We need to talk about being scared

Let’s stop pretending self-care is all spa days and silk pyjamas - sometimes it's smear tests and dentists.

The first time I went to the dentist as an adult, I burst into tears just walking in to make the appointment. When I tried to have a hygienist appointment, I cried so hard that I couldn’t open my mouth wide enough for the poor technician to get the cleaning tool into my mouth.

One memorable time, when I stood up from the dentist’s chair, I had left a kind of Turin Shroud of sweat in the shape of myself. I’d been panicking so much that I had soaked through my entire outfit and left a damp outline of my own body on the pale blue faux-leather reclining chair.

Even driving past roadworks used to make my heart pound, reminding me of the sound of dentist drills.

Self-care can be hard, boring and painful. It can be expensive. It can chip into your lunch hour or your weekend.

And when my filling fell out a few months ago, that same wave of fear washed over me. Oh God Oh God it’s going to cost hundreds – no – thousands. They’ll have to pull the tooth out. I’ll need a root canal. They’ll drill the nerve. I just won’t go.

So I didn’t.

But I’m sick of fearing things that aren’t going to kill me. Smear tests. Bank statements. People saying ‘Alice, have you got a few minutes?’ They all strike fear into me. When I was little, I used to ask my Mum to add ‘It’s not a telling-off!’ any time she called me, so convinced I was that I was constantly in trouble.

It’s so boring to be nearing 40 and still frightened of things. A therapist a few years ago told me that anxious children become anxious adults. And worrying about things just takes me straight back to childhood. The dentist on Acres Lane who did a filling without giving the teenage me an injection first, for example (thanks for that).  

It’s fear, isn’t it? It’s that feeling that if I just shove all those thoughts into a little box and bury it deep down or leave the bank statements unread or don’t bother making the dentist’s appointment or swerve the big decision I know in my heart is right, that somehow I’ll be able to make it all go away.

But you know what? In my thirties I went on to have braces, and jaw surgery where the bone was drilled away and chains were attached to the teeth embedded in the roof of my mouth. I had four teeth pulled out and had to go every six weeks for three years to King’s College Hospital orthodontics team. There’s no way you can stay petrified of dentists when Christina, the orthodontist who loves Dan Brown, is nattering away about her favourite book recommendations. My fears eventually diminished. Obviously, it hurt. But it was soon over each time.

Fears big and small have held me back, in ways big and small.

Sometimes I have to give myself a shake and wonder whether, a years’ time, will I be glad I’ve ignored that envelope with CONFIDENTIAL written on it? The pounding toothache? The dripping water coming down the kitchen wall when it rains? Will I be glad I’ve stewed about it endlessly at 3am? Or do I need to stop expecting the worst and just woman up and address it?

A woman told me recently she was lazy for having not done something, and I thought, no, you’re not, you’re scared. I recognised her darting eyes and her embarrassed grin. She wasn’t lazy, she was worried about it. But idleness is an easier emotion to process, and it’s neaater to dismiss your thoughts as laziness than it is to take the tiger by the tail and admit to fear. Part of the way I’ve started to think about self-care is as though it’s parenting myself. Would I just let my own child not do the things she didn’t want to do because she was worried? No, I’d support her through it and praise her afterwards. If I give myself the adult equivalent of a Chupa-Chup from the chemist after a scary appointment with the doctor, it’s the very least I deserve!

My favourite self-care treats (all alcohol free!)

·       A Spacemask

·       A new book, ideally from The House of Books and Friends

·       Watching a comforting film under my electric throw (the last one I watched was Noelle, joyful festive nonsense)

·       A flotation tank

·       A bunch of eucalyptus hung in my shower – the smell is incredible