what's your issue with the dentist? i never understand people becoming adults and still having this fear, it's like being scared of doctors

anon i'm going to take this as a good faith question and say that it's nothing personal against dentists lmao. for me it's a combo of two things:

i have complicated gnashers. my ehlers danlos effects my connective tissues, and connective tissues are found in gums, dentin (the bit under your enamel inside the tooth), and nerve structures in the face. all this to say: my teeth move in my head, and my jaw moves misaligned from my face sometimes. PAIN, anon. and as with a lot of medical types, dentists don't tend to be super educated about this. to make it more complicated my front teeth are adult teeth as they should be, but everything incisors back are still baby teeth, and have no adult teeth waiting to come in. so my wiggly teeth give me a lot of anxiety bc every wiggle or pang reminds me i've held onto these teeth way longer than i have any right to. last complication; i'm anaesthetic resistant. dentists are scary for me bc frankly, the great majority of them know less about how to handle my gob than i do, and they hold the pointy things.

the second thing is **tw dental trauma* as a child my teeth held on for dear life despite being loose for months and i always ended up having to get them pulled bc the tooth fairy has deadlines to meet. anyway one such time i got a dentist who was very old and shaky, and he pulled not only the loose tooth, but also the one next door that was not loose. it's not a good memory and every dentist's chair feels more or less the same. hence: a long lasting fear associated with all the sensory trappings (noises, lights, textures, tastes etc) of a dental office.*

I hope that very personal explanation goes some way to encourage you to consider that experiences aren't universal within an age bracket, and that people can have a lot going on under something like a common fear that you might not be able to predict or understand. some adults will be afraid of the dark, or storms, or dogs, or clowns. that doesn't make them not adults. there's no such thing as a childish fear, and even if there was, we all carry our child-selves around w us, so it all comes out in the wash.