Speak Honest Podcast: Real Talk on Relationships, Attachment Styles & the Work of Healing Childhood Trauma
Are you ready to heal your attachment style, master healthy communication, and create secure, fulfilling relationships? Subscribe now to uncover the secrets of secure attachment, navigate the challenges of trauma recovery, and improve your communication skills in love and life. In each episode of the Speak Honest podcast, we’ll dive into attachment styles, emotional healing, and proven strategies for deeper connection. It’s time to break free from the cycle of heartbreak and start building the relationships you deserve.
Speak Honest Podcast: Real Talk on Relationships, Attachment Styles & the Work of Healing Childhood Trauma
70. Heal in the Mess: My Dentist Chair Breakdown and What It Taught Me
Can a panic attack at the dentist actually teach you how far you've come in your healing journey?
In this raw and deeply honest episode, I share the unexpected emotional storm that hit me during a routine dental appointment and why it left me feeling more empowered, not less. From childhood dental trauma to adult self-advocacy, this story isn't just about cavities... it's about how healing can show up messy, loud, and inconvenient and still be proof of growth. If you've ever felt like you're doing everything right and still fall apart, this one’s for you.
You might want to listen if:
- You're doing “the work” but still get blindsided by anxiety
- You struggle with being “too much” when big emotions hit
- You’ve ever felt ashamed for breaking down in front of others
- You're learning to speak up for yourself in triggering situations
- You need a reminder that healing doesn’t always look graceful — and that’s okay
FIND OUT MORE!
- Apply for FREE Coaching with Jenn
- Join our FREE Community! Speak Honest Facebook Group 🧡
- Become a Relationship Reboot Member and access all you need to become secure.
- Schedule your Free 30 min Attachment Assessment with Jenn Today!
- Watch Jenn on the 🔴 TEDx Stage!
- Download your free Workbook: Dance of Attachment
- Visit www.speak-honest.com to learn more
- Follow Jenn on Instagram: @speak_honest
- Like the episode? Please write a review, your words help others find us!
DISCLAIMER: Speak Honest podcast content is informational, not professional or medical advice. Jenn is an ICF relationship coach, not a licensed therapist. Consult health professionals for specific concerns. Client opinions do not reflect Speak Honest’s stance. We aim for accuracy but are not liable for errors or outcomes from th...
Hello and welcome to Speak Honest. I am your host and certified relationship coach, jennifer Noble. It has been my passion for over a decade to help women like you heal what's been holding you back from having the relationships you deserve. Are you struggling with a relationship where you can't seem to voice your emotions, needs and boundaries without having it blow up in your face? Then you have found the right podcast, my friend. Get ready for practical tips, empowering truths and honest conversations. Now let's dive in.
Speaker 1:Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of Speak Honest. I am Jen Noble, your go-to relationship coach, and on today's episode I'm going to tell you guys a little personal story. So just the other day, I had an experience at the dentist and I've told the ladies in my relationship reboot program about this and I shared a little bit about it on Instagram as well. And as I was sitting down to record the episode, I thought to myself how could I really utilize this story, the situation I went through, and use it as a teaching moment? So that's what I want to talk about. But before I dive into that, first and foremost I just want to say welcome to anyone that is new listening here. It's so happy to have you. We've had an influx of listeners coming in lately and I just want to say I'm so happy to have you here.
Speaker 1:If you want to get plugged in to the Speak Honest community, the best place to do that is by joining our free Facebook community. You can go to Facebook right now and you can scroll into the search engine and just type in Speak Honest and what will pop up is Speak Honest secure attachment and confident communication for women with two little cute orange hearts. So you'll know exactly which group we are and I would love to see you in our community. We are a very close-knit community of women that are all in this Facebook group looking to heal, looking to have a good time, looking to just be in community with one another and lift each other up through the process. So we just finished a May challenge in the Facebook group. We just finished a May challenge in the Facebook group, which was incredibly fun and powerful and healing, and every day in May I went live and I did a live meditation, and so that's the kind of stuff that we do in there. So in June we're going to be doing a little bit something different, so I would love for you to come and check out what we're doing. I would love to see you in there. So again, you can scroll on down to the show notes and grab the link from there, or you can just search Speak Honest, secure Attachment and Confident Communication for Women.
