Fast-paced heart rate 

Sweating

Low blood pressure

Dry mouth

Feeling faint/fainting

Focus on your breathing. Before entering the building for your appointment, take a few deep breaths. When you start to feel more anxious, focus on exhaling and inhaling deep, long breaths. 

Ask questions. Dental anxiety often comes from the unknown. Patients become anxious when they do not know what is going to happen, how long the procedure will take, etc. Ask your dentist to walk you through what he/she plans on doing during the appointment, so there are no surprises. 

Agree on a signal. Another reason many patients feel dental anxiety is because they are afraid of dental pain. It can be helpful to agree on a hand signal, like simply raising your hand, to signify that the dentist needs to stop because you are in pain. 

Don't keep dental anxiety a secret. Before your appointment begins, discuss your fears with the dentist. He/she is likely very experienced with dental anxious patients, and can help to ease your fears. Your dentist may also take some precautions he/she would not normally take to make sure you are comfortable at all times, like verbally asking to check and make sure you are ok more often,  explaining each thing he/she is doing as they are doing it, etc. 

Staff who is passionate about delivering high quality service. If a staff works diligently to make sure that their clients are happy, you can trust that they will work extra hard to ensure that you feel comfortable and safe in their environment. 

Experience. The more experience a dentist has, the higher the odds that he/she has had patients with dental anxiety, and knows how to ease these peoples' fears. 

A variety of services. If you experience dental anxiety before your visits, you will not want to see multiple dentists in order to get all the services you need. Instead, you will want to work with one dentist who you can establish a relationship with and can begin to trust.