I had my first dose of the AstraZeneca vaccination yesterday.
I understand why some people will not be vaccinated and for others why it’s such a difficult decision to make. Reading social media, or even print media, you could be excused that it’s as simple as taking sides. Vaccinations are good, vaccinations are bad. But life is never really as simple as we would like it to be. When my first child was due to have their vaccinations as a baby I seriously did not know what to do. Although the vaccinations they were having were well established, there was a small risk associated with them. There were also very loud voices of anti-vaxxers, particularly with regard to the believe that Autism was related to having vaccines. Your brain is designed to keep you alive, to protect you from danger. When there is a threat, or a perceived threat, your mind evaluates the threat and if deemed necessary it switches to a stress response – usually described as fight, flight or freeze. Being an anxious first time mum, my brain went into evaluation stage. I read everything I could, spoke to all the experts I knew and made a decision. I went ahead with the vaccinations, but spaced the viral load out. I split the vaccines instead of having my children receive them all at once. Currently, most of us can recite what threats having a COVID-19 vaccination poses. For me with the AstraZeneca it is dying from a clot. And even though the scientific evidence states that the risk is something like 1 in 800,000 (less than the contraceptive pill, and I survived being on that) the side of my brain that wants to keep me safe says”
Because you cannot deny that this vaccination is something new. It feels rushed. Because no other vaccine has undergone so much public scrutiny you read about all the problems that have occurred in clinical trials. All of these factors combine to create fear and doubt.
Governments and science get it wrong, frequently. For me, the decision to have a vaccination is based on protecting others around me the best I can. Being over 50 the AstraZeneca was the vaccination that I was booked in for. Having had it, I still would have preferred to have the Pfizer vaccination which has less known side effects. Side effects can appear between day 4-20, so my kind, anxious brain will be watching me like a hawk for the next three weeks. In America one in 600 people have died from COVID-19. We have been relative fortunate in Australia, but we don’t know what the next variation will bring. And if possible I do not want to contribute to passing this disease to my children, my family and friends or my clients. So, I rolled the dice and rolled up my sleeve. Let’s see what happens next.
0 Comments
I have a question for you.
"How are you feeling right now?" Many people have no idea, or provide an automatic response like, "I'm feeling good, I'm fine." If you have difficulties with knowing how you feel, you are not alone. There are many reasons why you may not be able to easily identify what you are feeling - including the fact that many people who ask you how you are feeling, don't really care! It's just a societal nicety to get out of the way. But knowing how you are feeling IS important. Combined with knowing what you are thinking and identifying what your body is experiencing, it's one of the key ways you make sense of the world around you. This awareness is a part of living a more mindful life and taking responsibility for your overall self-care. Below are five habits or behaviours that might be getting in the way for you understanding what you are feeling. Note, I do not discuss trauma in this article, or anxiety and other mental health conditions that can cause difficulties in accessing emotions. The five habits discussed are behaviours and habits that everyone can fall into with realising it. 5 feelings habits or behaviours The first is DISTRACTION. There are so many things that distract us and take us out of ourselves on a day-to-day basis, not the least being, the 24 hour digital world we live in. Whether it be social media, watching YouTube videos, Netflix or Foxtel, there's so much you can tune into any second of the day and never have to be alone with yourself, your thoughts and your feelings. Distraction is a huge blockage that can get in the way of knowing how you really feel. Did you know that the statistics around how often people pick up their phone is amazing. It’s about once every five or 10 minutes. And the number of people who, the first thing they do in the morning is not check in with themselves, but check in with what random people are doing on Facebook or Instagram. Hands up if you can relate to either of these things. I know I definitely get hooked into this from time to time. The next three obstacles I’m grouping together and calling them REASONS. This covers justification, blame and shame. In these situations you can identify what you are feeling but you are stepping into your logical mind instead of allowing yourself the experience. In JUSTIFICATION you are explaining your feelings. For example. “Oh, I'm feeling pretty tired, but I didn't sleep real well. And you know, maybe if I've gone to bed early or I wouldn't feel quite so tired” or “I'm feeling okay today, but you know, I had time to myself and I was able to go for a walk and unlike other days where I don't get that sort of time”. BLAME is when you are attributing your feelings to what someone else did. For example, “I'm feeling really angry and it's your fault because you cut me off” or “it's your fault because you didn't do the dishes”. “I'm feeling really frustrated because they didn't ring me when they were supposed to”. So your emotion is all about what someone else did to you. I'm not saying some of these things didn't happen and some of them might not have contributed to your frustration or your anger or your happiness or whatever you're feeling. However, allowing yourself to go down this train of thought is taking you away from what you are feeling right now and interfering with your ability to experience that emotion fully. The next reasoning obstacle is SHAME. Journaling can help you find and connect with your authentic self. Have you ever felt lost? Like me, have you felt that somewhere along the way you took a wrong turn, veered of the path, or just became bamboozled with what life threw at you? It can feel like a battle to create your own space in a world that is often driven by consumerism, material success and 'progress'. However, there is a growing movement of people who know that tapping into personal and universal energy can create a sense of oneness and wholeness that transcends the artificial. Welcome to this slow, quiet corner of the world, where you can find practical ways to claim your own space and connect with yourself, others, the environment and beyond. And you don’t have to claim this space in a huge way with lots of trumpets blaring. Confidence can be found in the quiet determination as you actively connect with and pursue what is important to you. When you discover what matters to you and connect with your values you become part of the movement that is aiming to heal the world. Now, that’s exciting. There are many ways to actively connect and pursue what is important to you. Counselling, coaching, manifesting, prayer, meditation, visualisation, goal setting, intention setting, to name a few. It can be good to start with stepping into some quiet by turning off your phone and taking a break from your online world. One way of reconnecting with your authentic self is through writing, or journaling. If you have never tried tapping into the thoughts and emotions inside you in this way, I encourage you to give it a go. However, many people find there is a slight problem with this. Maybe you have experienced putting aside the time, sitting down to write....and then ....your mind goes blank. You know that your mind isn't actually blank. In fact you have 10's of 1,000s of thoughts each day. What is probably stopping you is the thought of not getting it right.
