Different take on the headline: when I was little and scared at the doctor, my mom would distract me from shots etc. by telling me about how they work and all the science behind them.
I still do this at the doctor if I'm nervous about the procedure. Try distracting yourself by attempting to work through the details of what's going on. Even if you're wrong, it's a distraction and a good exercise, and maybe you can ask the doctor to clarify later.
Never works at the dentist, though. I can never tell what the heck is going on in my mouth.
I have a dentist who loves to use the little remote camera to show me everything about my teeth and let me tell you: it doesn't make it any better!
Totally agree on the "understand to remove fear" side of things though.
When I was learning stick shift I had a terrible time until, frustrated after I had stalled the car for the umpteenth time, my dad stopped the lesson on "what to do" and instead spent a few minutes explaining what was actually happening inside the clutch system.
Suddenly it all made sense and I understood what I was actuating and why the feedback was the way it was. I became proficient quickly after that.
My father in law was a tennis coach. When a kid kept screwing something up, he'd stop them and ask in quick succession: "What's the capital of Illinois? Texas? Vermont?"
The kid would then, invariably, be able to hit the ball again. Sometimes all you need is a focused distraction to be able to perform.
>Flying and survival stats if there's actually a serious incident.
This is such a bad contextualization of the risks if you actually know the stats on the matter, since there are ~600 million passengers per year and <600 (as in, fewer than a thousand) fatalities; you have less that one in a million chance to experience a "serious" incident - in fact, I'm pretty sure the definition of a "serious" incident in this context is "an incident that normally results in a large number of fatalities". Which makes your stat above very nearly a tautology.
My point is that this is very much an example of where internalizing the stats should make you feel safer, unless you're letting a cognitive bias (like anxiety) prevent you from actually internalizing the real risks.
I fly because I know the stats. I worry because the stats for survival are low (or worse, you actually survive the impact).
It also doesn't help that I live near a major airport and almost on a fortnightly basis we get reports of planes declaring minor emergencies and having to turn around or be diverted. Occasionally it may be bird strike/engine fire.
> General anaesthesia and the idea you are actually awake but forget
Do you mean that this happens for some people? For me, GA felt like a very deep dream where I didn't notice falling asleep but I definitely remember what I dreamed.
I think the parent poster if confusing general anesthesia from sedation [1]. If you got a colonoscopy or your wisdom teeth out, it was probably sedation. If you got major surgery where they cut a big hole in you, that's more likely to be general anesthesia.
"Twilight sedation" is pretty spooky from a philosophical perspective. You are somewhat aware of what's happening to you and are experiencing it in the moment. But you are unable to form long term memories of it, so after the procedure, it's like it didn't happen. But there was a point in time where they you that you were was at least somewhat conscious of the procedure.
Quite possibly, I don't know the difference - as a kid I had to have serious orthodontic changes to my teeth as none of my baby teeth fell out and grew to the size of adult teeth.
One of the last surgeries I had, which was breaking off 4 molars, I felt like I was going to explode breathing the gas - like really painful pins and needles everywhere, my eyes actually opened and I felt like they were rolling back into my head (think pain of a really bad migraine but in your eyes).
Fortunately they closed my eyes, and it stopped but I couldn't speak, next thing I know my mouth is being held open with a vice, very painful, but I couldn't see, couldn't talk (wouldn't have been able to anyway with the jaw vice).
Aside from remembering panicking further, and occasional fuzzy memory of pain followed by (I guess) being unconscious again, that's all I remember of being awake.
When they finished I had to be slapped hard across the face at the end multiple times (this was the 80s), probably because the anaesthesiologist had O/D'd me on realising I was still awake. I was later told they were considering taking me to hospital because I wasn't waking up - this was the last time I had dental surgery.
About 5-6 years later they banned the gas they used on me in the UK.
I may need some routine (real, hospital) surgery in a year or so, and now I can't stop thinking about last time I had the above, I even started googling chances of being awake etc etc (because it does happen) and really wish I hadn't.
The other aspect of twilight sedations is: do you feel pain and then lose the conscious memory, but retain the stress reaction's affect on your body?
