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Scared of getting vaccinated causing stress.

Discussion in 'General Discussion Subforum' started by stevow7, May 13, 2021.

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  1. stevow7

    stevow7 Well known member

    Hello everyone! I’m scared of getting vaccinated because of side effects, long term usage and other stuff.

    I need help in what to do

    any suggestions?
     
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  2. miffybunny

    miffybunny Beloved Grand Eagle

    From a TMS perspective, I'm of 2 minds lol. On the one hand if you have fears about it, your brain will surely create all sorts of "side effects" and you will become anxious in your thinking. On the other hand, it's a great opportunity to practice not succumbing to anxiety. I had the first one and I did feel quite tired afterwards but I may just not been having a great day anyway. I think you know yourself the best....The question is what would freak you out more? To get it, or not get it? My husband is so scared of Covid that he would rather deal with side effects for ex. In my case, I was not dealing with fear either way, but I figured it was the correct thing to do and the pros outweighed the cons for me (I'm more concerned about Covid than the remote chance of long term effects).
     
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  3. Cactusflower

    Cactusflower Beloved Grand Eagle

    Hi Stevow7
    I was very frightened. Can you go somewhere and have a support person with you? I had Mederna, first shot I was in knots for the week before! But I did it with no side effects. #2 was much easier and my anxiety much better. Yesterday I had a headache and was very tired. That’s it, aside from a LOT of anxiety worrying about side effects. I just took it easy, chilled out and meditated a few times. Listened to a TMS podcast. Reminded myself its just TMS and tomorrow would be another day. I’m glad I did it. It was really hard but I managed.
     
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  4. stevow7

    stevow7 Well known member

    thanks for your response!
     
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  5. stevow7

    stevow7 Well known member

    thanks for replying!
     
  6. tgirl

    tgirl Well known member

    Maybe try telling yourself that getting Covid and the possible long term effects that could accompany it is worse than anything that could ever happen by getting the vaccine, statistically speaking. Having the possibility of getting Covid hanging over me is scary in itself.

    Also, if more people get the vaccine then the world can get back to travelling, eating in restaurants, and generally living a more normal life, because living the limited pandemic life is very dull and restrictive.

    This is my opinion anyway.
     
    Last edited: May 14, 2021
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  7. Zuz

    Zuz Peer Supporter

    Oh I so understand!
    I did not have a vaccine for a very long time, none since I have auto-immune diabeties. So I was afraid. However all my family and most of my friends are un science and understand well the vaccines and are so no afraid that really reassured me :).
    I had a bad back spasm a few days before so just sitting in the car to get there was painful. The next day my back flared up so bad and I think it was a bit because I overworked my not yet healed back and added to the stress of the vaccine. I remember my hands shaking that morning from anxiety.
    But effects of vaccine? What vaccine? My arm hurt a bit- completely ridiculous pain compared to my back. All my stress went to my back pain, the vaccine was so easy.
    I am very relieved it’s done :). I wish you to be relieved after also +++it’s definitely less scary than catching covid.

    Personally I am trying to convince my brain to not condition vaccine and back pain flare up, I can feel that conditionning happening. But I still have at least two months before the second dose as my country has not enough vaccines.

    i am happy for you that you do have a vaccine available , may it goes well +++ just take a day calm the next day in case you feel tired like some do.
     
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  8. Balsa11

    Balsa11 Well known member

    I think my anxiety leading up to my second shot made me more achey and tired than I would have been otherwise. After the shot earlier that afternoon, I was woken up that night by a lot of burning/pins and needles/zaps type stuff and it continued the next day but after that I got better. I was also worried about getting a fever but the chills, brain fog, and pain weren't that bad. It was completely gone two days later. So most likely you might need a break or time off if needed but for me it was more TMS and feeling distracted than actually feeling sick.
     
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  9. Zuz

    Zuz Peer Supporter

    You remind me: my mom ( who has TONS of tms) was actually feeling sick BEFORE the vaccine. After vaccine i think huge relief ( she was so sick march 2020 and no much testing we will never know if she had covid) and she just felt sleepy and tired and not sick anymore.
    I wish she would read about tms , she is such a textbook case ( but i am probably the worst person to insist she does ;) )
     
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  10. FredAmir

    FredAmir Well known member

    Hi Stevow7,

    I am still deciding to get the vaccine or not too.

    Knowing how much influence Big Pharma has, I am very cautious about taking new vaccines or medications. In her excellent book. Our Daily Meds: How the Pharmaceutical Companies Transformed Themselves into Slick Marketing Machines and Hooked the Nation on Prescription Drugs, The New York Times reporter Melody Peterson exposes the many ways they market, influence and control the system to maximize profits. She explains more in this interview with Bill Moyers.

