I have always had a problem. It’s grinding my teeth. I have done it since I was young, but I don’t know why. All I know that is my teeth are getting worn down, little by little. But it’s never really caused any problems for me, so I haven’t paid too much attention to fixing the issue. I just know that sometimes I wake up with a sore jaw and sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night to the sound of my teeth grinding, which is one of the worst sounds to me ever.
My Journey To Hypnosis For Teeth Grinding
As I said, for most of my life I’ve mostly ignored my teeth grinding. Once in a while, I’ve asked my husband to poke me awake if he hears me doing it, but he never does. I don’t know why. He’s probably scared of being yelled at for waking me up.
A few months ago, I was having tooth pain, which I thought was from a cavity. I went in so a dentist could investigate, and everything looked fine.
The pain went away a few days later which pissed me off because I had just spent $450 getting x-rays and having a dentist look at my teeth for pretty much nothing.
But during that appointment, a dental hygienist recommended buying a mouthguard from Amazon. She knew that I was grinding my teeth and that I didn’t want to shell out the money right now for a custom mouthguard.
The truth is that I’ve often had my dentist try to get me to buy a custom mouthguard, but nobody had ever told me about these custom night guards before! I was excited to get them and try them out.
The hygienist told me that grinding my teeth was going to cause my fillings to come out faster because of the wear and tear, which for some reason is something I’ve never thought of before.
I became convinced that if I had a nightguard, a lot of my tooth pain and grinding would go away. I also thought I would be able to protect my current fillings longer.
These mouthguards (see pic above) are easy to mold, but they are still quite bulky. From what I’ve seen of professional mouthguards, you are not going to get as tight as a mold with the store-bought mouthguards as you do with custom made ones at the dentist.
But I really liked the feel of the mouthguard in my mouth. It felt like protection for my teeth.
There were 4 big mouthguards in the pack and 4 smaller ones that look like kids’ mouthguards. The first few I made weren’t that good. The third was good, but it was causing me to gag sometimes at night. So, I used the last one of my big ones and carefully molded it around my teeth to get the best fit I could.
I wore it for just over a month and it started to feel weird trying to sleep without it. I wasn’t grinding my teeth. I was waking up feeling good. It was working for me and I thought I was doing something good for my teeth.
However, I started biting down really hard on my top teeth at night.
I have an overbite, so my top teeth don’t normally get any pressure on them, even when I grind my teeth. But with the mouthguard, my top teeth can’t go into an overbite. The mouthguard is too big. So my top teeth and bottom teeth stay directly in line with each other because of the mouthguard.
It felt weird to wake up biting down hard on my mouthguard (which was over my lower teeth) and feeling my top teeth almost sinking into the guard. I could feel the pressure on my top teeth in a big way. It didn’t hurt, but it was a ton of pressure.
Still, I didn’t think anything of it. I thought it was protecting my teeth.
One morning I was out for a walk and suddenly I had a ton of pain in my top tooth right next to my two front teeth. It was sensitive to the cold air and it was just hurting overall.
I didn’t want to run into the dentist and pay a bunch of money for nothing again, so I waited a week. That whole week, my tooth hurt so bad. I bought some Orajel, which numbs the area, and it helped a bit, but I could still feel the pain a bit through it.
Then the pain went away for a week and I was happy I didn’t go to the dentist.
Then the pain came back. Not as bad as the first go around, but it was enough to get me to make another appointment with my dentist. I had to wait a week and a half to get in after that, and my tooth hurt pretty much that whole week and a half.
I bought some Sensodyne toothpaste because not only was my top tooth hurting, almost all my teeth were acting up. I was having sensitivity everywhere at random places throughout the day.
When I went to the dentist, I was sure I had either fractured the tooth or had a cavity that was causing all my sensitivity now, but nope! I wasted another few hundred to be told that I had sensitive teeth and received a sticky note with suggestions for toothpaste that would help with the sensitivity… which I had already bought without a dentist’s diagnosis.
I was pissed.
My husband joked that I paid a few hundred for a sticky note.
That is true.
I Turned To Hypnosis For Teeth Grinding
I’m scared to wear my mouth guard because I’m positive all that pressure is what caused the sensitivity. But I also don’t want to grind my teeth.
One of the things the dental hygienist told me on my last appointment was that they are seeing a lot of people coming in grinding their teeth lately. She said that women tend to grind their teeth more as it’s a common way that women tend to release stress. She recommended I check out an acupuncturist.
I found that interesting. And it made me wonder about self-hypnosis for teeth grinding.
Since I know that self-hypnosis has helped me with many things in my life, I wondered if it could help me to stop grinding my teeth.
So I checked out Hypnosis Live to see if they had hypnosis for teeth grinding, and sure enough, they did. I bought it and have been using it every night before bed for just over 7 days. And it’s been working.
My husband hasn’t heard me grind me teeth since I started using the hypnosis session, so it obviously shifted something either in my physical body or my stress levels in a way that’s helped me to stop grinding my teeth at night.
The hypnosis for teeth grinding session is focused on relaxation and release of tension. It’s about finding a balance and releasing your inner you who knows how to stop teeth grinding.
It’s funny because I told my hygienist that I was just going to try to will myself to stop grinding my teeth, and she looked at me funny and then suggested acupuncture. I guess she believes in the power of acupuncture but not the power of the mind.
I believe both can work.
Looking it up, I found that acupuncture helps to calm the nervous system as well as release muscular tension. From everything I’ve experienced, I believe that hypnosis can have a huge impact on the body’s nervous system and muscular tension as well. It changes your subconscious mind, which automatically runs things for you, so it could absolutely reach those programs that are keeping you tense and grinding your teeth at night.
So, whether it’s my belief that hypnosis for teeth grinding will work, or if it is working despite my belief, it seems to be working for me.
I also think that teeth grinding is a bad habit that I may have fallen into and I don’t think it has to do with stress. I have a bad habit of clenching my right hand very tight. I notice it mostly when I’m daydreaming or watching TV. It seems that I tense up my hand a lot for no reason. It’s just a bad habit. This is why I think grinding my teeth has become a bad habit too.
Self-hypnosis is excellent for overcoming bad habits. I can say that with certainty.
The only problem with the hypnosis for teeth grinding session is that she gets louder at the end of the session, which tends to bring me into a state of wakefulness. To solve that, I’ve memorized when the end of the relaxation session is and turn it off before she starts to bring you back into a fully awake state. That way I can just go to sleep afterward.
If you wanted to listen to the hypnosis session at a certain point during the day, then just listen to the whole thing and you will feel ‘wide awake’ after it.
If you are interested in it, you can learn more about the hypnosis session I bought for teeth grinding here. I haven’t tried the one from Hypnosis Downloads yet, but I may end up purchasing that one down the line.
