OCD and HIV anxiety

[Cnfused123]

I have always suffered from some kind of OCD or anxiety. It started off with blasphemous sexual thoughts about God where I couldn't enter a temple (I am a Hindu) followed by certain rituals which if I didn't do something really bad would happen to my parents.:weep:

It then went on to a fear of wetting my bed in the night so I wouldn't sleep over at friends' or relatives' house and if I did then I had to go to the toilet 10 times. It then went on to changing my underwear every 10 times a night because if I didn't I thought I would get dirty sexual dreams in my sleep. :scared15:

All this was before I hit puberty. After puberty and when I discovered masturbation, I started feeling I would get pregnant from masturbation or God would punish me and poison me somehow:lac: (Go figure!)

At one point I was so worried I convinced my parents I was going to die because I had masturbated and at another (16 years old at this point) I had convinced them that I had a sever form of mental disorder and I had no future. :emot-fail:

Now at 27, the fear of HIV has consumed me for the past 2 years. I have tested myself after every person I kissed or had mutual masturbation or frottage with. even though logically I know it was only frottage, my mind has played games with me by telling me that what if something more happened which I was unaware about (most of the times I was a lil tipsy or drunk):mad:
Recently I was going through a lonely anxious time and I just needed company. I ended up not sleeping but just having frottage with 4 guys individually at different times, one of whom I was dating. once out of my anxious phase, I felt so guilty about what I did, I got myself tested and once realizing that I was negative, I went back to my happy life for a week until I lost my virginity to a friend while drunk :mad: I know big mistake... I shouldn't have let that happen but it happened.

Now I feel like God is really going to punish me this time. We were drunk but I do remember him wearing a condom and he has said he is virgin as well. I have known him for two months and know that he is a nice guy but jus worried about what if he has HIV? I am also worried about what if the condom broke or he didn't wear it carefully? He told me the condom did not break but I am just freaking out. :unsure:

The anxiety is worse because from a previous relationship two years back I contracted genital herpes and since then I have this feeling that I am unlucky and might contract something else.

I know a lot of people who do worse then me and don't worry about it (not that it means that what I have done is right, it is wrong in my eyes).
I am feeling very suffocated lately. I have done an early detection and HIV 4th gen test and anxiously awaiting results so that I can move on with my life but the test centre is taking its own sweet time :curse: and killing me inside.

I am so worried, I just want to find a nice guy, be married and have kids. I don't want to make these mistakes anymore, will God/Universe give me yet another chance?

[Jabz]

Yet another chance at what?

You most certainly have OCD and you should be working on understanding and learning to manage it.

What you are doing is classic reassurance seeking which is basically enabling and making you OCD even worse. You have a lot of themes for your OCD to work, but you have to realize that it's OCD and not reality.

To realize that it will take a long time of learning to understand and manage your OCD, that's all.

[Cnfused123]

yet another chance at being healthy and HIV free. :weep:
I am so worried.
A part of me knows that its a severe form of OCD and people who have done worse then me are happily living their lives and here I am stressed, anxious, cant concentrate on work, cant eat, cant sleep, cant do anything and feeling extremely guilty.
If only my test results would come back I can put it behind me and work on my OCD. Right now I cant think of anything else other than my test results which aren't ready yet :curse: (so annoyed)
so all I can do now is read about HIV and seek reassurance.
I am just so frustrated with the test center who keeps saying different things

[MyNameIsTerry]

Hi,

I think you perceive it as a severe form of OCD whereas I just see as a combination of several forms which may mean more work. I'm not downplaying it because I have several forms of OCD (some are gone now) namely touching routines, some checking, some violent thoughts and one of my worst has always been Magical Thinking.

You have Magical Thinking because you gave the example of having to perform certain rituals of something bad will happen to your parents. This is likely complicated by the fact you have the religious thoughts form of OCD. You have also got contamination. I'm less sure on the bedwetting issue as that could be seen in various anxiety disorders as a matter of higher anxiety than normal or situation specific anxiety.

The issue of HIV sounds like it started out as OCD but now has become an obsession as opposed to a ritualistic one seen with OCD. Perhaps closer to Health Anxiety, which shares many of attributes of OCD.