And similarly for anesthesia: even if you don't feel pain, is your body having a stress reaction? Obviously yes to some extent, for the non-neural pathways that are physically insulted during the procedure, but what about for neural pathways?
I've helped a couple of family members who have gone under the sedation that you're talking about. I don't care how much more dangerous or more expensive general anesthesia is. I'm taking that option every time. I never ever want to be under the sedation you're talking about.
That sedation takes hours and hours to wear off, where you're worse than helpless. Completely memory free for hours after the surgery is over and can barely function. It's terrifying.
Meanwhile, when I've woken up from general anesthesia the few times I've been under, I'm almost immediately perfectly conscious and able to function on my own and remember things.
When I had my wisdom teeth out, I had a "dream" that I was on a old wooden mine-cart styled roller coaster with wheels that were sparking dramatically against the rails first on the left side, then on the right. (mirroring the teeth removal)
I asked my dentist a lot of questions and had them give me a tour of the shop. I was getting a crown and they showed me their CNC machine that took a 3D scan of the original tooth and scan of the nub after eroding it down and just perfectly machined a ceramic replacement.
The best dentist I ever had was as much a geek about all things dental as I am a geek about all things computers. He would happily describe, in great technical detail, every aspect of what he was doing, why, etc.
It was pretty awesome, and I left every visit feeling very positive about the experience.
There was this one time I had a prolonged dental operation, I was fully conscious, the dentist talked himself through a delicate situation while hunting in my mouth for the right angle to do it. And I thought suddenly, hey, it's just like me when I'm debugging! Cool!
What your doctor (and dentist, etc.) are really doing with you is exactly the same as what you do when you're debugging a program. Except that health care providers don't have the luxury of having a debugger or the ability to examine the "machine" state in accurate detail.
i did this with air disasters. i'd been terrified of flying for many years so i immersed myself in every kinds of media i could find on the topic. i found it oddly comforting (though i definitely overthink things whilst in the air at times). geeking out has helped me navigate some tense moments.
The audio recordings of pilots and air traffic controllers doing their best Chuck Yeager voice during a malfunction and going through checklists and binders and clipboards is immensely reassuring to me. There's contingency plans for all the contingency plans. Everyone involved made their bed well enough to bounce a quarter off of it that morning and (where applicable) trimmed their mustaches to conform to some NIST standard. The drilling! Such drilling.
A few years ago a passenger plane had a window blow out and some other problems. In the radio recordings the pilot, a former military flying instructor, sounded completely unperturbed.
Ha, you reminded me of when I got my vasectomy. Naturally a bit nervous, I was asking about everything the doctor was doing as he was doing it. It actually did help me get through the procedure with less nerves (it’s really not a bad procedure at all, just for anyones edification).
Hm, maybe it is that for some people, but for me, another large component is that understanding the procedure makes it less scary. The doctor isn't doing these mysterious horrible things and you don't know what's coming next. You do know, or at least suspect, what's coming next, so the fear of the unknown/unexpected is mitigated.
> Try distracting yourself by attempting to work through the details of what's going on.
This helped a lot with flying anxiety, once I could put a reason to most of the sounds and movements of flying I could relax a lot better. An unexpected one will get my attention though
I've heard that one of the greatest counters to fear is curiosity, and that people who tend to be more curious tend to also be less fearful. It makes sense when you think about it.
Objectivity is a totally different headspace. That's why critical thinking is so difficult. As unfamiliar and uncomfortable as it may be, it sure does have its advantages.
I'm 32 years old and I still have to do this whenever I get an injection. I have no idea what kind of trauma triggers this but I have an extreme phobia of needles, but I am a big supporter of vaccines. Every time I get a shot, I have to look away, and kind of go through the process of telling myself what the shot is doing and how it works.
I still do this at the doctor if I'm nervous about the procedure. Try distracting yourself by attempting to work through the details of what's going on. Even if you're wrong, it's a distraction and a good exercise, and maybe you can ask the doctor to clarify later.
Never works at the dentist, though. I can never tell what the heck is going on in my mouth.