Hey guys, today I’m going to be explaining to you how to stop chronic teeth grinding holistically or naturally without involving a lot of procedures and all those things.

So, let’s first categorize this into two categories. The first category is stopping teeth grinding doesn’t mean that the damage which has already been caused will go away, like the dental damage, the broken teeth, or let’s say the misaligned jaw.

It doesn’t mean that it will go away because that is physical damage, and it needs physical attention, let’s say, seeing a dentist or an orthodontist, right?

Releasing Jaw Tension

But now, stopping the habit itself, stopping this habit which has, let’s say, started as more of an adaptive response to stress, to become a maladaptive one to the point where you cannot control it. Stopping that now involves identifying what really led to this habit going from adaptive to maladaptive.

And what I’ve realized is, working with clients, it’s more of tension in the jaw, and sometimes this tension can be due to unprocessed anger and failure of someone expressing themselves because when you don’t express yourself, you end up holding things back.

So, holding things back, you end up holding these things in your jaw because expressing yourself is something like you have to speak up about something. Failure to speak up means that you are holding things in your throat, and most tension in your throat will be transferred to your jaw, which means that you end up grinding, grinding, grinding.

So, that’s why to really stop holistically is to release the tension in your jaws. That’s as simple as it can be said.

Self-Help Techniques

So, if you can find an exercise which can help you release this tension from your jaw, slowly by slowly, you’ll realize that your grinding will keep getting better, better, and will move from being more frequent or chronic to much better.

Yeah, so that is if you can do it by yourself. I’ll explain to you why sometimes you can’t do it by yourself. If you can do it by yourself, just find a way to release the tension from the jaw. Some people suggest massaging it or just doing some exercises or changing your diet; all those things can help.

Seeking Professional Help

But now, when this habit has become so maladaptive to the point where your mind has adopted it as a go-to response when you have stress, it really means that even if you try to stop it, the mind will not let you stop it because the mind is now using this mechanism as a way to keep you safe.

So, the mind has more or gotten used to these teeth grinding as a way to keep yourself from seeing what really led to the development of this habit from being adaptive to maladaptive.

So, your mind will not really let you. That’s where now you need to seek help. So, when you seek help, it’s like seeking a safe space to process those unprocessed emotions or seeking a safe space so that you can process those emotions and remove your mind from that fight and flight response which is still acting in the present moment as a reaction to what happened in the past.

Unprocessed Emotions

That’s basically what happens. Like, if you’ve not really dealt with a past event or all those unprocessed emotions of the past, your mind would always be clinging to this fear and flight response because it’s still clinging to those memories, those traumatic memories, those past emotional difficulties.

So, your mind is still living there, but now, once you get this safe space, you are able to let go of that tension which you are holding in your jaw, and this tension can be anger, it can be sadness, it can be grief, just any kind of emotion which you’ve never processed.

Client Examples

Once you let go of this tension, it’s like communicating with the mind that “Hey, I’m in a safe space now, and this tension or this habit is not serving me anymore.”

That’s basically how it works. That’s why, working with clients, I did realize that the main emotion actually when it comes to grinding is anger, like you are holding things back.

So, someone was saying that she held the anger because she was avoiding conflict, and then another one was saying like because they were afraid of expressing themselves.

So, by holding on to that anger or that resentment or that emotion, they end up grinding and grinding as a way to release this tension.

But once we are able to resolve that, to give them the space, just me allowing them the space to process, they feel lighter in the jaws, lighter in the jaws, to the point where when they were moving the mouth up and down just voluntarily because the emotion, the unprocessed emotion was not the thing which was now controlling the grinding, they would just observe it consciously.

Holistic Approach

So, to deal with grinding or chronic teeth grinding and clenching naturally is more releasing the tension in your jaw, and the tension can develop because of a lot of reasons. There are a lot of reasons it can develop, but the release is a release. If you can’t do it by yourself because it’s become so deeply ingrained, seek help, and a therapist will offer your space to release this tension.

And isn’t that a better way to deal with it before rushing for a very expensive surgery or a very expensive body modification?

It’s better to just focus first on dealing with the emotion, and then now, if let’s say this grinding has affected some of the aspects of your physique, then now you can do all those things, but it’s working side by side.

Benefits of Holistic Approach

And it’s much better to focus on this unprocessed emotion because it doesn’t have any negative effect on you; it has just positive effects on your life, even on your pocket, even on just you being better because, for example, like the client I was working with yesterday was able to go to this point where she could express herself.

This means that expressing yourself means that, of course, you have a better career, you will show up for your business, you’ll show up for your friends.

So, it all started with just a normal teeth grinding, and her wanting to overcome this chronic teeth grinding, but now she’s going to the point of expressing herself, and these are the things which surgery cannot help you with. Yes, surgery can help you with aligning all your jaw and all, but it cannot help you with expressing yourself.

Conclusion

So, when you focus on the root cause of the problem, it is now the more natural way or holistic way of dealing with teeth grinding, not just focusing on changing the damage which has already been done, but focusing on looking for the solution which led to the development of this habit as something which you are using to cope with stress and anxiety. Hope you found that informative, guys. Feel free to ask me any questions. Until next time, have a nice day.