Or maybe the quiet is unnerving. We get so used to multi tasking that doing anything without additionally listening or watching something feels wrong. How to kickstart your writing habitHow to work out what matters the most
The most important thing when you first start is to create the habit of writing. To help you get started, I have created a 14 day Self-Connection journal, specifically to kickstart your journaling process. Kim Ross Child Psychologist, Fierce Self-Care Advocate and Founder of Positive Young Minds --------------------- ps Positive Young Minds combines evidence backed knowledge and the experience of working with 1000s of children, adolescents, and parents for over 17 years when working with you and/or or your child. You are welcome to book a private consultation where I can work with you to support your own wellbeing and help you connect with that sense of calm you are looking for. Does buying Christmas presents stress you out? If you love Christmas and the hope and magic it can bring, but buying presents is a nightmare, you are not alone! Some years the list of people I thought I just had to get presents for seemed to be never ending - family, friends, work colleagues, teachers, staff, football coaches, not to mention my own children the list went on and on. Buying Christmas presents is one of the many expectations you can feel at Christmas time and one of the many stressors and tasks that can lead to Christmas overwhelm. I have 14 suggestions to help you reduce the stress and anxiety of buying gifts, including what to buy your kids, but first the two most important things to keep in mind when buying Christmas gifts are: 🌟 Experiences that contribute to our happiness. Not more stuff! 🌟The simplest way of making gifts easier is to reduce the number of gifts you buy and the number of people you give gifts too. 🌟The simplest way of making gifts easier is to reduce the number of gifts you buy and the number of people you give gifts too. Each year leading up to Christmas when we ask ourselves what we want for Christmas, I find is an inspiring time to actually look at what I have. We know that if you are looking to increase the happiness in your life that putting time and energy into experiences rather than things is the way to go.
However, things have a way of accumulating. Whether you have bought them with good intentions or whether they have come to you as gifts or through other means. And before you know it even things you love can just become part of ‘stuff everywhere’! Sitting back and looking at your stuff can be a great way of reconnecting with what is important to you. By curating your stuff you can creating an environment that supports your current stage of life, your current interests and is uplifting. Let’s start by looking at books. Growing up we had a set of World Book encyclopedias. I loved them. You could open up at any page and learn something new about the world. Looking at them gave me a sense of wonder and thirst for knowledge. I probably loved my fantasy books (Enid Blyton anyone?) where I went into worlds where anything and everything was possible. It’s the promise contained in books that I love. As I grew older my relationship with books became a bit more complicated. Books I had to read – school novels, reference books. Books I thought I should read – parenting books, self-help books. And instead of being always about pleasure books also became a mirror reminding me of things I didn’t understand, couldn’t learn or highlighted my inadequacies. Do you love all your books? Do you smile when you see them, refer to them regularly and rejoice in their wisdom? OR Are their books on your bookshelf that taunt you with reminders about your failures? Cookbooks full of recipes you haven’t tried. Self-help books with exercises you haven’t completed. Novels you haven’t read. Parenting books that seem to mock you. Reference books you don’t use (or are way out of date). Why are you holding on to them? Marie Kondo speaks of holding things to see if they spark joy. And it’s an exercise I do every so often. You take the books down from the shelves and hold each one. How does it feel? Do you feel inspired when you hold it? Or do you notice creeping thoughts such as I ‘should’ read that, followed by a sigh or accompanied by a self chastising ‘well that was a waste of money’. (If you have electronic books that you’ve downloaded, although you can’t hold them you can look at the titles and notice what thoughts and feelings arise.) From here you have two choices. If you feel inspired, warm, joyful when you pick up the book - make the recipes, do the exercises, read the novels. Reconnect with the reason why that book is on your shelf in the first place. OR If you feel nothing, or the weight of the ‘shoulds’, move the book on. Acknowledge your intentions when you bought the book. Thank the book for the hope it inspired, acknowledge and release any guilt or disappointment in yourself. Depending on the book you could donate them, give them to friends etc. Notice how you feel when you do this. As you remove the stuff (and fluff) from your life that no longer matters, you make space for reconnecting to what is really important to you. If you do this I would love to know what you discover. You can email me at kimdunn@positiveyoungminds.com.au. As students are going back to school, some of the are running there and not looking back. Others are refusing to go back, and others are going back but struggling to get through the day.
Wherever your child fits into the picture, they are facing change. Changes to school structure - including drop off and pick up procedures, hygiene practices and how they interact with their friends. Changes from having you around more often to not seeing you during most of the day. Changes from leisurely getting out of bed, to having to be out the door by a certain time. Changes from perhaps only to do focused work for a short period of time and then having fun/computer time, to back to being highly regulated in their activities. And change, as you know, can be difficult and worrying. One of the best ways you can help them manage this change is through providing some individual quiet time, particularly if they are used to having your attention during the day whilst remote learning. For some questions to help with conversation and some recommendations to help with calming them after school click here. |
Categories
All
Disclaimer* These articles are provided by Kim Ross, Psychologist for general information and education . They are not designed to be used for therapy.. If you are experiencing stress please contact your GP or mental health professional.
AuthorKim Ross is an Online Psychologist and Founder of Positive Young Minds and Private Practice Sustainability. Archives
October 2023
|