The waiting room is always worse than the chair. You sit there turning it over, and by the time you’re actually in the dentist’s chair the thing you dreaded takes two minutes and you barely remember it on the way out.
I’m the same with needles. I’ll tell anyone I don’t like them. But the truth is a needle has never caused me more than a few seconds of anything. The few seconds aren’t the problem. The problem is the half hour beforehand, imagining it.
That’s a strange trade when you say it plainly. The real thing is brief. The dread is long. And the dread is happening over something that, right at that moment, isn’t actually happening at all.
I think money does this to a lot of people. Not the money itself, the thinking about it. The worry about the pension you haven’t looked at. The conversation with your partner you keep not having. The decision sitting in a drawer. None of it is happening to you right now. It’s all in the waiting room.
So the useful question isn’t “how do I fix this.” It’s quieter than that. Is the thing I’m dreading actually happening, here, today? Or am I just sitting in the chair early, putting myself through it twice?
Most of the time it’s the second one. And noticing that doesn’t make the dentist go away. It just gives you the half hour back.