Am I safe?

A friend contacted me recently about her teenage daughter.

I remember treating her years ago when she was a little girl. She was always quiet, a little nervous, but wonderfully cooperative. Like many children, she wasn't excited about coming to the dentist, but she trusted the people looking after her.

Fast forward several years.

She's now in her late teens and developed toothache.

The sequence of events that followed might just change her life.

Imagine being seventeen again.

Trying to work out who you are.

Wondering where you belong.

Feeling everything intensely.

At that age, emotions don't simply visit. They arrive with a megaphone.

Every disappointment feels larger.

Every uncertainty lasts longer.

Every decision carries more weight.

So my friend took her daughter to her regular dentist. Following 3 visits, each one with different outcomes for her tooth, she was still in pain. At first the threat was an infection, then it just needed a filling, then after after all that drilling and the anaesthetic not working, to be told to either have a root canal or to remove her tooth.

Each unsuccessful appointment, produced more pain and chipped away at her belief that she would get help. Now to top it off, she has to face to either go through the most frightening dental treatment or the embarrassment over the reality of loosing her tooth in the peak of teenager years.

Just as her mind feels flooded with fear, embarrassment and isolation, another complication appeared. Her father strongly believes root canal treatment causes cancer and refused to consent to it. And she finds herself caught between two people she wanted to trust.

Imagine being seventeen.

Your tooth hurts.

One healthcare professional tells you one thing.

The internet tells you something else.

Someone you love tells you something completely different.

Every option seems frightening.

None of them feels safe.

It wasn't difficult to understand why she was frightened.

What fascinated me wasn't the fear itself.

It was the question her brain was almost certainly asking at every stage of that journey.

Am I safe?

We often think fear is the problem.

It isn't.

Fear is simply one of the brain's oldest ways of protecting us.

Our brain is scanning for signals of safety and danger all the time.

Long before we consciously decide whether something is dangerous, our nervous system is already gathering information.

Every conversation.

Every facial expression.

Every unexpected sensation.

Every silence.

Every kept promise.

They're all pieces of evidence.

Pain is a powerful signal.

Unexpected pain is even more powerful.

Conflicting advice makes that signal louder.

Suddenly the brain isn't simply worrying about a tooth.

It's questioning whether the people, the information and even its own judgement can be trusted.

It isn't asking whether this person is kind.

It isn't asking whether they're qualified.

It isn't asking whether they're trying to help.

It's asking something much simpler.

Am I safe?

Listening to her mum, I couldn't help but wonder how to bring her daughter back to feel safety around her again.

I started imagining safety as an island.

Each of us has our own version,

This island is built by each of us, as a result of how we interact with others.

It may be a place you have visited before, or somewhere you've built yourself.

You might have been there many times before, or maybe you are noticing it now for the first time.

Some will have it busy, with lots of buildings, people, others will want it filled with trees for shade and quiet rivers.

Some will choose to be there alone, some will invite people in, but only safety and trust is allowed in your island.

Some will want loud music flowing through it, some will want to listen to birdsong or the rhythm of the sea.

You might even have different spaces, for different times in your life.

Whatever your island looks like, you know you can return there whenever you need.

This isn't an island where fear doesn't exist.

But an island where fear no longer has to shout.

In this island all your thoughts and emotions are safe, they all come and go as waves, and you let them, they are all allowed.

The island isn't far away.

You can see it.

But there is a large cliff separating you from this island

In order to reach it, you must go across a rope bridge

It sways gently as you step on it.

The wooden slats aren't perfectly straight.

Sometimes the ropes creak.

On windy days it moves more than you'd like.

You wouldn't sprint across it.

You probably wouldn't look down.

You'd place one foot carefully in front of the other

Testing each plank before trusting the next.

Each step you take, each plank you trust

Each plank that holds beneath your feet teaches your mind something remarkable.

Not that the bridge won't sway.

Not that the journey will be effortless.

Simply this.

You can take another step.

As dentists, we can't control everything.

We can't erase what a patient has read online.

We can't control conversations they've had with family or friends.

We can't always prevent treatment from becoming more complicated than we'd hoped.

What we can do, is help patients feel safe at each step.

Because rope bridges need maintaining.

One painful injection doesn't destroy the bridge.

But it may loosen a plank.

Being dismissed afterwards removes another.

Reading frightening stories online frays one of the ropes.

Conflicting advice stretches it further.

Suddenly the bridge isn't broken.

It just doesn't feel reliable anymore.

Repair is possible.

A clinician who genuinely listens repairs a plank.

An honest conversation tightens another rope.

A patient who feels in control strengthens the handrails.

The bridge becomes more stable.

Not because nothing difficult happened.

Because every repair reminded the brain that it wasn't crossing alone.

We can't promise patients they won't feel afraid.

We can't promise treatment will always be comfortable.

We can't promise life won't present unexpected turns.

But perhaps our role was never to remove fear.

Perhaps it is to become part of the bridge.

To help each patient move, one careful step at a time, from a place where every thought is centred on threat, towards a place where trust feels possible again.

Every patient who walks through our door is already crossing a bridge we cannot see.

Some arrive with bridges that have carried them safely for years.

Others arrive with missing planks, frayed ropes and memories of journeys that didn't end well.

They don't need us to pretend the bridge won't sway.

They don't need us to promise that every step will be easy.

They simply need enough evidence to believe they can keep walking.

Because perhaps the most important question a patient will ever ask isn't:

"Will this hurt?"

It's the quieter question they may never say out loud.

"Am I safe?"

And perhaps every interaction we have is part of the answer.