In terms of Magical Thinking, you know nothing bad will happen but you probably also have a nagging thought in your mind of "What if...something happened and I could have stopped it". This is the curse of the What If issues that many anxiety disorders suffer from. You have to remember that you don't have magical powers and nothing you think or touch can affect the physical world in the ways your OCD is telling. You know this but you need to work on removing the link between the thought and the ritual. As you do this, you will find it makes you less anxious and the thoughts come less often. Trust me on this, I was touching things hundreds of times a day such as slippers, door handles, window locks, window panes, a pond grabber, retieing bags, the list goes on. Most of this, I no longer do because I have worked to remove the link between the thoughts & rituals but I have also worked on my underlying GAD which would prevent the OCD reducing.

The religious one is hard for me because I'm agnostic and I think there can be issues within religion that can drive these types of thoughts if you suffer from anxiety. Do you think there are environmental factors in your life that drive yours? Do you have pressure on you to be a certain way, for instance? I don't know much about your religion so I'm unable to really see whether there is but the reason I ask is that I have seen threads about religion where people have had more right wing families and this was a contributing factor.

Do you think there is a religious connection to the HIV? The reason I ask is that you seem to have a connection in thoughts that promiscuity could lead to judgement and punishment. If you are judging yourself harshly then this will only drive your anxious thoughts and its going to be important to you to make acceptance part of your strategy to recover because you need to resolve these thoughts of past relationships. You are not a bad person and you don't deserve any punishment. You also have an opportunity to forgive yourself for your past and move forward in the way you wish to.

You will gain a lot from Mindfulness. Its has no connection to religion. Its from Buddhism and really does help with OCD. Acceptance is one of the 8 elements it can promote. Would this interest you?

[twtm2002]

Hi - I have been away from this forum for a few weeks but would like to offer my absolute support to you. I share from something very similar to you - a total fear of contracting HIV without any rational basis for doing so. Despite every doctor, online forum and person I know telling me the very simple truths around HIV , I still believe I will defy medical science and be the person who contracts the virus for a massage! Yes, a massage. My guilt stems from the fact I was naked; it became mildly erotic and I ended up touching my penis. No sex; no touching of my penis by the masseuse...nothing. Yet, I walk around in a daze thinking I am in the middle of sero-converting the moment a red mark appears on my arm. I personally am a huge fan of mindfulness and have also been in therapy for some time about the anxiety. I am not sure if it is OCD or Health Anxiety but either way it is a real issue. I have found over time that if I distract myself through sport; reading; keeping busy it does dissipate but let's not kid oneself - it is still there.
In your case let me be clear - frottage does not transmit HIV and if a condom breaks you know about it. Coupled with the chances of you being with an HIV+ man i would say your risk was close to zero.

[stiia]

I feel you! I'm having same fears. I have always been hypochondriac. Lately HIV have been my biggest fear. I've had unprotected sex once with a stranger (I know... I'm stupid, stupid!!!!), I've been tested after that (more than 6 months after risk situation - I was too scared to go before...) and it was negative. Everything was good, I was happy.. Until now, a year after my first test.

There was that international AIDS day or something.. All my fears came back. What if the laboratory has mixed my blood sample with someone else's or what if the nurse have checked someone else's result? I tried to call to the clinic, but they didn't answer the phone.

I'm not sure if I need to be tested once again? Will it give me a relief or will it make my anxiety worse? I'm so scared, what if I'm right and I'm really having HIV? I hate this feeling!! I can't talk to anybody, they would think that I'm insane and will laugh at me..

I'm so tired.. At the summer I was assured that I had ALS or MS. I know I should talk to someone and relax, but I can't.. :( :(

[ocdPANIC]

Ive had this fear b4 its just ocd.

[Warriornotworrier]

I'm also currently suffering from this and I too don't know if it's because of OCD or not. I had unprotected sex at the beginning of October. I had a full STI check about a month later and everything came back clear. A week after those test results I had PROTECTED sex using a condom (twice). 5 days later I got a sore throat and cold symptoms. It swant me into sheer panic. I really should wait 6 months or so to have a test but in the mean-time my thoughts are going crazy. I'm trying to learn German at the moment and I got lent a book about a girl who contracts HIV. I can't bare to read it. I can't bare to listen to my thoughts some times. They send me crazy and into sheer panic.

[b0yer]

If you had protected sex, you can't get HIV unless there was a break or defect in the condom.