Dental phobia

I've been trying to help out one of my mates with her dentist phobia. The first attempt wasn't all that good. I didn't really know what I should be trying, and just ended up using some generic ego-strengthening type stuff that I'd tailored a bit to be more dentist focused. She did say it helped a bit when getting a wisdom tooth taken out - which is a pretty big fear for her, so even a little bit of help there is a really good thing.

Thankfully, my second attempt at some hypnotherapy a couple of days ago seemed to go a lot better. After a progressive relaxation induction, and a couple of deepeners, she was in a fairly deep trance. So I went on to install a post hypnotic suggestion for calmness. Set up so that all she needs to do is a take a deep breath and think of the word calm, then all the anxiety and tension will just fade away (based on stuff lifted from Hartland's, again :)). After that, I got her to experience visiting the dentist to try it out (making a point to focus on the smells and sounds). Once the anxiety was beginning to build up, I got her to do the deep-breath-calm thing to get rid of any anxiety. I went through a few dental situations (e.g. waiting room & dentist chair) like that to reinforce it.

After bringing her back out of trance, she said it felt like it worked really well - and I was pretty impressed with how well it seemed to work as well. I guess I'll find out for sure next week, cos she's going back to the dentist then. Hopefully everything will go great :)