Tag: fear

Guest Post: 7 Reasons Not To Fear The Dentist

1. Your dentist gives you free stuff! Don’t you want free lip balm, toys and all the toothbrushes and floss you can stuff down your pants? After the dentist finishes the exam and cleaning, often these lovely parting gifts await you.

2. Your dentist understands your fear. And will give you plenty of nitrous oxide (laughing gas)! Whether it’s because you had a traumatic experience as a child or you don’t like the idea of someone poking around in your mouth, some people have a real fear of visiting the dentist. According to Comfort Dental of Anderson, Indiana, when patients receive sedation dentistry work, it allows them to have little or no memory of the experience. No reason to be scared, you won’t remember anything!

3. Your dentist helps you have a winning smile. Say goodbye to crooked and yellow teeth! Smiling helps facilitate better first impressions and makes you look more attractive. Your dentist can help create a million-dollar smile–whether it’s a professional teeth whitening session or straightening your teeth with braces. Your teeth will look so stellar that friends and family will no longer ask about your uncanny resemblance to Count Dracula!

4. Dentists use the latest technology. No rusty tools a-la Little Shop of Horrors. Today’s dentists’ offices are more like Star Trek (Beam Me up Scotty!). Offices are equipped with the latest technology so procedures are not only less invasive but also allow patients to feel more comfortable. There are many new technologies that accomplish these goals, such as devices that even eliminate the need of the fear-inducing drill.

5. Your dentist keeps you healthy. If your dentist spots something like oral cancer during a routine checkup, you can thank them for saving your life. Truth is you only have one set of teeth. If you deal with dental issues before they become a problem, chances are you won’t be so scared to go because there won’t be any major problems. Crazy concept, we know.

6. Calming atmospheres and soothing music. Some dentists’ offices have transformed into downright spas! Televisions, calming music, chamomile tea and white noise machines with ocean sounds are just a few of the amenities that provide a calming and inviting dental experience.

7. Your dentist knows what he is doing. They went to school…for many, many years! Becoming a dentist involves at least two to three years of prerequisite science courses during the four years of college to receive an undergraduate degree , and dental school is another four years. Throughout schooling, dental students have intensive instruction that involves nine hours of lectures and/or lab five days a week, totaling about 100 credit hours of classes each year.

After all the years of school, they still need to be licensed by the state before they can practice. They need to pass the National Board Dental Examinations and clinical board examinations to show that they are competent to practice dentistry. Some states may even require one to two years of residency. And if your dentist decides to specialize in anything from pediatric dentistry to periodontics, that involves even more years of schooling. All this makes them super smart, so you trust them to look in your mouth.

Becoming a dentist takes hard work and extensive training. So have no fear. You are in good hands!

If you have a dentist who had put you at ease, nominate them here.

Post contributed by Alisa Vilabrera of TopDentists.com

September 23, 2012
Guest Post: 7 Reasons To Try Hypnotherapy

‘Celebrity Hypnotists’ and their peddling of hypnosis as a form of entertainment have a lot to answer for. The lack of trust in hypnotherapy as a bona-fide method to treat conditions from depression to weight loss or mothers in child-birth to bed-wetting in those resulting children, is unnecessarily wide-spread and much of this could be put down to too many slap-stick programs and internet clips of people flapping like a birdy, declaring their love for a doggy or regressing to babyhood, sucking on a dummy, dribbling – and worse. Hypnotherapy, founded in the ‘mesmerism’ of the 1800’s and now used as a method for curing conditions that stem from emotional and psychological issues, has also influenced the development of the widely recognised cognitive behavioural therapy, and which employs clinical hypnosis.

Among the many reasons to think about hypnotherapy in a positive less ‘look into my eyes, not around the eyes’way;

1. Spiders Are Cool. They eat the flies which might land on your food after eating poo. You don’t have to be scared of spiders and chase them from your home – spiders are your friends. Hypnotherapy can help with irrational fears and phobias of all kinds in both adults and children.

