HIV fear

[Rofy29]

Hi all
I want you to help me with my anxiety long time over 10 years now i had this fear of hiv and any situation that involves a medical procedure like going to the dentist or giving birth or having a cut with any object or if my husband go to the dentist or get any medical procedure that involves blood i get this sever fear and specialy when i Google those situation some sites shows that there is a risk even if it is theoretical now this is affecting my life and sometimes I never sleep although i am a clinical pharmacists i get those fears my husband got this Chinese treatment wet cupping that involves superficial cutting the skin and using vaccum cups to withdraw blood i m afraid of hiv risk although he did it in medical center and many people are doing and said that it doesn't cause any risk and it is just like going to the dentist or having microblading for tattoo my mind refuse to believe them

[Paxiled]

I'm personally very big on meditation because even if it doesn't help with anxiety it helps a lot with our spiritual selves and it forces us to take some time out to just sit and be quiet.  Although it never really got rid of my anxiety, it did really help me stay healthy despite it and now that it doesn't work anymore I'm a lot more tired and cranky and I really miss what it used to do, so again, I'm really big on it.  As for that cupping, I don't know where you think that involves cutting the skin, I've had it done and it didn't do anything for me but no, they don't cut anything.  But that's neither here nor there.  You have a phobia.  If this is the only phobia you have, you don't have an overall anxiety problem, just the one phobia.  But if you have a lot of things that make you anxious, then you have an overall anxiety problem.  I mention this because a single phobia is pretty easy to treat relative to overall anxiety problems, and doesn't take that long, so I'd stop thinking of all this HIV stuff from things that probably have no possibility of causing it and see someone who knows how to treat phobias.  On that HIV forum, virtually nobody on it has any risk at all from what they did so having an HIV phobia seems to be a pretty widespread problem and so I'm guessing psychologists have gotten pretty good at treating it.  Peace.

[specialmom]

I meant that I 'wanted' to be big on meditation but couldn't do it.  I heard a comic once said meditation was a great chance to think about everything wrong in your life or what you don't like about yourself. ha. That's how it kind of was for me because I couldn't stay focused.  I tried!  But the app "Calm" which I use (I do pay for an upgraded version because I like it better) fixed that for me.  It helped me actually use meditation effectively.  My son uses 'headspace' for that purpose.  I do think it is beneficial but for me, I needed a guided meditation experience to make it work or else I would be meditating with one eye open looking at the laundry pile, or thinking about the next car pool or what to make for dinner, etc.

[Paxiled]

That's kind of me now, alas.  It worked for a ton of years, but unfortunately not anymore.  But that's me judging it, and that's what you're not supposed to do, and here I am doing it anyway, but I'm on a severe downward slide so I think I've just reached my expiration date.  The thing about meditation I think is, you should learn it from a spiritual teacher even if you have no inch of an inclination toward Buddhism or Hinduism or Taoism.  The reason is, they explain meditation better than people who use it as if it's just some relaxation tool, because it really isn't.  It's a training tool to teach us to live in the moment and to not let our thoughts bother us.  It's okay to sit there and think, what's not okay is to judge the meditation a failure for doing so.  And that's really hard for us western folks.  When you get a thought, you're just supposed to watch it and slowly and without judgment return to whatever it is the particular meditation you're doing uses to focus your attention.  I've learned four different forms of meditation -- TM, the one I do regularly, which is a Hindu mantra based meditation, Mindfulness, which can be done in different ways but is basically watching your breath, Shinay, a Tibetan Buddhist meditation where you watch a point in front of you, and a Taoist meditation.  There are a million of them, but what I like about learning them in a spiritual setting is that they get you to start meditation without you realizing it.  If you learn it from a relaxation standpoint, you know you're meditating and you don't know the derivation of the technique.  I'll tell a funny story, though.  I had a relationship with a devout follower of a form of Tibetan Buddhism, and yet, at home, whenever we would "sit," their term for meditating, she would almost instantly fall over slowly and go to sleep.  So it goes.  

[specialmom]

This particular forum is for the disorder of anxiety.  We don't answer questions here ever about risk and I'm sure you've already been to the other forum to ask about that.  Your answer was probably that you didn't have a risk.  What we can talk about here is that your logical brain is being overruled by your anxiety. Health anxiety is real. The fear you have, the symptoms of anxiety you have which could be a panic feeling, a burning chest, non stop ruminating all could be anxiety related. A therapist could be very beneficial to give you tools to reframe your thinking.  To get to a point where you can use coping tools.  If you can find a therapist that works a lot with anxiety, this could change the way you deal with this and maybe even the way you think so you can move past the fear. There are a lot of books on the subject too which you could start immediately.  The most important thing to remember is that anxiety can feel horrible but in the small picture, won't hurt you.  But in the big picture, leaving it unchecked it does impact your life negatively.  So, get some help with it. Lifestyle things like proper sleep, nutrition and getting exercise is very important.  I have been doing 'yoga for anxiety'.  That's all i searched and found lots of videos to try.  It's mostly just yoga with a few extra soothing things thrown in but it can be calming.  Meditation apps like headspace or calm are also calming.  I was never big on meditation but the way Calm works (the one I use), it's easy to follow and get into. So, work on this issue from the anxiety perspective and let the blood fear go. Blood won't ruin your life, but anxiety can.