Phobia and Fear

have a real bad HIV phobia and it relates to my day to day life. Like if i cut my finger on a knife or something i start getting scared and thinking what if somebody else cut them selves on that knife before and they have HIV then i start getting panicky and i get anxiety. It scares the **** out of me. I am going through some hard stuff right now and ill explain it all. Last Saturday on 7/21/07 i went to Walgreens and i was walking out of the store with my bag in my right hand and my receipt in my left hand and i was about to throw the receipt in the trash can by the front doors but the can was full, i didn't just want to shove my whole hand in there so kind of just stuck it in there. I got in my car and drove away and i was almost home and something popped in my head part of my fear and phobia. I started thinking what if i got poked by a needle when i put the receipt in the trash, so i actually turned around and drove back to the store and i started digging in the trash looking for the supposed needle just to calm my fears and prove to myself that there wasn't a needle and that i didn't get poked and that it was all in my head. Well i didn't find on and then i went home and i could not sleep. I was so scared that i got poked or something and i was scared that now i am gonna have HIV so i drove back up to the store looking through the trash again. I know this sounds crazy and i even know its crazy but i was so scared. I started looking in bags and looking through everything just to make sure. I searched for a long time and i didn't find anything. I kept leaving and going home and i could sleep so i would go back to the store and look for more. Its like it would make me feel better knowing that there wasn't a needle that poked me and that i was alright but as soon as i would get home i would get real scared again. I did that probably about 4 or 5 times. Finally i just stopped.  About 9 in the morning the next day i went back up there and the trash was still in there and i went inside and asked the lady who worked there if she had a plastic bad that i could have. She gave me one and i took everything from pretty much the top layer of the trash can, anything that i thought that i could have came into contact with when i first threw the receipt away and anything that i may have came into contact with when i kept digging through there. I took the bag home and dumped it out by my trash cans and went through it all making sure there wasn't a needle or anything in there. There wasn't, So i felt like i was ok. I didn't get poked cause i didn't find any needle but then i started to get scared over the fact that i had some small scratches and little cuts on my hands and i was digging through the trash, what if there was some blood in there that i didn't see or something. I asked this question to the HIV doctor on this website and he said that there was no risk and that i don't need any testing at all. So know im over the fact that i am not gonna get HIV from digging through a garbage can but im still nervous about "did i or did i not get poked from a needle" I think that if i was actually poked i wouldn't have this doubt whether i was or not, i think that i would absolutely know. Is it just my extreme anxiety and irrational fears that is making me so scared and believe that i might have been poked and is it my fears/ocd or whatever not letting me think rational and know that i wasn't poked

[sumone]

Have you talked to a doctor? It sounds to me like you may be suffering from OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder) seeing as you seem to be obsessively worrying to the point where you're compelled to repetitively do irrational things in an attempt to lessen your anxiety. You should really see a doctor about this and see about getting some treatment.

[sunsarethebest]

Yeah i am seeing a psyhchatrist right now, hopefully she can help out

[terrance4567]

I know it sounds weird for me to say....but I wish I had your type of OCD instead of the one I have...