OCD and Fear of HIV

[Jozie77]

Hi All
I am so pleased that I have found this forum, as I feel quite alone and have no-one really to chat to about what I go through except my therapist, but often I think that she is just appeasing me.

My story is that I think that I have had ocd in some form or another for most of my life.  When I was a teenager I suffered from anorexia, which I have heard is a form or an expression of ocd.  And I have always basically been paranoid and very much always assuming the worst.

The latest obsession that I have is HIV.  I had protected sex with a friend of mine over a year ago and am completely convinced that I have now been infected with HIV.  The friend has reassured me time and time again that he is negative and plus we used protection.  But everynow and then my ocd flares up and nothing that anyone says can convince me otherwise.  The friend thinks that I am a complete lunatic and we hardly speak to each other anymore as a result of all this.

This isn't the first time I have thought I have had HIV, in the past I have worried about this and despite negative tests I still remained convinced that I have HIV.

Is there anyone out there who can relate to me?  I would love to hear from you.

Please if you are going to tell me to just have an hiv test, don't respond as even though I know is is the most rational thing to do, I can't.

Thanks

[mariabianca]

I do it via therapist & meds. 99% of the time it works. 1% not, like now because I'm waiting on blood work. I'm also getting re-regulated on my meds. When my incident happened, I was off my meds & that's why the whole situation keeps playing out in my head, over & over. It's also why I haven't slept w/the guy either - OCD is stopping me amongest other things.

1 month ago I fooled around with a potential new boyfriend (mutual masturbation - no risk I have learned through this site) I gave him a hand job & he came on my hand - that hand was ok. It was the OTHER hand I started flipping out about. I had a day old paper cut on it & the day after the handjob, I found a scrape of the topside thumb. Skin intact, jagged & red, no blood. But here's the kicker, the sperm never touched the hand directly, I touched the hankie that had hand lotion (with alcohol content) & his sperm. I had an anxiety attack, refused to talk to the guy, was ready to go get the PEP from the emergency room. My sister was able to calm me down & get the story out of me. She's not a medical professional & said she was pretty sure the virus dies when it hits the air. She found an HIV forum & specialist & emailed them my story & got a reply. NO RISK AT ALL. I then joined this website & started to read about HIV.
This past week I had a GYN appointment where I had blood testing & yes again, HIV ANXIETY. I panicked myself into believing the results would come back positive.From what??? I had NO oral, vaginal, or anal sex!!! Logically I know that IF, IF, IF, this guy had something he wasn't aware of, there was NO WAY I could have caught anything by touching that hankie. Two reasons: the virus hit the air & was weakened & no longer infectious AND it was mixed w/the hand lotion that had alcohol content. The alcohol content would have weakened if not killed the virus altogether.
I keep telling myself that no matter what HIV is NON INFECTIOUS when it hits the air & even if my hands were all cut up, it is not a way that HIV is transmitted. I repeat it over & over & over hoping it sticks

[dineshkaarthik]

thank u very much. iam happy now

[JGF25]

Sorry...this is a very old thread and I usually don't monitor them.  Anyway you have to have ACTUAL intercourse with a person who is HIV positive to have any chance at all of becoming HIV positive.  I want you to think about this statistic.  If you take a syringe with HIV tainted blood and poke yourself with it, you have a 0.03 percent chance of become HIV positive...that is how flipping hard it is to get.  You cannot possibly be HIV positive.  The testing is unnecessary.  We are not talking the flu virus here which is highly contagious.  HIV cannot even survive outside of a host (person).  It hits air and dies.  

No analysis of this night is needed unless of course this is stemming from guilt but that is a different matter.  You didn't have sex with this girl.  I'm sure a lot of guys would get aroused by having a lap dance.  

[dineshkaarthik]

Please reply to my above concern...

[dineshkaarthik]

Hi, I went to a strip club some 40 days ago and I went to a lap dance. While the dancer was dancing touching all my parts and while she was hitting my penis which is inside my pants with her butt, my *** came out in my pants and she was also wearing her underwear too. After I released my *** inside my pants, she sat in my lap with her underwear for some time. I did not have any kind of sex with her or any kind of ********. My sperm came out in my pants because of the touch and she was wearing her underwear too.

I developed a great fear that I will be infected with HIV and so went to a doctor and got my HIV tested after 7 days of this incident and got the result as Negative. But still that fear is there and got again tested after 30 days and got Negative.

Do I need to worry about this as I am suffering a lot internally as I have a sweet loving wife and daughter. Please help me......

[anonymous1397]

Hello all,

I am so glad I found this site as I thought I was the only person who had extreme OCD about HIV.

Unlike many of the people who post on this site, I am someone who was afraid of having HIV because I actually had unprotected sex. I do not have fear of getting it from door knobs or tissues, but actual fear based on the facts that one can get HIV from unprotected sex.

I got tested at 15 weeks post my "scare" and it came back negative. However, this didn't mean anything to me as I continued to fear that I would still contract HIV or that the test was wrong. I realized that I was falling into a pattern of believing my own fears over scientific fact that I did not have HIV. Going on the CDC website and reading that you can be positive you do not have HIV after 12 weeks gave me relief for only a few hours before I started doubting an extremely reliable source. The main reason why this anxiety and OCD behavior started is because soon after that "scare" I met an incredible man that I love very much and I feared that I was going to give it to him and ruin his life forever. The reason behind my OCD was not necessarily that I had HIV but because I feared the guilt of knowing that I could have given it to someone else had I contracted it. (I included where I got my information from the CDC website below.)

I urge all of you to seek help or educate yourself on the facts. I know how hard it is having this debilitating problem of constant urges to have your blood drawn for yet another test or reading all the symptoms of HIV and being so worked up about it that you actually cause yourself to become sick and display certain symptoms.

I wish all of you luck and pray that you all make a full recovery. Knowing that we all make mistakes and we are not alone in this is very helpful. God bless.

http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/basics/testing.html