Speaker 1:But now I will go ahead and get started with the episode and while you're listening, I just want you to kind of think about yourself in this situation as I'm telling the story and as I'm explaining where my emotions kind of got really heightened. Check in with yourself and see okay, where do you relate in this? Do you relate with myself? Do you relate with the dentist? Maybe the nurse or the dental helper? Honestly, I'm terrible, I don't know the name of that person. You can leave me a comment and let me know what the name of that would be Maybe the hygienist, but she's not really the hygienist. Anyways, I digress, but really check in with yourself and see in this story, how are you feeling? Does it bring up any emotions for you? Do you also have dental anxiety? Do you have anxiety over something else where you are unable to go see your doctor? Or maybe you're unable to go get a haircut because you have anxiety around this stuff. This is all very common. It's perfectly normal. We all go through it and I want to normalize that for everyone. So I hope you enjoy today's episode.
Speaker 1:Okay, so the other day I had to go to the dentist to get a cavity filled and just to give you guys a little bit of backstory, I've actually never had a cavity filled. I have great teeth. It really actually annoys a lot of people. I've never had braces. I've never had a cavity. My teeth are pretty good. Yes, they are a little bit small and sometimes gappy, but I kind of love my teeth and I love the personality they bring to me, so I've never been bothered to try to get them fixed. But as a result, I also, in childhood, had some dental trauma, if you will. So I did have some stuff done to my teeth when I was younger. I did have sealants put on and I got these little caps on my bicuspids put on when I was really really little.
Speaker 1:So, as a result, some bad things happened to me back then and I'll explain that in a second and so I have developed dental anxiety throughout the years was when I was pregnant with my son, so that was like back in 2011. It was actually a perfectly fine experience, but still it just was uncomfortable. It really hurt. They didn't believe me that it hurt so bad and I didn't go again. So for about 13 years and I just want to be honest about this I did not go to the dentist. I didn't even take my son to the dentist. Yes, please throw me your judgment and shame. Trust me, anything you have to throw at me will not be any less than I have ever thrown at myself for the same thing.
Speaker 1:And yet this is how anxiety works, right? And so that's why I wanna bring this up, because this is what happens we shut down, we avoid, we put our head in the sand, we don't do the things that we need to do in order to better our lives because of fear. And so finally, somewhere along the lines I think it was just because I knew I needed to get my son to the dentist I started taking him to the dentist and I thought, ok, I need to do this, I need to go see a dentist. So I talked with my husband he's got a great dentist, I worked it out with going to them and I thought, ok, let's just go for a quick cleaning. But, as you can imagine, when you go for a quick cleaning and you haven't been for 13 years, they want to do a deep cleaning and that really scared me and I didn't know what to do. So I shut down and I didn't go back for a couple of years again. So see how this is working. This is a process. This is a long time coming and I finally went back and I finally got in my headspace to be able to go.
Speaker 1:And the first time I went back so this was, I think, like back in February I had a total panic attack in that first session. They were great, they were amazing. Specifically, there's like one receptionist there who must have some sort of trauma training, because she was fantastic with calming me down and listening to me and validating me and I went back in and I got the cleaning done and then I went back for four more cleanings and in those progressive cleanings I was totally fine. Like I was so proud of myself but also just so happy and also either which way it was going to go, whether or not I was going to have a panic attack or not. I was okay with that, but at the same time it felt good. Oh, okay, I'm getting better at this. I've. I'm doing the meditations, I'm doing the hypnotherapy, I'm talking to my therapist Like I'm working through this stuff. Oh, my goodness, this is actually working. This is great. I'm totally healed.
