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Stop Teeth grinding (Bruxism)

Stop it with hypnotherapy and NLP

Bruxism is the grinding or clenching of your teeth. This uncomfortable and unpleasant habit is a very common problem. It is a habit that you acquired unintentionally, and it can lead to serious deterioration of your teeth. There are many possible causes, but you may well be one of the many people for whom bruxism is a habit that can be quickly and easily ended forever.

Picking up a habit

Some people grind their teeth during the day, and a lot of people grind teeth whilst asleep. It has been estimated that perhaps 30% of children suffer from bruxism, but almost all of them stop before they get their adult teeth.

Although the causes are unknown, there are factors that are known to be involved in many cases; stress and anxiety are just two of them. If you have developed bruxism you may well have been unaware that you had picked up the habit until a dentist noticed tooth damage.

Diagnosis

A dentist observing flattening of your teeth usually diagnoses bruxism and records any changes over a period of time. Sometimes your sleeping partner will tell you about the appalling noise of grating teeth.

Associated factors

Presence of any of these factors increase the risk of bruxism:

• Stress

• Anxiety

• Anger

• Pain

• Frustration

Changing your behaviour

Whatever the cause, and whatever factors may have helped to put you at risk, the point is to stop the habit. If you have a habit then you have a thought pattern that leads inevitably to the teeth grinding behaviours. And this pattern also leads to thoughts that are powerful enough to decide your behaviour. Interrupting this pattern, re-patterning, may well be sufficient to change your behaviour and stop the habit.

Re-patterning

Hypnotherapy and NLP are very useful tools for re-patterning. We use hypnosis to induce sufficient relaxation to enable unconscious re-patterning through suggestion and metaphor. NLP is a tool you can learn to use to consciously change your thought patterns.

 

Sometimes there are other issues such as anxiety or stress that must also be cleared up

Signs and symptoms

These may include:

• Teeth grinding/clenching during sleep, possibly loud enough to wake your sleep partner

• Worn down teeth

• Damaged tooth enamel, exposing the dentin

• Tense facial and jaw muscles

• Clicking of the jaw joint (TMJ)

• Earache arising from muscle tension

• Headache

• Ridged tissue on the inside of your cheek because of chewing

• Tongue indentations

The signs and symptoms of bruxism may resemble other conditions or medical problems.

How long will it take for me to stop grinding my teeth?

We can usually help resolve this issue in one or two one-hour sessions. The presence of other issues may extend this slightly. Of course, not all those with bruxism can be helped using this method.