Aa
anxiety about catching HIV
Hello
I have horrible anxiety about catching HIV. In the summer I was downtown drinking with my family and on our way home we found this pop up picnic area and sat down. met some people that where hanging out there and as we were leaving i sat up and felt a pain in the butt. I automatically assume i sat on a nedle that contains hiv..but it could have been that a hit my butt on the wood that surrounded the area. i got home checked my pants for blood found nothing. & mths later i cant stop thinking that it was a needle and i should be tested. Ive been tested so many times for no reason that im afraid to go tot he doc. I need someones help. i feel lost and hopeless and stressed to the max. someone out thre please help me.
I have horrible anxiety about catching HIV. In the summer I was downtown drinking with my family and on our way home we found this pop up picnic area and sat down. met some people that where hanging out there and as we were leaving i sat up and felt a pain in the butt. I automatically assume i sat on a nedle that contains hiv..but it could have been that a hit my butt on the wood that surrounded the area. i got home checked my pants for blood found nothing. & mths later i cant stop thinking that it was a needle and i should be tested. Ive been tested so many times for no reason that im afraid to go tot he doc. I need someones help. i feel lost and hopeless and stressed to the max. someone out thre please help me.
my post was sensored...you can replace the **** with the work "stick". I used p*rick and it didn't like that one...LOL.
Hi there. Being the CL of the OCD forum I will tell you that what most people write about is fear of HIV. There is a fine line between HIV Anxiety and OCD. One of the hallmarks of OCD is irrational thoughts. What you are thinking, the needle stick, is an irrational thought.
Sit down and close your eyes and picture the scene. You will quickly realize that there wasn't a needle on the bench before you sat down so there couldn't possibly be one after you sat down. You need to replace these negative thoughts with positive ones. "There was no needle."
Also another thing you can do is write down on an index card the ways that HIV is transmitted. You can look this up on the web but in short you need to have direct contact with an infected person's bodily fluid (Saliva does not count). In addition HIV does not live on surfaces or in needles. It is a very fragile virus and just cannot survive outside of it's host. When this irrational thought comes into your mind, whip out the card and read the transmission ways to remind yourself that you are not in danger.
Compare HIV to the flu virus. The flu virus you can get from someone sneezing in your vicinity, coughing into their hand and touching a doorknob, etc. HIV is not transmitted in this way. If it were, we would all be infected. Also, did you know that if you were to take blood from an infected person and immediatly ***** your finger with the needle, that your chances of becoming infected would be less than 1 percent?
The trick here is to not give into the irrational thoughts. You make the positive statement, you whip out the card and you say "enough." What you don't want to do is sit there and feed the irrational thinking with a whole bunch of what-ifs.
If this does not work for you then you really need to seek out a psychologist who can help you with this. I too had HIV irrational thoughts. I sat in an AIDS clinic during my lunch hour for a few weeks just to prove to myself that you cannot get it from sitting in a room full of HIV infected people. You canot get it from the chair, the magazines, the tables, the air, etc. It just doesn't work that way...thankfully.
I hope that I have given you some things to try and alleviated some of your fears. It is time to say "enough." Take care of yourself.
Sit down and close your eyes and picture the scene. You will quickly realize that there wasn't a needle on the bench before you sat down so there couldn't possibly be one after you sat down. You need to replace these negative thoughts with positive ones. "There was no needle."
Also another thing you can do is write down on an index card the ways that HIV is transmitted. You can look this up on the web but in short you need to have direct contact with an infected person's bodily fluid (Saliva does not count). In addition HIV does not live on surfaces or in needles. It is a very fragile virus and just cannot survive outside of it's host. When this irrational thought comes into your mind, whip out the card and read the transmission ways to remind yourself that you are not in danger.
Compare HIV to the flu virus. The flu virus you can get from someone sneezing in your vicinity, coughing into their hand and touching a doorknob, etc. HIV is not transmitted in this way. If it were, we would all be infected. Also, did you know that if you were to take blood from an infected person and immediatly ***** your finger with the needle, that your chances of becoming infected would be less than 1 percent?
The trick here is to not give into the irrational thoughts. You make the positive statement, you whip out the card and you say "enough." What you don't want to do is sit there and feed the irrational thinking with a whole bunch of what-ifs.
If this does not work for you then you really need to seek out a psychologist who can help you with this. I too had HIV irrational thoughts. I sat in an AIDS clinic during my lunch hour for a few weeks just to prove to myself that you cannot get it from sitting in a room full of HIV infected people. You canot get it from the chair, the magazines, the tables, the air, etc. It just doesn't work that way...thankfully.
I hope that I have given you some things to try and alleviated some of your fears. It is time to say "enough." Take care of yourself.
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