HIV.

[Olivia_H]

I recently posted on here about having HIV anxiety due to performing oral sex on my highschool boyfriend 6+ years ago when we were 15-17. He had one previous sexual experience with another girl in our class before me and I worried that he'd caught HIV from her and passed it onto me.

I plucked up the courage to do a BioSURE HIV self test which is reported to be 99.7% accurate. As far as I could tell the test came back negative but I can't shake the feeling that the test was incorrect. On the test, 1 line = negative and 2 lines = positive, I only had one visible line. However, it mentioned you may see a reddened area just above where the strip starts, but that will just be the blood pigmentation and not a second line. I'm just worried that the blood line was a second line...now that I'm typing this I realise I sound nuts. I do have a second test I can take but I'm scared of a false positive.

At what point does one feel secure again? I miss just being bored with nothing (serious) on my mind...

[AMomentofClarity]

I recently posted on here about having HIV anxiety due to performing oral sex on my highschool boyfriend 6+ years ago when we were 15-17. He had one previous sexual experience with another girl in our class before me and I worried that he'd caught HIV from her and passed it onto me.

I plucked up the courage to do a BioSURE HIV self test which is reported to be 99.7% accurate. As far as I could tell the test came back negative but I can't shake the feeling that the test was incorrect. On the test, 1 line = negative and 2 lines = positive, I only had one visible line. However, it mentioned you may see a reddened area just above where the strip starts, but that will just be the blood pigmentation and not a second line. I'm just worried that the blood line was a second line...now that I'm typing this I realise I sound nuts. I do have a second test I can take but I'm scared of a false positive.

At what point does one feel secure again? I miss just being bored with nothing (serious) on my mind...

The best thing you can do right now is treat your anxiety.

[SarahNah]

My friend has HIV, in six years would have become a lot sicker if it had have been passed onto you! It generally develops within 2 to 4 weeks after infection with HIV. He was sick, very sick. His being treated now thankful and it now aokay!

I really think you're okay, I know it's hard sometimes to get a idea out of your mind. I think the anxiety might be looking for something wrong in the test but you know deep down there only reason to do the test again is because of the anxiety! I know it's scary and sometimes it feels very intense.

[MyNameIsTerry]

At what point does one feel secure again? I miss just being bored with nothing (serious) on my mind...

When you stop caring. When your subconscious has finally taken the hint it is of no importance to your conscious mind and gives up running these cycles.

Consider anything you have done recently and how none of it matters to you. For instance, perhaps you dropped some litter a month ago. You don't worry about it because it has no real importance to your mind other than at the time and it was reconciled/filed away whatever the outcome.

(someone who is anxious over that litter will be stressing about just as you are about your HIV, or they could have the potential too. It's about what sticks and what doesn't in the subconscious and we all differ)

Unfortunately, it takes time to unpick a load of core beliefs built up in a negative fashion around this theme, and don't forget HIV may only be how it is manifesting from a root problem that needs the real therapy work (like petals of a flower, pluck one and you've got others to deal with, petals re-grow, new petals (new themes) form, etc).

Tests can be useful and practical. But I can tell you with absolute certainty that even if the test was fool proof your subconscious can still come up with a "what if" whether it's whether someone made the test equipment wrong to whether the doctor was "on form" that day...and I've seen just such "what ifs" on here.