2. Stuttering Wastes A Lot Of Time. It’s even difficult for a stutterer to say ‘stutter’, which just can’t be fair. Hypnotherapy can help the afflicted find a way around the stuttering and thereby improving confidence which perpetuates a further improvement of the condition.

3. The Extra Weight Is Hard To Lug About Isn’t It? Now be honest, there is a much healthier, thin person under all the blubber who craves far less and who could be uncovered with the help of weight loss hypnotherapy to change eating behaviours . Approaching food and it’s consumption in a different way is better than crash dieting, which doesn’t work anyway; better than gastric bands, which can be painful and lead to digestive problems.

4. Bed-Wetting Is, Like, Soooo First Decade. Actually, you should have stopped this before even reaching your first half-decade. If you have not by then, your parents should be sick of changing wet sheets, as you must have had enough of the crackle of the plastic sheet, so ask them to check out something like The Therapy Lounge hypnotherapy where therapists are used to dealing with wee ones (sorry).

5. Anger Management Is Only Funny In A Film With A Shouty, Sweary American Comedian. Otherwise get a lid on it, keep your cool. Learn techniques through hypnotherapy to control and reroute your anger into more positive feelings.

6. Compulsive Shopping Can Ruin Relationships. Particularly if you have a stingy other half who doesn’t like you spending your own money either. You can’t buy happiness so you can’t keep shopping to find it that way. Hypnotherapy can help you change your behaviour so that you can resist the shops and the internet which has made it all too easy to flex the plastic and spend online.

7. Gloria Gaynor Might Not Be Enough To Make You Believe You Will Survive. Divorce is a very tough process and has a prolonged recovery time. Cognitive Behavioural Therapy or Neuro Linguistic Programming, as well as traditional hypnotherapy, could help you overcome the negative emotions that could be overwhelming you, and eventually have you humming along to Gloria with a spring in your step.

April 29, 2012
Guest Post: 7 Reasons To Grow A Beard This Winter

The full beard, like many types of groomed facial hair, is a beautiful thing. But it’s also one that appears to fallen by the wayside of popular fashion. That is not a trend that Tommy George of www.idealo.co.uk wants to see continue. Here are seven reasons why.

Canada's Adam Kleeberger Keeps His Face Warm During The Rugby World Cup

1. Cost. Razors are expensive. Hair grows for free. You do the math(s). Nowadays, sixteen bladed, all singing, all dancing razor blades that not only scratch your face off but also sing the national anthem of Tonga are all the rage. However, they are REALLY expensive. Expensive enough that if a chap were to stop buying razor blades for an entire month, he could afford a whole set of Lego. Now would you rather have a sore face and no distraction or look cool AND have a ton of bricks to play with?

2. Competition. Men love a competition. Particularly competitions to judge who is most manly. In the animal kingdom, lions, tigers and bears fight and kill for this privilege – all you have to do is grow the best beard amongst your rosy-chopped and clean-shaven peers. All of the bragging rights in the pub – and with it all of the women – will be yours. Sort of like Rasputin, but with an even more mythical effect.

3. Fish Fingers. For gentleman of a more distinguished grey persuasion, it is possible that after several hard months of beard growing, people will mistake you for Captain Birdseye (particularly if you should choose to wear a naval uniform and wink a lot.). Upon realising this, total strangers will offer you the delicious fishy snacks out of pure courtesy. Another saving – and fish fingers don’t come cheap.

4. Fear. No man really likes children. Children are loud, small and, most importantly, banned from the pub – if you’re pub isn’t a swanky gastro-pub with tablecloths and disinfectant in the lager that is. So what better way to scare off little Jonny than to grow an enormous, terrifying beard and mutter under your breath? There is a reason children always cry when sitting on Santa Claus’ knee at Christmas. Use it to your advantage. Or alternatively buy a clown suit.

5. Loss. You will find after your beard advances past a stubbly stage and beyond the echelons of bumfluff, that one can grow quite attached to the looming dark mass upon ones cheeks and become used to the endless compliments that one receives on its behalf. So, when the beard is finally hacked off, the flow of niceties dries up and eventually a feeling of longing for the first follicles of re-growth. They say it is better to have loved and lost – but where beards are concerned, the loss can be simply avoided. With a beard, love and never lose!

