melp1997
16-11-17, 20:14
hello this is gonna be a long one..... as the title says i'm not sure how many people have experienced severe anxiety about hiv or if i'm just being weird but if anyone has then i just wanted to share my experience! it started last year when i was first diagnosed with health anxiety and i had unprotected sex with a guy who then joked about having hiv, that definitely flicked a switch in my brain because since then everytime i have sex (protected or unprotected) it's all i think about. Basically after him i got tested and everything was fine and i didn't think about it for a few months until i started having casual sex again (even though i vowed to never have sex again) i think what re-sparked the hiv worry was that a guy i knew and trusted had slept with random girls and unfortunately slept with me after and gave me chlamydia (sorry for the tmi) he didn't tell me he had it until afterwards otherwise i never would've done it, this just sent me into a massive spiral and i 1000% convinced myself he had also given me hiv aswell and this is when the googling started again, finding out all the facts, figures and symptoms of hiv and of course i started to feel the symptoms the more i googled them! i got tested 2 weeks after him and it was negative but that wasn't good enough for me because i knew it wouldn't be accurate until 12 weeks so it was 12 long weeks of googling, not going out because i was riddled with anxiety and just wanted to stay home and google more, thinking i want to just jump off a bridge because it'd be easier than going through this and a cycle of reassuring myself and then re-convincing myself over and over again always thinking 'but what if...' - this is by far the most crippling my anxiety has been, if i could've stayed in bed for 12 weeks i would've! in that time i also got a boyfriend that i felt like i couldn't be fully happy with because in my mind there was a chance i had hiv and the thought of telling him or giving it to him made me feel physically sick and i couldn't even talk to him about it because i didn't want him to worry over nothing because in the very very VERY back of my mind deep down i knew i didn't have it. but then i even convinced myself that maybe my boyfriend had hiv!! i decided that if i had it it's better to know now and if i didn't then i could just move on with my life so after 12 weeks i finally sent off my home test kit. waiting for the results was absolute torture, i was honestly planning my suicide because i was CERTAIN it would come back positive but at the same time i kind of felt a bit more relaxed knowing that i'd made the first step and finding out the results was inevitable. So a week and abit passed and 2 days ago i finally got the text 'NEGATIVE' i felt relieved but also annoyed that i'd wasted 12 weeks of my life not enjoying myself because the risk of me having hiv was probably 1% (and that's if anyone else i slept with had it and they don't!) i was so happy until i got a missed call from the clinic, my first thought was 'what if they're calling to say they got the result wrong and it's actually positive' but turns out it was just a courtesy call! because the thought of hiv was in my head for 3 months day and night, i'm still trying to adust to not having to worry about it but i can feel my brain trying to find something else to worry about - i wonder what it will be next! :mad: i'm also now trying to stop worrying that the result was wrong, wasn't accurate, i should have done it later than 12 weeks or i didn't do the test right but i'm sure that will pass with time :) - this weekend i'm going out with my friends for the first time in months without having this lingering over me and ruining my life! for anyone going through this just try and think rationally and think about how much at risk you actually are (you'll probably be very low risk) and just go and get tested so you can stop worrying!!! just because you think and convince yourself of something in your mind, doesn't make it any more real or true in real life! it's very hard to catch and if you're low risk the chances of you having it after sleeping with a hiv positive person ONCE who wasn't on treatment are slim! i probably engaged in some higher risk activities (i don't mean needles lol) but i'm still fine!! at 4 weeks the test will still be 95% accurate (that's what the lady at the clinic in the UK told me the very first time i went to get tested) so use that as reassurance until the 12 weeks test because that's more than likely to be negative to :D after this i've realised nothing is as bad as it may seem just try and keep the rational thoughts above the irrational ones