    As for the Covid vaccine, here were/are some of my concerns:

    1. Is it safe short term? It appears that aside from minor side effects for most propel, Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are safe. Everyone I know and everyone that they know that has been vaccinated has had only minor side effects. Actually, those side effects are a part of the immune response activation. Also, another way I know is that I have relatives and friends who are doctors and work in hospitals. So I get firsthand reports.

    2. Are the vaccines safe long term? Since mRNA vaccine is new, we do not know if there will be long-term negative consequences. So that is one of my concerns. In medicine it is always better to avoid new and improved until it is tried and true!

    3. Do they work in real world situations? Here in California doctors, there has been a dramatic drop in Covid cases in hospitals. Economy is opening up more and more here, yet unlike last year, we are not seeing a surge of cases.

    Right now, I am waiting to see if we have a surge after Memorial Day and Fourth of July. If not, I will most likely get the vaccine. I was planning to get J&J one because it is based on the old, tried, and true technology. However, short-term risk is higher than the other two.

    As for being worried about getting the vaccine, there is a difference between being worried and being concerned. Worry is the incessant, ruminative speculation of what might go wrong—an anticipation of chaos and catastrophe. Concern, on the other hand, is a calculated consideration and assessment of actual danger. Worrying is one of the top negative mental and emotional habits among TMSers. In my new book Vanquish Stress, I dedicate a whole chapter to worry and how to eliminate this negative mental habit that can cause so much tension.

    Hope whatever decision you make will be the best one for you,
     
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  11. BloodMoon

    BloodMoon Beloved Grand Eagle

    Hi Stevow7,

    My opinion is that you're probably best deciding with reference to your own particular circumstances coupled with looking at the facts about the vaccines as far as they are currently known (from scientific and other reputable sources).

    I’m in the UK and our Government is extremely keen for as many people as possible to get themselves vaccinated when they are invited to do so – this being mainly to do with wanting to open up the economy again and to prevent the general wards and ICUs of our hospitals in our National Health Service being overwhelmed with covid patients. Our Government is not concerned about those (possibly few) unlucky individuals who may suffer serious long-term adverse side effects from the vaccines either immediately after vaccination or later (at some point when it would be difficult to know whether the vaccine caused them or not) or about those who die from having one of the vaccines. (You probably already know, but a few susceptible individuals have died from rare blood clots that scientists do believe were caused by the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine and they are currently trying to determine why those individuals reacted to the vaccine in this way).

    If you are young, female, white and with no underlying health conditions (like diabetes, hypothyroidism, heart disease etc.,) you are statistically apparently less likely to become seriously ill from covid and end up in hospital or in intensive care, but you may, for some reason be an exception, and you might, nevertheless, still get long-covid.

    It may help to get an A4 sheet of paper (or possibly several sheets of A4 paper!) put a dividing line down the middle and label one side of the line ‘reasons/possible reasons to get vaccinated’ and the other side ‘reasons/possible reasons not to get vaccinated’. It might not be a case of the longer or the shorter list of the two helping to decide the issue for you, but you might see that something in one of the lists is so important to you that it clinches your decision. If nothing else, making a list might help reduce the 'pros' and 'cons' thoughts going around in your mind and give you a chink of head space to decide.

    Some other things to possibly consider...

    What your level of risk is with regard to contracting the virus…Do you go to work, do you have contact with a lot of people or is your risk relatively low because you are retired and hardly see anyone?

    Some people get covid but are asymptomatic and that might be the case for you if you were to contract the virus, but that would mean you could spread the virus to other people without knowing it. Regular testing could help determine your status regarding the virus though. (In the UK we can test ourselves regularly with ‘lateral flow’ tests, but I understand they are far from fool proof.)

    If you have, for instance, elderly family members that you want to associate with, who are likely to be more susceptible to serious illness or dying from the virus, you might want to get vaccinated to protect them.

    Do you live for such things eating out in restaurants or meeting your friends in nightclubs or in the local pub? Are you likely to want to travel abroad, go to big concerts or sporting events, if not now, sometime in the future and would you be happy to keep having the booster jabs that they are saying that people will need going forward? I read that this would probably be on a six monthly or at least annual basis, as scientists say that the level of immunity declines over months, not years and they will need to tweak the vaccines to deal with new variants.