6. Food. Beards are a useful source of food. Eating off the beard of a rival (which you may have to do if your rival has read reason two) will give you those much needed calories due to the left over food that can be stored up over a period of time. Either intentionally or not. The smart man with the beard will never go hungry. Whats better than a twelve ounce, juicy, tender, sirloin steak? Finding a twelve ounce, juicy, sirloin steak in your beard two hours later! That’s what.

7. Stroking. Dogs, cats, parrots and, to a lesser extent, crocodiles and tarantulas, all like to be stroked. It is surprising in this age of instant gratification that humans haven’t followed down a similar path to chin tickling heaven. Well children, let me let you in on a little secret, being stroked is great! However, the opportunities for being stroked are considerably limited, but when one arises it is always prudent to be in possession of a long, sleek elegant beard. Then, who knows where the night will take you!

So, gentleman, cast aside your razors and join us in our quest for a simpler, hairier life.

September 17, 2011
7 Reasons That Anatidaephobia Must be Awful
Anatidaephobia is the fear that wherever you are, whatever you’re doing, a duck is watching you. While some people might see this debilitating condition as funny, we do not. We realise that it must be bloody awful, here are seven reasons why.

1. It’s Not Taken Seriously. People are often crass, insensitive and immature. While they would shy away from mocking the sufferers of other phobias they think nothing of making fun of anatidaephobes, solely for their own puerile entertainment and amusement. Well at 7 Reasons, we’re bigger and cleverer than that. We know what not to show an anatidaephobe.

This is what not to show an anatidaephobe.

2. At Home. Anatidaephobes must find it terribly difficult to cope at home. After all, they’ll believe that when they’re there a duck is watching them. And how is anyone supposed to relax with a duck watching them? And how are they supposed to tell if a duck is watching them or not when they’re suffering from snow-blindness? Or soft-furnishing-induced vomiting.

3. Escape. So they’ve got a duck staring at them at home. What to do? What to do? Get away from it all, that’s what. Get away from the daily grind, the endless plates and pitchers, the white stuff all over the place, the searing pain in their eyes, the duck that may or may not be there staring at them and head off on holiday. To somewhere far, far away from the many, many cups and saucers and the sinister duck.

4. Having A Lovely Time, Wish You Were…Oh…You Are. Well, apparently to anatidaephobes, flying isn’t a barrel of laughs either. But a journey in an aircraft is a temporary annoyance – unless it plummets from the sky in a fiery ball and hurtles at several hundred miles an hour into a mountain, in which case it’s a more permanent irritation – and, having escaped the duck at the aeroplane window, the travelling anatidaephobe can finally emerge from the aircraft all set to begin their relaxing holiday in Osaka.

5. Look On The Bright Side. Well okay, Osaka may not be as relaxing at they’d hoped. But sufferers of anatidaephobia can console themselves with the thought that the big yellow duck isn’t real, and it’s not like ducks hang around in large gangs. That would be terrifying.

Yes. This would be terrifying.

6. It’s Still Not Being Taken Seriously. Well it seems we’ve been rumbled. There does appear to be a series of images in this post that would be terrifying to anyone with a fear of ducks and, if you’re an anatidaephobe that’s made it this far down the page, we apologise for our silliness and can reassure you that there are absolutely no more photos of ducks in this post. It’s all just text from now on.
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7. Comparison. Okay, that was a cheap shot (which is great as there’s a global recession) and, you might reasonably ask, would we make fun of people who suffer from other debilitating ailments; people that are scared of the dark, for example, or the morbidly obese? And the answer is no, we probably wouldn’t. A series of pictures of the dark would be very dull indeed, and a post full of pictures of fat would be totally disgusting and would put everyone off their sandwiches. The good news, however, is that unlike the fear of the dark – or fat people – anatidaephobia isn’t real. It was made up by Gary Larson – he of The Far Side fame – so we can all relax now. Unless you’ve ever claimed to be an anatidaephobe or have been reading this piece through the gaps between your fingers, in which case you’re a simpering nitwit and we can heartily recommend this fine web page.
February 16, 2011
7 Reasons That You Shouldn’t Knock on the Front Door When I’m in the Bath

Yesterday, while I was bathing, someone knocked on the front door. They shouldn’t have. Here are seven reasons why.

