 

tw/ death, covid, illness, heart issues, seizures, strokes

Hello r/Anxiety couple time commenter, long time lurker, first time poster. Let me get right into the meat the potatoes of this issue I'm having, I have pretty severe health anxiety have my whole life very mildly but much more extreme now. I am a 24y/o M, 6’2 140ish pounds, my only existing issues are allergies and anemia but they’re not severe by any means.

I am severely and I mean SEVERELY afraid of COVID and equally as afraid of getting the vaccine. I am in no way, shape or form an antivaxxer I attended public schools, and college growing up have all my shots and annually get my flu shot. I was all on board for getting the covid vaccine until I stumbled across an article that outlined young males in my age range can get Myocardial issues from the vaccine, so immediately I spiraled and refused to get the vaccine.

I scheduled three appointments and walked out or cancelled all of them, on the 4th time about 30 minutes before my vaccine I got a suggested article on google that talked about a young male aged 23 who had a stroke after his covid vaccine. You can guess how getting the shot went on the 4th attempt.. it didn’t go.

That night I started to investigate more and see if the stroke article had any legitimate evidence or was just coincidence, however this lead to me many reddit and YouTube threads which detailed horrific stories of stokes, seizures, balls palsy, GBS, brain fog, death following the covid vaccine. Which has now manifested in me not leaving gm room, not touching groceries that get delivered, not going out with my roommates, not having food delivered because I fear catching covid that bad. The catching covid unvaccinated fear has stemmed from my roommates explaining how many 20 year old's are in ICU’s from covid.

I want to get vaccinated rather I need to get vaccinated so I don’t lose job and I need to so I can move on with my life, how do I determine whether or not these stories about adverse side effects are true or if they are rooted in lies. I understand the “well covid is more dangerous then the vaccine” but if both fears are death from covid or the vaccine… that logic is kinda flawed for me and i'm having a hard time overcoming that..

Any and all advice is welcome friends thank you for reading this and sorry for formatting mistakes if any I am on mobile.