For the record: Being musical ruined my mental health, now it’s ruining my teeth

By Hattie Butterworth

I am, in fact, not joking. Being musical is damaging my teeth in a serious way. I have a teeth-grinding tic which is leading to loss of enamel and extreme tooth wear, because I grind my teeth along to music in my head. All the time.

Teeth grinding or ‘bruxism’ usually happens at night and often, so I understand, it is related to stress and anxiety, and potentially to antidepressant medication. I am an ideal candidate. Mine happens day and night. When I’m not talking or eating, I am grinding my teeth. Gnashing up and down - a strange tension that provides a comfort I can’t get rid of.

I always have a song in my head. Whatever I have listened to most recently is playing over and over again. It’s not annoying - songs don’t really get ‘stuck’ anymore like they did in the depths of OCD, but they are always there, more in the background. It’s become quite comforting to me to feel there’s always a soundtrack going on.

I don’t know when I first decided to provide percussion along to the soundtrack, but my teeth now can’t refrain from champing up and down with the rhythm of the song I’m singing. ‘Bet on it’ from High School Musical is in my head as I write this line. Then ‘Denim Jacket’ by Sammi Rae whilst I’m proofreading. My toes keep the beat whilst my teeth provide the syncopation of ‘bet-on-it, bet-on-it’.

‘Your teeth are in a seriously bad place,’ said my dentist last week. ‘Do you grind?’

‘Constantly'. Dentists are good at making you feel ashamed, even if they don’t intend to. My grinding-related damage is due to stress, anxiety, OCD and my obsession with sound and rhythm. A long list of things that haven’t felt within my control, though it feels like my fault.

I have a mouth guard on the way and I’ve bought a better toothbrush. Though it won’t do anything to stop the grinding, it will lessen the damage to my already eroding teeth during the night - but not during my constant daytime grinding. I am now noticing what has been, until now, a largely automatic and mindless experience of musical chomping and thinking about how I might be able to stop.

As is often the case with musical-related neuroses, google has provided little research into this phenomenon. Reddit is always slightly better than Google for this stuff, and it reassures me that I’m not alone in this experience: ‘I do this all the time actually,’ one person said. ‘I make up my own teeth drums and beats, grind my teeth together to make a scratching sound like on vynl and do this blood rushing sound in my ear for the bass.’

‘Yup - drummer/grinder here.,’ someone else chimes in. ‘Seems to work in sync with tapping my fingers on the mouse when I'm at my desk. Annoying as hell as I can't seem to break the habit. Always been a fidget and struggle to sit still at work/meetings.’

I’ve read about how CBT might be able to help. At this rate, it feels like CBT is used as the scapegoat to help with literally anything. How can we stop an involuntary action? I feel tension build and I have to relieve it - the music needs accompaniment. If I stop grinding, the music exists in my head with nothing alongside. I don’t like that idea.

‘Mobile phone applications such as BruxApp are available to download and may be helpful in tracking occurrences of Awake Bruxism as well as control attempts’ a study on awake bruxism tells me - maybe this is the next step.

I dowload BruxApp, which tells me it’s ‘not a game’ because awake bruxism is ‘no joke’. It tells me its main feature is alerts that it’s going to send me throughout the day. The idea is that it will bring my attention to the tension and movement of my mouth. Awareness might be the first step towards reducing the grinding.

The BruxApp Alert is a sound from your smartphone. Whenever you hear the Alert, the idea is to focus your attention on the mouth area (teeth, muscles, joints) and ask yourself three key questions:

1- How are my teeth positioned right now? (apart – lightly touching - tightly clenched - grinding)

2- How are my muscles? (Relaxed - Tense jaw muscles and jaw clenched without teeth touching)

3- Do I feel pain in the face? (Yes – No)

In summary, whenever you hear the Alert:

1 - Focus on your mouth (and answer the 3 questions above)

2 - Drop the teeth apart

3 - Relax the jaw muscles (if tense)

So now there are some periods of the day where I’m not grinding and my mind feels hollow and still. But the music doesn’t stop. It washes round my brain, begging for a response from somewhere. So I start breathing in time to it. Sharp in-and-out breaths following the rhythm of a song’s melody. Gaining a new tick was not the aim.

Where can the music go inside my head now? Maybe I need to stop ignoring my cello and piano and see if spending more time actively making music makes the idle musicality in my head less incessant. Watch this space.