This past year has been a challenge. I don't have to tell you that; you know. A challenge, to say the least. And in the past few months, many have been challenged with emotional dilemmas after COVID-19 vaccines first became available in the United States.

Here in Minnesota now, the eligibility is pretty much wide open to anyone over 16. But that's as far as eligibility goes; that doesn't mean you're going to get a shot right away. It's all about the supply. Some people are waiting their turn in line, others are deciding whether or not to even get in line, and some are experiencing vaccine anxiety, or feeling guilt or feeling shame. And maybe you're thinking, "Oh really, that's a thing?" But maybe you're thinking, "Yep, that's exactly me. I've been feeling anxious."

Well, you are not alone, because this is something that I'm hearing from more and more people. I spoke with Dr. Sophia Albott, a psychiatrist with the University of Minnesota Medical School who sees patients at M Physicians' St. Louis Park clinic, about these emerging vaccination attitudes and how to manage them as the vaccine access widens to new populations.

Block Quote

Every Wednesday morning at 8:30 CST, Jill Riley connects with experts and local personalities for some real talk about keeping our minds and bodies healthy — from staying safe in the music scene, to exercising during a pandemic, to voting and civic engagement. Looking for more resources and support? Visit our friends at Call to Mind, MPR's initiative to foster new conversations about mental health. Subscribe to Wellness Wednesday as a podcast on Spotify, Apple, RSS, Radio Public, Stitcher, or Amazon Music.

Jill Riley: The word "anxiety" has been pretty kind of out front in this past year. And I'll just say, you know, I can speak to my own experience for me personally, when the pandemic first hit, I was anxious about something else than I am right now. I mean, we didn't know a lot about coronavirus, and so that was causing anxiety. Now, what will happen if I get sick? Am I gonna be okay? And now it's really sort of shifted, and I think I can relate to some of this anxiety just around, you know, the timing of actually getting a shot. And so this term "vaccine anxiety" that I hadn't really heard of before now: what does that really look like? What does that phrase mean?

Sophia Albott: I think you're really correct in describing this past year as being characterized by anxiety. So I think people have been living for the past year under this sort of chronic stress, chronic anxiety type of setting. And now we have this vaccine that is available to us. And I think it brings a whole host of questions around, when is my time going to come to get the shot? When is life going to return to normal? Or what is even life going to look like after I get the shot and after we start to go back to normal? And I think just all of those questions contribute to some of the anxiety that people are experiencing around getting the vaccine. I also think that some people may be having some anxiety associated with their concerns that maybe they don't feel comfortable discussing about the vaccine. Certainly, I think that that comes up for people as well. And you know, what the party line is that we need to achieve herd immunity, but that doesn't mean that people aren't going to have questions or maybe even some concerns around what is the best thing for them.

Well, so how can people cope with this anxiety that they're feeling? It is only natural to feel anxious about it.

Anxiety happens when we have a fear of something that is unknown to us. So no one knows what it's going to be like to get the shot. And so I think one of the best ways to sort of manage anxiety, our basic sort of simple coping strategies, getting enough sleep, getting exercise, getting outside and, and finding connection with other people. I also think that being able to talk about one's anxiety or one's emotions is hugely important to helping to get to the other side of those in some sense. So there's this paradoxical thing that will happen when people have difficult emotions that, strangely, talking about them helps to diffuse them often.

This feeling of guilt. Have you heard people talk about this?

Yeah. So paradoxically, I have seen this actually a lot in health care workers that I either work with or that I treat. This sense of, I'm taking a resource when my wife is actually dedicated to caring for other people. So there's sometimes can be this sort of asymmetry and taking a resource that they feel like maybe would be better for other people to get. So that is something that we are also seeing in people. And I think a lot of this feels, actually, sort of the other side of the anxiety about anticipating when my time is going to come. It's like, I don't want to be the one who sort of is taking the resource before other people need it, if that makes sense.

So we all know that the best thing is for all of us to get the vaccine because as soon as there's herd immunity, then hopefully this this pandemic will start to recede. I think there's some people that feel very concerned about getting the vaccine and so one of the responses to that is to say, gosh, you're not doing your part, why aren't you getting the shots? And I don't think that probably is the most constructive or healthy attitude to take when people do have questions about not getting the vaccine.

What is a better way to handle that?

When people are in stressful situations, it pushes us into casting choices in binary terms, and that simplifies things: like it's either a good thing or a bad thing. And it prevents us from thinking more critically about nuances and how we're going to make a decision. So I think engaging people in a dialogue that is going to keep those emotions under control and easier to manage so that people can maybe address some of the things they're concerned about, and then maybe get to a place where they feel like yes, this is a choice that I'm going to make to sort of help us get through this. So keeping dialogue open, I think, is always key.

So we've talked about vaccine anxiety, vaccine guilt, vaccine shaming. You know, I have one more question. I've seen a lot of this pop up in my social media feeds, especially now that more people are eligible here in Minnesota: it's not the super easiest thing to get a an appointment, but people are getting them and they're getting their shot. I see a lot of people posting selfies on social media. And I wonder what the psychology around that is. I mean, does that add to vaccine anxiety? Or is the intention look, I did mine now you can do yours, maybe it's more of an encouraging thing? I've been observing this, so I'm just kind of wondering about that.

My guess is that it is about sort of I've done my part, yeah. And sort of emphasizing this communal sense that we are going to do this to help, you know, get through this pandemic and bring it to an end. I work with healthcare workers, and when I hear some of the guilts things, I usually try to remind them that getting the vaccine is also contributing to establishing herd immunity, you're kind of doing your part for the cause. The tricky thing is we also want people to feel open about being able to talk about if they have concerns or maybe hesitancies. And I think that having open dialogue and making sure that that's something that's available is an important thing to just kind of consider with all of this.

Tension's high, a lot of anxiety in the last year. Eventually, we're going to be in a post-COVID world, we're going to get there. How can people begin to emotionally prepare for that?

I think all of us are ready to have life go back to what it was pre-COVID. But I also think that there's going to be a lot of importance to recognizing what we've been through and acknowledging that a lot of loss has happened: the loss of a loved one or a colleague or even a job. But I think all of us lost our way of life for the past year, basically, and so acknowledging and sort of talking about our grief around that loss, I think it's going to be hugely important and recognizing that is part of us. It's part of what has shaped our lives and then recognizing that we also got through it. And I think that's going to put us in the best position to be able to process the grief and also move on and build our post-COVID lives, as it were,

I'm glad that you brought up the word grief, because I think a couple months in the pandemic, I was already talking about grief with people, you know, grieving time; grieving loss of job; grieving, like you said, loved ones. And then here we are, we're in April of 2021. And it's like the light is there at the end of the tunnel, but we're not quite there yet. And then to somehow get to the other side. And then you know, maybe that'd be to desensitize to what we went through.

Absolutely. And also being sensitive to the fact that for some people, this pandemic hit them even harder. I think talking about grief is something that we're really going to need to be doing a lot of sort of focusing on as things start to return to normal, because I think the other side of that is not pretending that this didn't happen. Life isn't going to just be a complete replication of what it was before. We've been through something really difficult. And I think it's when people can own that and sort of incorporate that into their life narrative and even seeing it as a source of strength: surviving and powering through.

Wellness Wednesday is hosted by Jill Riley, and produced by Anna Weggel and Jay Gabler. Our theme music is a portion of the song "F.B. One Number 2" by Christian Bjoerklund under the Non Commercial Share Alike 3.0 International License.