Severely overwhelmed (4 crossbite elastics). Please help me cope! 😭
I got my aligners two days ago and I'm struggling sooo hard. I have 2 elastics on each side (so 4 in total) which go from the top inside to the bottom outside to correct a crossbite, and I have no clue how I'll be able to make it through 9+ months (36 trays).
My mouth feels shut, the pull hurts with them in, the hooks hurt my tongue and lip with them out, I can't move my tongue around, my mouth is dry AF, and I'm biting on the rubber bands which makes my open bite in front even more pronounced. On top of that, I'm a huge foodie and I absolutely dread eating right now.
To make matters worse, I already lost at least 3+ attachments on the very first day (I honestly stopped counting).
It's all just very overwhelming, and the worst part is that my final result doesn't even motivate me all that much. I don't really care about the aesthetics and only doing this for functionality. My orthodontist said I'm grinding away my molars and I have to go through this to not mess up my teeth further (I'm almost 40 btw). In my depressed state right now, I'm starting to doubt this will even fix that.
Also, I would love to just chew on the chewies all day (ortho said 20 min a day) because it distracts me and relieves some pressure, but I can only do that when I take out the elastics (since they go inside to outside)!
Really looking for any advice that help me deal with it better somehow.