In our clinics we strive to be better and better all the time. This undoubtedly includes finding out how our clients feel, how satisfied they are with the course and result of treatment. But it doesn't stop there. No less important for us is the background of the whole treatment and therefore the question of why they decided to undergo the treatment and how it helped them. How they felt before the treatment and how they feel during it and especially at the end of the journey to their dream smile. Whether our braces were able to help them feel better about themselves and overall love for themselves.
Every day at our clinic we meet the stories of our clients:
"Finally, I will no longer have teeth like a squirrel",
"Hooray, I'm not going to laugh like a horse anymore",
"I can't wait to get rid of my vampire smile."
We hear these sentences perhaps more often than is healthy.
It is often surprising to us how large a percentage of our patients confide in us that they are dissatisfied with their teeth and smile so much that they are ashamed to laugh.
It would seem that these feelings of dissatisfaction with oneself stem from years in elementary school, when they had to suffer silly jokes and taunts from their classmates. However, it was increasingly coming to us that the biggest critic is usually not our surroundings, but ourselves. And it is not helped by today's era full of Instagram, filters and "perfect life" presented through social networks, which places exaggerated demands on all of us.
We found this topic so strong that we could not let go of it, we had to open it up and devote ourselves to it in depth.
We started to listen more to all our employees, as well as to existing, new and potential clients, and we did a little research on how we perceive ourselves before and after treatment, as well as on what ugly labels and nicknames we were able to brand ourselves with.
For example, that up to 32% of respondents do not show their teeth when smiling and are downright ashamed to laugh, which seems to us to be a really high number.
Even more interesting and saddening was the fact that 24% of people encountered taunts from others because of their teeth, and 22% of those surveyed used a derogatory nickname for their teeth. The most common is a vampire, followed by a squirrel, a pizizubka, a rabbit or a mare.
And the vast majority of 96% of those surveyed underwent treatment to feel better about themselves.
In our survey, we asked an open question about how (would) the adjustment of the teeth affect self-esteem and how they perceive themselves. More than often, there was an answer associated with an increase in self-esteem.
The vast majority of respondents said that they could finally stop being ashamed to laugh and cover their smile in photos. They would therefore be much more relaxed and happy. Some of the answers were also directed towards professional life. Respondents often reported that they did not smile at all because of their teeth, they covered their smiles and this had negative consequences at work. Although their work performance was evaluated more than positively, in their personal evaluation they often heard criticisms of how they act on the surroundings - closed, hostile, unpleasant. The answers were varied, but in most cases they had one factor in common - unpleasant memories of situations across private and professional life. Our respondents could not be themselves, they constantly had to be on their guard and did not enjoy life to the maximum. There was always something holding them back - their smile.
Because the topic is very complex and sensitive, we turned to psychologists from digiterapie.cz and found out what effect a smile can have on our lives:
"Smiling is one of the quickest and easiest ways to make a social connection with another person. Most people rate a smiling face up to 34 percent more positively than one that lacks a smile. In addition, a smile improves the mood not only of the smiling person, but also of those who look at his smiling face. And it's also very contagious – it's caused by so-called mirror neurons, which make us look the same as a person looks against us."
We can all agree on the important role that smile and laughter actually play in our lives. Building people's confidence in every way is crucial at an early age. So we took a deeper look at this topic through the eyes of an experienced child psychologist and found out how we can help children love themselves and laugh without any restrictions:
"From an early age of the child, it is necessary to strengthen his self-confidence. The basic principle of education in this period is to lead the child to cope with everyday situations - the first steps, hygiene, cleaning toys, or expressing their needs. This necessarily includes a constructive appreciation of even the slightest progress. This gives the adult child a foundation to build proper self-esteem. The child enjoys everything he has learned and acquires the ability to believe in himself.
In education, praise and reward (ideally not always material) must prevail over criticism or punishment. It's another way to help a child strengthen their faith in themselves. For example, it is also useful to create a situation that we are convinced that the child can handle and we will have the opportunity to praise him constructively. It's very important because loving yourself is the first step to loving others."
We decided to go even further with this topic and use its elements in our new campaign to point out that there is no need to be a critic of oneself and that healthy self-esteem is not based only on how one sees oneself in the mirror, but on how one thinks about oneself and accepts oneself. But because we are all different, our paths to self-esteem cannot be the same. Someone will find enough strength in himself, another has support in a partner, someone will be helped by a year abroad and another may change his profession. And someone can be helped by a smile that they do not have to hide.
