The deployment vs release distinction is probably the biggest mindset shift teams struggle with.
I've seen teams deploy once every few weeks because they're afraid of production risk. Ironically, that creates even more risk because every deployment becomes a massive bundle of changes that's difficult to validate or roll back.
Feature flags and trunk-based development changed that for us. Smaller deployments became routine instead of stressful events.
The dentist analogy is spot on. Skipping one appointment feels safer today, but you're usually just borrowing pain from the future. 😄