Speaker 1:So when they said, okay, we need to, it's time to start getting your cavities filled, I was like, okay, I can do this. So I scheduled in to get four cavities filled. I said, just, you know, let's do four at a time, not not much more, even though, yes, I do have way more. And I was like, let's do this. So I go back in and I'm ready to go the day before. I'm a little nervous, my body, I'm feeling confident, honestly. I'm feeling safe, I'm feeling secure, I'm feeling heard, like everything is going on really well.
Speaker 1:I meditated before I went there. I fell asleep to my hypnotherapy to make sure that I was in the right mindset, I was doing everything right. And then I show up at the dentist and I go to sit down and we were in a different room. That I'm used to. Wild how this happens, right? We? Just we were in a different room now. So instead of room one that I'm normally and I'm in room three, and then you feel it, my body just starts to tense up. Just this change of an environment starts to change up and I was like, okay, that's okay, you know, it's okay if I'm upset, it's okay if I'm scared, and it's okay that we change the rooms and I'm just talking to myself. And then I sit down and I get a new dental helper I realized this because she is probably actually like the dental nurse and not the hygienist, and I was so used to hygienists and so this is a new person and also my super awesome, amazing receptionist ladies is not there.
Speaker 1:So can you see how people with anxiety are used to consistency. They need that consistency in order to stay safe. So, with all of this stuff going off, my body is already a little bit on edge, but again, I'm in control, I'm taking care of myself. And so I just say to the lady listen, I'm gonna have a little bit of a struggle with this, and as soon as I start speaking, I start crying. So that's where it starts. So this is. We're not even like five. Told her everything that was going to go on. I told her that I do have dental anxiety, that I do have panic attacks and that this is something that I've struggled with for a really long time, but I'm trying to work through it and here's how you can help me. So that, right in of itself, is huge. That's something I want you guys all to listen to is how to advocate for yourself, how to get to a place where you don't feel any shame or embarrassment around your situation, so you can just express that to someone. And she was like okay, tell me what you need, let's figure out some hand signals, we'll stop when you need to stop, we'll continue on when you need to continue on now.
Speaker 1:Of course, in most things this did not go perfectly and in fact, as I'm thinking about this situation, some of the stuff the dentist did still really pisses me off, like the way that he would talk to me or the way he dismissed me At one point in time. I'm crying, I'm literally crying, and I'm having an attack in that moment. And he's like oh, you know, the best way to fight your fears is to work through them. And I was just like my mouth is half numb at this point in time. And I was just like don't say that to me, like that is just completely useless to say. And at that point in time I was like, actually, and I started throwing out my science. I was like, actually, did you know that if you try to work through your fear and you do not have the appropriate stuff set up in place, meaning you do not have a support system and you are not prepared in your mindset yet, you can actually reinforce the fear, causing it harder to get over it in the future? And I think that really just shut him up and he was like, oh, what, are you some sort of psychologist? And I was like, I mean, I'm in school to become one and also I kind of just do this for a living. So, yes, a little bit, and also think about it, guys.
Speaker 1:When you live your whole life in this state of anxiousness and disarray and panics, you do, honestly, just sometimes gravitate towards finding your calling, and that's why I do what I do. The reason why I'm here is because I just keep observing all of this stuff that's happening in my body and I'm thinking. I feel very healed, I feel very secure, I feel very safe in my life, I love the people around me, I have curated the humans in my life to feel very good and supported, and yet I still get this way. And that's really what I want to talk about today, which is just that, no matter how hard it is that we do the work, we will still always sometimes falter. We will make mistakes.
Speaker 1:I mean, I say that in like quotation marks. I know you can't see me, but it's not a mistake to have a panic attack. I didn't choose that. This is just part of my body. But what I can choose is I can choose to either shame myself, look down on myself, really degrade myself and say why would you do this?
