to follow.

Confidence doesn’t come from the experience or the knowledge. Not entirely.

Experience and knowledge can give you temporary confidence, and yes over time that may build some reserves of confidence – but again you’re relying on external factors – job titles and achieved certificates to provide you with the confidence you seek. In the long run though, it doesn’t solve the root of where the lack of confidence exists. So if you want to get to the root, you need to do the inside work.

1. Uncover the stories that you’re telling yourself about who you are, what you can do and your confidence. You can then create new stories that have you showing up as the person you want to be.

2. Build confidence habits. 3. And most importantly retrain your mind to so that you have your own internal source of unstoppable confidence. One that no one else can touch! And really, who wouldn’t want that! As Albert Einstein has said “the definition of insanity is doing the same things over and over again expecting different results”. So if you’re look to seeing new results in your career and life, you need to make a choice.

Continue doing what you always have or choose to master your own inner confidence. 

Healthy Habits and the Mindful Brain

BY STEFANIE BARANOWSKI, DIAMOND LOTUS YOGA

I get up nice and early with the best intentions of waking up slowly, enjoying my morning and having a good steady rhythm of healthy habits but I’m not perfect. Mornings for

me are filled with habits; some are healthy habits and some are habits that could use a make-over. Notice how I didn’t label my habits neither good nor bad habits; mindset is everything in how you create change in your habits and create healthy habit making. Half of everything you do in a day is habits such as the time you get up in the morning, the usage of your cell phone, driving a car, eating and exercising; us humans are creatures of habits.

WHAT ARE HABITS AND HOW CAN WE CHANGE THEM? Most of us can probably recognize which habits fall into the ‘healthy’ category and which habits fall into the ‘work towards change’ category. In order to effectively bring those habits that fall in the ‘work towards change’ into the ‘healthy’ category, we need to understand how habits are formed in order to break the habit loop and create new connections for change. A habit is a behaviour stuck in a loop. These behaviours are repeated over and over again and run in our subconscious minds. After continuous repetition we no longer become consciously aware of them. The behaviour is triggered by a cue and supported by a reward and with repetition becomes a habit. Most times we aren’t consciously aware of these behaviours and don’t know there needs to be a habit change and then sometimes we are conscious of it but don’t know how to create that change. Even when we know we need to change them or have the best intentions at changing them, it’s challenging in a society that is driven by instant gratification. In order to create change we really need to work on: noticing the habit, wanting to change it, doing the change needed and liking the change that is occurring for there to be a successful change. Here is a great way to implement that process: Step 1: Mindfulness; to bring yourself into conscious awareness of your behaviour and your habit loops both ‘healthy’ and ‘work towards change’ types of habits. Step 2: Find out what your cue or also known as the “why?” behind the behaviours in your habit loops. Why do you engage in that behaviour/what’s the excuse you tell yourself? Step 3: Find out what the reward for the behaviour is. What is it that is reinforcing you to continue to engage in the behaviour and the habit loop. What is the reward system that is causing the dopamine release? Step 4: Create an action plan for change by writing out your behaviour loops and what you want to change your behaviour to. Make sure to set a new reward system for yourself or think of what the reward would be if you created a new habit loop. Ex: Not making my bed in the morning Making my bed in the morning.

Step 5: Rewiring the brain and rewiring the habit loops. Start catching yourself engaging in the habit loop and then implementing the action plan. With time and repetition of the new action plan, eventually the new action plan becomes the new habit loop but instead of it being the habit loop of ‘work towards change’, it then becomes a ‘healthy’ habit loop. New Year’s comes around every year with great celebration and intentions to set new big goals for the new year, also known as resolutions, that will help improve our life from the previous year; everyone wants a transformation. However, it’s not those big goals that really change us, it’s those small habits that are transforming us every day. You won’t see those small habits create change in your life right away but slowly overtime they will make an impact.

COMMON SMALL HABITS

that create positive healthy changes over time:

1. Gratitude (look for the positive in each day). 2. Get up right away when you need to (Avoid pressing snooze). 3. Exercise for one minute (ex: lunges, squats, crunches). 4. Invest in experiences (What we remember isn’t objects, its experiences). 5. Organize your home and vehicle (A clear space is a clear mind). 6. Stand up every hour (I love when my Apple Watch reminds of this one). 7. Ask open ended questions. 8. Turn off notifications. 9. Drink more water. 10. Discover one new thing a month (keeps us curious and expands our knowledge over time). 11. Make your bed. 12. Spend a minute during the day with just yourself. Start with a minute and increase as you go. 13. Ask yourself whether what you are doing is worth it. 14. If a task takes 2 minutes, then do it right away. 15. Take care of your posture. 16. Read for 15 minutes a day.

Leaders are readers.

THE BEAUTY OF LIFE IS YOU GET TO BE THE AUTHOR OF YOUR OWN LIFE STORY.

Habits are neither good nor bad, they are just lifestyle practices that create the life we live. The beauty of life is you get to be the author of your own life story. At any time, you get to change the way your life story is written just like you have the power within you to change your lifestyle practices. With any practice, practice makes progress; and practicing habit loop change with consistency brings on a narrative transformation of your life story. 

Journals can often be a safe space to express difficult emotions. Journaling allows you to Just WriteCreative journaling for self-care track patterns, improvements and changes over time. Looking back at previous entries you will be able to see problems that you’ve been able to overcome. Being reminded of the strength that you had in other situations helps us to move forward with more confidence. Keeping a journal helps you create order when your world feels like it’s in chaos. You get to know yourself by revealing your most private fears, thoughts, and feelings. Look at your writing time as personal relaxation time. It’s a time when you can de-stress and wind down. WHAT IS JOURNALING? Journaling is the practice of writing your thoughts, feelings and reflecting on your experiences. It’s just as important to create a meaningful connection with ourselves as it is with people in our lives. So then why should we write? This helps up label our emotions and concretely look at them to get them out of our heads. WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS? While you are writing and when you finish, notice how you feel. Did you like the process? Were you feeling relaxed and soothed during or after writing? Did you feel at times frustrated, angry, confused, despairing? Recognziging this is a part of the process of journal writing. HOW TO JOURNAL & HOW TO START There are no rules about when and how often you should write. Just like anything else that

is good for you, you need to do what feels right for you. However, just like healthy eating and exercise, you will see the best results when you remain consistent and do it regularly. HOW TO USE JOURNALING PROMPTS Reading your past entries is a way to learn more about yourself, but journaling goes beyond keeping tabs on your daily events. Prompts can help direct you to collect your thoughts, to write more freely about your emotions . JOURNALING PROMPTS • How do you draw strengths from loved ones? • What are 2 things you would like to tell a family member or a partner? • What are you grateful for and why? • What part of your work do you enjoy the most? • When do you trust yourself the most? • What part of your daily life can cause stress and what can you do to change it? • Make a goal list and how you feel in the vision of your goal achieved. Challenge yourself to explore and see everyday things that we may normally overlook. Daily reflection on experiences, relationships and with yourself can help guide you to get in touch with your thoughts and feelings. We all need to take some time to think about our own wellness, let journaling be your journey to explore all the aspects of yourself. Find your own tools and make your own way as you write. The only way to journaling, is to write. Then write some more.