Having a hard time getting over anxiety/depression

[RecurringThoughts]

I've posted on here about the same stuff, so I apologize in advance if this instigates eye-rolling.

I've been feeling super anxious and depressed this last week because of doubts/distrust surrounding my repeated HIV tests. I've been tested on four different occasions, 1 of which I took after the 3-month window period, and 3 of which I took well after the 6-month period. I've taken two this year and took two last year. Each time I get the negative results back, I come up with ways those results might be wrong... I guess to FUEL the fire of my anxiety. I think things like, "well, maybe the test was done wrong", "maybe the lab technicians mixed my blood up with someone else's", "maybe I am weird and am taking 1-2 + years to develop antibodies", etc. I can't just accept the negative results and move on with my life, which I find frustrating and ridiculous because I KNOW most people take one test, get the results, and live on normally.

I have good weeks where I really enjoy my life. I get hopeful and begin imagining starting a family with my fiancé, having a career, being happy...And then BOOM, out of the deep recesses of my mind emerges this fear. Suddenly, I can't be happy because I might have this illness that somehow isn't being detected by the tests, and I can't have children because I don't want to potentially expose them to this virus, nor do I want to put my fiancé at risk just to have a family...

I try to keep busy and active against what I think might be a mental illness that is getting worse every month. I practice yoga, I go to support groups that discuss anxiety, I exercise everyday, I get out and spend time with friends and family. Yet the fear is always there and I practically think of myself as someone who DOES have an infectious disease...

[str8trippin]

I can definitely relate to this. Not to the HIV specific worry, all though getting tested for it has crossed my mind a few times because I have a former love interest that I kissed (once) prior to him finding out he had HIV, but general health worries that I have on a daily basis. I have had so many tests done already...blood work four times for all sorts of different things, two EKG's, two chest x-rays, neck x-rays, audiology testings, women's health exam...all normal. And yet I still don't feel well physically and have it constantly on my mind that something must be wrong...they must have missed something...they didn't look close enough...they're just telling me nothing is wrong even though they know it is. It gets overwhelming, as ridiculous as it is, and people don't understand that the fear is legitimate and coming from legitimate feelings you are having and is not just some crap you are making up for attention. I keep telling myself that I have to trust the professionals, and then just continue to reassure myself and make healthy and positive decisions and progress in my life. But you really can't snap your fingers and have the fear just go away like people seem to think you can. It's not easy. It's frustrating and exhausting and just all around crappy!

[RecurringThoughts]

This is exactly it! Although, I feel healthy and all my blood work (not testing for HIV) has come out "amazing", according to some doctors. There are little things that make me worry about HIV, like getting super itchy bumps on my arms for seemingly no reason, having night sweats, or getting yeast infections a lot (even though the fact I am on the Nuvaring can explain the recurring yeast outbreaks).

My fiancé thinks I am nuts. He trusts my results and has contact with me that I worry about all of the time. However, I also feel like I should just believe what the tests say because I have done all that I can to make sure that I am not putting my partner at risk. I want to say that I can't restrict my partner, or risk having a healthy sex life because of paranoia, but I feel selfish for thinking that!

P.S. The statistic on getting HIV from kissing is very very very small, but I also think everyone should get tested at least once. I regret not being tested before each new partner, and I think that guilt and shame is the reason for my anxiety now. I always identified as being more responsible than that, and yet I made a really stupid choice many times and now I think I am punishing myself for my decisions.

[Cobra]

Maybe this will relieve you a little of this irrational fear. They have developed a vaccine that rids the body of HIV. They are currently testing it on lab animals, but it works. Even if you did have HIV, it is not a death sentence, and very soon they will be able to cure it entirely. I personally think your fear of having HIV is probably based on guilt. Did you have a hard time as a youngster with your sexual orientation? Grow up in a religiously oppressed setting, or have a homophobic parent or sibling?

[RecurringThoughts]

Cobra,

Thanks :) I know about the vaccines, but was under the impression that it was a preventative rather than a curative. You're right, though, I do think that a cure is bound to be discovered within the next 20 yrs, especially with all of the hopeful research that has been going on. On a related note, I keep having to remind myself that if 4 HIV tests all came up with false-negatives (which is what I am basically suggesting here, with my fear), that would be something people knew about. I think that the HIV tests are more sensitive and accurate than I am giving them credit for, because otherwise the CDC would have a serious problem to deal with.