Speaker 1:You're such an embarrassment. Why are you so difficult? Why can't you just be easy? Why do you always have to do this, jen? And instead I could see that as okay. You had some shit happen to you when you were a kid. It's not okay. See, when I was a kid and I was trying to explain to the dentist that I had a lot of pain in my mouth and they weren't listening to me, then what happened was, because I'm a bit of a fighter, I started kicking and flailing and fighting back and what happened was they would hold me down. Think about that. I'm like eight years old and I am feeling pain. They're not believing me. I'm trying to get up and they're holding me down to the point where I remember having bruises on my forearm.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's no wonder I'm a little bit scared as an adult, as a 40 year old woman, going to the dentist. Do you hear that level of love and acceptance and validation I have for myself in that moment? That was the energy I brought in to that appointment and that energy is what I want us all to bring into every lived experience that we have, whether it be your budgeting, whether it be you have to go to the doctors, whether it be you have to go to the hairdressers or the dentist, whatever it is. Just have compassion for yourself, for the way in which you are acting, because there's no right or wrong way to act. Seriously, ladies, I want you to hear me, there's no right or wrong way to act. We are just doing the best that we can with the tools that we have.
Speaker 1:And the next time I go to the dentist, will I hopefully be a little bit more equipped? Yes, but if I'm not, then what is it teaching me? It's teaching me that I have a little bit more work to do, and I can be grateful for that and I can be, you know, to some extent excited about that. That's I know this is going to sound weird, you guys, but like that's kind of how I feel right now. I kind of feel a little bit like energized that I had this big, massive panic attack and yet at the same time I'm handling it. Yet I'm handling it, yet at the same time I'm not feeling stuck, I'm not feeling depressed. This morning I do feel a little bit overwhelmed. I will be very honest. Then I can tell I have some emotional kind of hangover going on and I need to be very protective over my energy today.
Speaker 1:So after I record this and after I finish my Friday 15s with the girls in the Relationship Reboot program, I'm going to go curl up on the couch with a blanket and a cup of tea and I'm going to do my work on the couch. Do you see how I'm still taking care of myself? That is what I want to teach all of us. If there's one thing, one thing I could get to just have you all take away from this big, massive experience I had yesterday with the dentist, is that we are all doing the best that we can, we are all healing in the best way that we know we can, and it is going to look imperfect and it's going to look messy. I want us to heal, even with the messy. I want us to heal in the mess right there. That's what I want to take away Heal in the mess, make the mistakes, have the panic attacks, cry in the dentist chair, blow up at the lady, at the doctors, and then come back from that.
Speaker 1:Learn from it. Don't shame yourself, don't beat yourself up for it. Don't be those people that were earlier on in our lives, degrading us and telling us we're not enough and we're unlovable and we're stupid and we're difficult or we're annoying or we're too much. Instead, we are going to be the caregivers that we needed for ourselves and we're going to say it's okay, it happens. Of course you're scared, of course you're nervous, of course you blew up at that lady. She wasn't listening to you, but let's learn how to take care of this in the future. Okay, and do you hear? Do you feel the difference in that? That's what I want us to take away.
Speaker 1:All right, everyone, thank you so much for being here for today's episode and listening to me talk about my dentist experience. If you have any questions about what I went through or anything you heard today, go ahead and jump into the Facebook group. We do a post every week for each podcast that drops every Wednesday morning, and that's the best place to continue on in this conversation. And again, I just want to invite you. If you have not joined the free Facebook community yet, I highly suggest you come in right now.
Speaker 1:Scroll down to the show notes, click on the link or go to Facebook and search Speak Honest, secure Attachment and Confident Communication for Women. We can't wait to see you in there. I will speak with you all next week. Take care, as we wrap up today's conversation, always remember that healing is a journey, not a destination, and it is an honor to be a part of your healing journey. If you want to dig deeper into the topics we covered today, be sure to head over to our show notes, where you can find all of the valuable information mentioned in today's episode right there. And please remember to rate, review and subscribe if you enjoyed today's podcast. Your feedback means the world to us and helps others discover our podcast. Until next time, remember to speak up and speak honest.
