generalized anxiety disorder

[cosmos123]

I have a generalized anxiety disorder and a phobia of HIV and rabies. I went to get my blood work down and the nurse used a vacutainer to draw blood. However, the vacutainer holder was reused ( the nurse confirmed it is only the needle which is changed and not the holder as it does not come into contact with the patient) and now I think I will get HIV and I keep thinking about HIV until I get tested again at 3 months after the window period. luckily I have medicines however I hate this. please advice me???
Regards

[del677]

Thank you for writing.

No chance of contracting any disease from having blood drawn. They are very sterile and know how to do it safely.

It's actually rather hard to get HIV. It takes unprotected sex to transmit it. (Even that is easy to thwart with a condom.)

And HIV is treatable. I've known someone who's had HIV for many years and is just fine.

Fears on the other hand, don't necessarily respond to reason and logic. Try yoga, qi-gong, tai-chi (meditative motion), or plain mindfulness meditation. 'Headspace' is one app that teaches mindfulness. There are some Headspace videos on YouTube that explain the concept. These exercises can help train the brain, strengthen various parts of the brain, shrink the Amygdala which causes fear, so anxiety lessens as a result. Takes a few weeks to start seeing the results. Worth a try.

Blessings!

[Paxiled]

Well, no, you not only don't have any risk of getting HIV but by admitting you have a phobia you are admitting you know this.  Us phobia sufferers know we're being ridiculous as most of the things we're phobic about we've done many times before without any problem and then we get this idiotic anxiety disorder and suddenly things get really really hard.  So no, you shouldn't waste any time getting tested, and you shouldn't get tested when I know and you know this isn't a risk because doing so will just reinforce the phobia.  I would suggest you find a psychologist who does cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and get to work.  It won't be easy, but give it a try.  If it doesn't work, try a different therapist.  Medication can be necessary when your life is so disrupted you just can't get it to work at all for you, but it won't cure the problem, so if you can do the therapy and it works, the problem is gone.  As to the above post, just some clarifications so people don't get exaggerated expectations about certain things.  Tai chi isn't meditative motion.  It's basically slow motion kung fu, it's a martial art, and although you very well might find it relaxing to do as you might doing anything that takes your mind off of the things that bother you and focuses it instead on something that is very hard to do well and therefore takes a lot of concentration and is really fun to learn and to do, it won't fix an anxiety problem.  Yoga comes with meditation and without, and the vast majority of yoga in the US is for exercise, not meditation.  Qi-gong are just warm-up exercises before you do tai chi or kung fu, and again, while they're good to do and fun and a great way to start a day, again, they won't really do anything about a genuine anxiety disorder.  Mindfulness, on the other hand, just might help, but to learn to do it correctly you should really learn it from a meditation teacher.  It's really just a fancy name for zen buddhist meditation that tries to get close to the meditation the Buddha used to supposedly reach enlightenment, and while it's had more study than other forms of meditation if it doesn't work for you there are thousands of great meditations from the Buddhist, Hindu, and Taoist traditions that can really make life a whole lot richer and if they work for you over time produce a more relaxed frame of mind.  But I really doubt you can learn to do them correctly in a way that works from an App.  You need to see a spiritual teacher who actually knows the roots of the practice and how it's supposed to be done and can impart it to you in a way that really sticks.  While you can learn it from psychologists and New Age practitioners of many stripes, it's not that easy to understand or to do and in my own meditation experience, it really does work better if you learn it from those who actually do it and live by it even if you have not the slightest spiritual inclination at all.  Don't need one.  As for shrinking the amygdyla, why would you want to do that and how would anyone know if that happened?  What's the correct size of it?  Nobody understands the amygdyla, although a lot of research is ongoing and has been for decades to try to figure it out.  All we know is it's a part of the primitive brain we can't reach that is responsible for providing fuel to the adrenal gland to allow us to do what we need to do.  When it overreacts, we can get panic attacks, but nobody knows if there's anything in the amygdyla that causes this overreaction.  Without it working we wouldn't be able to respond to danger or crisis, so again, why would we want to make it smaller?  What we want is not to be victimized by it, which is something our thinking does to us, and that's not done in the primitive brain.  It doesn't cause fear, the way we think does.  It's a neutral organ that just feeds us adrenaline when the body determines we need it.  If we don't need it, that's a problem, but not a problem caused by the amygdyla but reacted to by it.  Peace, all.