Tooth decay: emotional and spiritual meaning

What tooth decay is

Tooth decay, or dental caries, is damage to a tooth caused by acids that bacteria in the mouth make from sugars. The hard surface softens, a cavity forms, and the tooth becomes sensitive because the nerve is close. Pain with sweet, hot or cold food, a visible hole, or a toothache are the usual signs. Left alone, decay reaches the pulp and can become an abscess. Treatment is dental: fluoride, a filling, a root treatment or, if the tooth cannot be saved, extraction. Diet, saliva, brushing and time all play a part. None of that is optional.

The emotional reading below does not replace a dentist. A cavity is a physical lesion. The questions are about what else, in the same season of life, has been gnawing.

The emotional meaning of tooth decay

Decay is read as an extreme inner pain that has become visible. What is happening in the depths shows on the outside. Something is eating you through to the core, and you cannot express the harm, so inflammation appears. The tooth softens, and it hurts.

When the emotional tension has become too much, it is read as landing on the tooth that matches what you are living. Each tooth is taken to stand for a particular aspect of your personality and your life. A cavity there is a refusal or a rejection of that aspect, a way of undoing yourself. The structure of a tooth is the most rigid in the body, and decay is placed on the mental side of life. The question is direct. Is this hatred, remorse or rancour, especially toward authority?

Biting, and not biting

You may "show your teeth" when you feel attacked. What is the real cause of the pain? Finding that first reason is what gives you a chance to turn a destructive process around. You can be angry with yourself for staying silent, and so for hurting yourself. You may also have been in a situation where you wanted to bite, in self-defence, and you did not, because a well-brought-up child does not do that sort of thing.

In French, to have "a tooth against" someone is to hold a grudge, or even hatred, over something they did. Cavities in childhood are read in that light, together with having received little affective nourishment: marks of affection, tenderness, sweetness. People laughed. The wound went right down into the teeth.

What the teeth filter

A family conflict can be hard to take in. The teeth are how you filter and discriminate what enters the body, and, by extension, your world. Chewing is the physical picture of that sorting. The more the conflict stays without a solution, the more a vital part of you is read as dying back. Pain can show as a cavity and can travel on into other physical complaints that belong to the same knot. Mouth ulcers are the other side of a mouth that will not speak.

A gentler way to hold it

The aim is not to feel guilty about a cavity, and it is not to skip the filling. Sugar and bacteria still matter. The emotional perspective asks what else you have been feeding on.

• Say the thing that gnaws. Silence turned against yourself is part of this picture.
• Name the grudge. A tooth "against" someone is the French way of saying the rancour has a target.
• Ask which aspect of life this tooth is refusing. The reading treats each tooth as a particular corner of you.
• Notice where you wanted to bite and stopped. A polite child who never answers back can still be furious.
• Look at the food of thoughts. Which ideas are no longer nourishing, and what would be more balanced in their place?
• Take life with a grain of salt. That is how "wisdom teeth" are invited to grow: less rigidity, not less dentistry.