Unvaccinated and excluded: How do I rejoin society?
QI am vaccine-free in relation to Covid-19 due to severe and ongoing complications I, and others like me with CFS/ME, have experienced.
I am also overwhelmed with sadness that all of my former loves and joys — libraries, the art gallery, the museum, the theatre, concerts, and catching up with friends over coffee or dinner — are instead now sources of pain for me. I used to go to the library every week without fail but I have not been back, now that I am “allowed” to enter.
What can I do to help overcome the trauma of being excluded from society and to make it bearable to take part in any of the things that were taken from me?
AWe’ve all had to make so many changes, and accept so many intrusions into our life over the past two years it can sometimes be hard to keep up and allow ourselves the time and space to process the emotions that naturally follow such big events.
It’s like an emotional whiplash — and I’m sorry you’re struggling with ongoing anger and distress.
There’s a lot of rhetoric about how modern culture has become increasingly polarised — as the culture wars so increasingly evident in the US pour out into other Western cultures. Aotearoa is not immune from the impact of feeling pressure to increasingly pick sides in whatever issue we find ourselves vehemently disagreeing on.
Obviously, Covid-19 vaccination has been one of these issues — but more broadly the ongoing response to the pandemic has had the power to split us all — and even though it’s cliched, it is important we all find ways to try to come back together.
At an individual level what we call black-and-white thinking — being unable to see an issue other than in extreme terms of right and wrong, with me or against — is a result of feeling strong emotions.
Distress, pain, rage, and grief make it hard to think clearly, to step back and appreciate the nuance.
And one of the problems with getting stuck in black-and-white thinking is it naturally leads to blame.
If I’m right (and anger, in particular, leaves us naturally feeling right) then you must be wrong. Regardless of whether others are actually to blame, staying focused on blame leaves us with nowhere to go, emotionally speaking.
Blame leads to stuck-ness because if the only solution is other people doing something such as acting contrite, being understanding, or accepting blame, then not only is it unlikely to happen, but we’ve also given our own power away.
Regardless of where we all sit on the issue of vaccination and mandates, we can take responsibility for the choices we’ve made, accept that there may have been some consequences at the time, which are now largely in the past, and move on.
We can focus on keeping our own side of the street clean, as it were.
Like any grief, ultimately we have to find ways to move away from fighting reality, fighting ourselves, and fighting others, and shift to dealing with the present in the most effective way we can.
So if you have friends who accept and understand you, spend time with them. If you have people who don’t, or otherwise treat you in ways that are upsetting, limit time with them.
And if important things like going to the library are upsetting, but as you say now available to you, then find ways to work on re-engaging. You may need to do it slowly, and it may be upsetting but know that experiencing the feelings is required to move through them.
All of this applies, regardless of whether you were “for or against” vaccination mandates.
If we’re going to keep responding to the pandemic, not to mention the other issues we face as a community, we have to find ways to disagree, work it out, and move on.
That’s on all of us.