1. Doubt. I’m lying in the bath. I’m wet. I’m not about to get up to answer the door, it’ll be bloody cold standing on the doorstep with only a towel around my waist and five chest hairs to keep me warm, so of course I’m going to lie here. But what if it’s important? What if there’s a gas leak and they’ve come to alert me? What if the house next door is on fire? What if the police have come to warn me that there’s an axe-murderer on the loose?

2. Foreboding. What if it is the axe-murderer? I’m alone in the house with my cat. An axe-murderer wouldn’t be satisfied with hacking the cat to death, that wouldn’t even be murder. That would be animal cruelty. That would probably be an assault to the dignity of the axe-murderer: It would be a demotion from axe-murderer to cruel man (with axe). He’d be a laughing stock. He would be shunned by the other axe-murderers. That would never do.

3. Fear. What if he’s the sort of axe-murderer who doesn’t want to chop me into a barely identifiable pulp of blood, flesh and sinew right away? What if he’s the kind that’s on the run and wants somewhere to hide for a while; menacing my cat with his axe in the living room while I tell the police at the door that I haven’t seen anyone and that I’m alone in the house? I don’t want one of those. It’ll be hours before my wife comes home and I can hide behind her. Hours.

4. Terror. What if he needs to hide out for a couple of days? What in the hell would we feed him? We’ve had snow here for two weeks and the shops haven’t had much in; all we would have to offer him are vast quantities of limoncello and Twiglets. And I doubt that axe-murderers even like Twiglets. After all, I bloody love Twiglets and I’m the total opposite of an axe-murderer; I’m a no-axed-not-murderer, or as we’re more commonly known, a victim. So, the axe-murderer will have lots to drink, but nothing to eat. So he’ll be drunk, and he’ll be cross. He’ll be a drunken, angry, axe-murderer which, I rather suspect, is the worst sort.

5. Twiglets. What if he does like Twiglets? Because these aren’t just any Twiglets. Oh no. These are the Christmas Twiglets. The Twiglets that I’m not allowed to touch. The Twiglets that no one is allowed to touch, or even gaze directly at for a prolonged period. Not until Christmas Twiglet season begins at 9pm on the 24th of December. I’ve made that mistake before and there were consequences. And now I know better than to breach the sanctity of the Christmas Twiglets. In fact, I seem to remember that, following the incident that has come to be known as Christmas-Twiglet-gate, my wife told me that if I ever ate the Christmas Twiglets again (outside of the clearly defined time-frame) that she would kill me. So that’s it. It’s Hobson’s bloody choice. If the axe-murderer likes Twiglets I can either tell him he can’t have any and he’ll kill me with an axe, or I can let him have them and my wife will kill me without an axe (with a handbag probably, or her soup). Basically, I’m fucked.

6. Reflection. When was the last time I saw an axe-murderer? I haven’t seen any for ages. I don’t think I’ve seen one since The Shining. There used to be loads of them. Absolutely bloody loads, but their numbers seem to have declined. They seem to have had some sort of heyday in the late 1940s when they were menacing Fred MacMurray and Ida Lupino in a remote California farmhouse most weekends, and then their numbers appear to have dwindled away to nothing. So, in all probability, it wasn’t an axe-murderer that knocked on my door about sixty minutes ago.

7. Resolution. My fingers are wrinkly, I’m cold, and my left knee has literally turned blue. I have other things to do. I’m supposed to be writing tomorrow’s 7 Reasons piece. I’m not even supposed to be thinking about the Christmas Twiglets. I’m not allowed to do that until the 22nd. You’ve just stolen an hour of my life and caused me think dangerous thoughts and turned my knee a funny colour (somewhere between cobalt and Prussian blue). Damn you, whoever you are/were. Next time, I’m coming down in my towel. To my death, probably.

December 9, 2010