I wasn't raised in a negative home. No one is homophobic and I am postulating haven gotten it from mostly straight men (one partner had an encounter with a man once, but said to have been since tested. I won't get into my general trust issues towards people reporting their test results...). However, I was raised to make smart and healthy decisions, such as getting tested after each partner and not being promiscuous. I was promiscuous, was with several men, and now I feel guilty for potentially putting them at risk, putting myself at risk, and just being really really careless. I feel kind of like a scumbag, frankly, and maybe worrying about HIV is my self-inflicted psychological torture.

[Cobra]

You are psychologically torturing yourself. A normal person would be worried, be tested, and then be happy-- saying to themselves, Boy, I was lucky. I'm going to be more careful from now on. But they would let it go. You're repeating the same thoughts and the same behaviors because you feel guilt, or something negative. I'm not a shrink, just an outside observer. Maybe it's just hypochondria. I don't know. I just don't understand why we all torture ourselves like we do with these catastrophic fantasies. There has to be some underlying trauma, some guilt or something that compels us to drive ourselves crazy worrying about our health.

[RecurringThoughts]

I think you're correct about repeating the same thoughts and behavior because of guilt. I sometimes wonder if I am OCD, but don't think getting a formal diagnosis would help me break this cycle. I've been trying meditation, and that helps for a while, but the thoughts seem to often come back, as does the urge to take another test. My fiancé, family, and counselor urge me not to take another test, but it's like an addiction! I feel like if I don't take a test, I won't catch the disease soon enough to make the treatment the most effective, or keep my fiancé from getting it, crazy stuff like that :/

Thanks for your help. I would love to know -- for the sake of myself and other people with similar habits -- what causes such obsessive thoughts and paranoia.

[Cobra]

It's probably OCD. I have some tendencies myself. The stereotypical OCD person flips lights off and on a certain amount of time because they believe, irrationally, that something bad will happen if they don't complete the ritual. Same with washing hands and whatever. You're doing the same thing, just with HIV tests. If you don't have the tests, you think, something bad will happen to you and your loved ones. It might not be the stereotypical OCD behavior, like washing hands repeatedly (which I do sometimes) but the ritual and relief are the same. Maybe, instead of treating health anxiety, you should look into treating OCD. Or at least researching it so you know what you're dealing with it. Sometimes it helps just to know what your problem is.

[RecurringThoughts]

In a similar vein, I had issues writing an honors thesis for school where I would feel the need to constantly re-check my citations to either (1) make sure I wasn't accidentally mis-quoting an article or (2) unintentionally wording something too close to what someone else had written. I checked this 20 page paper several times, eventually leaving myself notes on the paper saying "stop checking this, you're being ridiculous". I have always been treated for an anxiety disorder because I don't tidy things or wash my hands (in my opinion) any more than someone who just happens to be really tidy.

[flychickadee]

Hi!

My very first post :)

This week my therapist introduced me to "fact checking". Maybe it would be helpful?

I'll use myself as an example. There was a gas company putting new pipes in our entire neighborhood and I was terrified, almost to the point of paralyzation, about it.

My therapist asked, "what is the fear?" and after a lot of hemming and hawing ("gas is scary" "why?" and more follow-up questions) I concluded that the main fear was that the house was either going to explode or set fire. And the fact checking goes like this:

FEAR:
House is going to explode/set fire.

FACTS:
1. The workers are trained in what they are doing.
2. The workers are mindful of their own safety and they likely wouldn't willingly work in a very dangerous setting with high risk of explosion/fire.
3. They talked to my roommate and I about what was going on and never mentioned it as a "high risk" situation. They did mention that it was preventative, as the pipes needed to be replaced every x years, which is still 3 years away but they want to do it before things go wrong.
4. Have I heard of a gas explosion in this area in the news? Only once, a handful of years ago.
5. Etc...

I was skeptic of the activity, but my anxiety was noticeably lower when I had finished. I believe it is linked to the DBT module "wise mind" if you're familiar with that.

*l

[Cobra]

I am a writer and I drive myself crazy sometimes going over and over a paragraph changing things. I have to be mindful of it and tell myself, Only three drafts of each work, then you're done. Anything else is just wasting time. Most people do not know a participle from a preposition, and the world isn't going to end if I miss a comma here and there. But not everyone is a typical OCD type. I'm a frickin' slob sometimes, but when my mind gets stuck on something, it's like being on a carousel ride. It just keeps going around and around and around.