    On our UK Government’s website they list the so called ‘yellow card’ scheme weekly reports of side effects that individuals and people’s doctors have reported post vaccination for the Pfizer, Oxford/AstraZeneca and Moderna vaccines (as these are the ones currently being used in the UK). Of note, is that the Moderna vaccine has only been use for a few weeks here so far. Here’s the relevant webpage (which also informs about instances of Bell’s Palsy, i.e. usually temporary one-sided facial paralyses, the number of cases of which are being monitored in association with the Pfizer vaccine, plus other conditions that are being monitored that may or may not be being caused by the vaccines) and you can page down for the links to the 'yellow card' scheme reports https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/coronavirus-covid-19-vaccine-adverse-reactions/coronavirus-vaccine-summary-of-yellow-card-reporting (Coronavirus vaccine - weekly summary of Yellow Card reporting)...

    The huge range and number of adverse side effects can at first seem rather alarming, but one needs to bear in mind that – apart from the serious rare blood clots in association with low platelet levels in some people vaccinated with the AstraZeneca vaccine – the medical conditions in the 'yellow card' reports may have occurred naturally and may not have been triggered by the vaccine, also bearing in mind that millions of people in the UK have now either received one dose of the vaccines or have received both doses. Of note, is that not all side effects will have been reported as it’s not compulsory to use the ‘yellow card’ scheme and a nurse friend told me that, in her experience, a lot of medics here don’t bother with it...

    I am finding the ‘yellow card’ scheme reports somewhat helpful though for me to monitor the instances of a particular medical condition that I have a mild version of that can sometimes develop into a life threatening condition, usually for no apparent reason, but there have been cases of it being triggered into worsening post vaccination, e.g. with the flu jab. I'm using the data to help me decide whether or not to have a covid vaccine and, if I'm ever allowed to choose, which one I would prefer. Anyway, I’ve posted up about the ‘yellow card’ scheme reports in case it helps someone else facing a similar situation.

    My father's had the Pfizer vaccine, both jabs. He's 93 and has Rheumatoid Arthritis and takes low-ish level immunosuppressant drugs for his RA. He had the second jab about a month ago and has experienced no side effects whatsoever, not so far anyway. My husband's in his 60s, has no underlying health conditions, was given the AstraZeneca vaccine and has had both jabs. After his first jab he experienced a thumping headache for 2 days and was also extremely fatigued for about 3 days; he had to go to bed to sleep for a number of hours during the day. After the second jab he felt just a tiny bit fatigued for about 24 hours afterwards.

    Good luck with your decision.
     
    Last edited: May 16, 2021
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  12. mugwump

    mugwump Well known member

    Your body, your choice!
     
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  13. Cap'n Spanky

    Cap'n Spanky Well known member

    Tomorrow I'm going to the funeral of someone who died from COVID-19. I have another friend whose father-in-law is in Hospice right-now, dying of COVID.

    As of today, 274 million people have had at least one dose of a vaccine in the US. Adverse reactions have been very rare and most often mild: 2.5 -10 per one-million doses given. Most of us have stuff in our medicine cabinets right now that is much, much riskier.

    To me the answer couldn't be clearer.
     
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  14. Zuz

    Zuz Peer Supporter

    I know it but hearing/reading it again will help me for my second dose. Thank you
    And my sympathies to you and your family +++
     
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  15. Cap'n Spanky

    Cap'n Spanky Well known member

    Thanks, Zuz! That's greatly appreciated. :)
     
  16. Ellen

    Ellen Beloved Grand Eagle

    I was worried that my tendency to experience TMS would make me have more difficult side effects to the vaccine. But that didn't happen. Just had very normal, typical response. And I just returned from a trip to visit my son and grandkids which I wouldn't have been able to do safely without the vaccine.
     
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  17. Dorado

    Dorado Beloved Grand Eagle

    I had both doses of Pfizer. I agree that you need to weigh the pros and cons for yourself.

    Ultimately, we're all making decisions that affect our physical, mental, and/or emotional well-being on a daily basis. Cymbalta withdrawal left me with a major paranoia that everything I was putting in my body somehow had the potential to permanently damage me. I spent too much time reading those damned horror stories that didn't have to apply to me.

    Nothing ever did damage me beyond repair. Not even Cymbalta. But I sure did worry about it. As immortal beings who are physically imperfect, we're vulnerable. My cognitive behavioral therapist reminded me that I needed to focus on accepting that vulnerability, as opposed to trying to control it.
     
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  18. TG957

    TG957 Beloved Grand Eagle

    If I understand the math correctly, our chances of being seriously hurt or even die in a car crash are higher than from a vaccination. Why are we not afraid of riding in a car?
     
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  19. tgirl

    tgirl Well known member

    There are all the psychological pros and cons to vaccines, but logistically speaking, in Canada things won’t be reopening until we have reached a certain level of people being vaccinated. So for the sake of getting life going again vaccinations are vital. We’ve all had our childhood vaccines; this is just one more.

    I like what Dorado said, learning to accept vulnerability.
     
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  20. Sita

    Sita Well known member

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