A few questions about anxiety

ok so yeah, hi everybody. im not new to this site, but i am new to this forum. so a couple of weeks ago (i think 3 now) i had unprotected sex with one of my friends. yes i know a big no no. but it was my first time and i wasn't really thinking. so yes my first time, not hers. she on the other hand has had unprotected sex before. so a few days after the event i started freaking out like what if i have hiv :| and stuff like that. so about 5 or 6 days later i started to get diarrhea, uneasyness, loss of appetite, fast heartbeat, chills, shaking, headaches, and i seemed...disconnected? from everything, . like i was there, but i wasn't really there, it was like i was looking through someone elses eyes. its hard to explain, and like every little thing was another symptom of hiv then i found this site and i joined the forum hiv/aids. i started asking questions about what had happened and if i could have hiv. my answers were its highly unlikely to get symptoms only 5 days after exposure and just calm down you can't diagnos hiv with symptoms. but i couldn't stop thinking about it. it never left my mind. then after a few days everything stopped and i was normal again. then i think i caught a cold, maybe about a week ago. i got a sore throat and a stuffy nose, and i just lost it all over again. i started thinking "omg this is hiv" and i went into a tail spin again and i got a sore neck and shoulders, more diarrhea, loss of appetite, more headaches. all these match with symptoms of hiv, but oddly enough those are the only ones i got. i never got anything like swollen glands or a fever or night sweats. so in about thirteen days im going to get tested for hiv and im scared. all the people in hiv/aids have helped me soo much. they tell me the likelyhood of me contracting hiv from my encounter is very low. but im still afraid of going to get tested...what if they're wrong? so pretty much my question here is

are all these "symptoms" that i was feeling from my anxiety?

can anxiety and stress really do all that to your body?

oh and one other thing. today i got this tingling feeling in my feet and my left hand...can anxiety be causing that?

thanks in advance for your help, i really appreciate it

Post Edited (needadvice_1717) : 4/13/2007 2:27:48 PM (GMT-6)

so should i really be stressing this much about having hiv? i mean like the girl i had sex with has had unprotected sex with about 3-4 guys in the past year (shes on the patch) but we live in southern ontario. and from what they told me in hiv/aids the hiv rate in canada and the united states is low.

yeah no kidding about unprotected sex. like this whole thing has changed my life. i realize now all the great things i have and how much i want children and to grow old and my kids have kids. and i realize now how fast all that can be taken away. i pray every night that god will forgive me and that i turn out negative in my upcoming test.

haha thanx man. ive actually never had anxiety before this tho. like i get nervous and stuff. but nothing ever as bad as this. and your right once i start thinking about it all i do is search for symptoms of it and then i just like create them in my head and it just makes it worse.

Anxiety can get real nasty, I couldn't feel my hands or feet and my mouth became numb all due to our horrible little friend, when I was at a really bad point.

  Hi 1717

A lot of ppl that do have anxiety go around looking for anwsers on the net thinking the worst as anxiety mimics so miny other things with the same symptoms we tend to become more hypersensitive to are body's making it worst on us and if you do dwell on it for to long you could end up having a Panic Attack from it, but I really don't think you have hiv in most cases one must have an open wound and the transfer of blood to get aids

  Cowboy up

i keep telling myself that over and over. and i know she wasn't on her period, she just hadn't had sex in a while. but like shes going to get tested on the 26th and im going with her, and im just losing my mind. how do i learn about anxiety anyway? like everything i see on my body now is another sign of hiv. i just can't shake it and its killing me

no i didn't have an open sore. but its just scary cause all you hear about is how people get hiv from unprotected sex and the media makes it seem like as soon as you have unprotected sex you get hiv. and i just feel so stupid and guilty cause my parents have provided so much for me and i could have just thrown it all away in one night. and yes i have talked to her and we're going on the 26th to get tested

As has been said, the media and government agencies promote protected sex for many reasons, and they use scare tactics to get the message across. I don't have a problem with that because it's still a good message. Having unprotected sex really is a bad thing to do.

But the odds of contracting HIV/AIDS is a lot lower than one would think. You could both be bleeding, have sex, and odds are you wouldn't be infected. It's actually a pretty difficult disease to transmit vaginally. If you had sex with her 20 times, well, that would be risky. And the risk is higher with anal sex, obviously. The reason some third world countries (mainly subsaharan Africa) have so many troubles is because for many years they did NOTHING to prevent the spread of AIDS. To a certain extent, they're still not. Condom use is still rare in Africa...it's a cultural thing. So there you have more disease and people who have sex more often than we do and with more partners. And virtually none of that sex is protected. So, yeah, they have a big problem.

The odds that you've contracted any STD, much less AIDS, from this girl are very low. Try to concentrate on that as much as you can. I know it's hard, but try. In the meantime we'll be here for you.

thanx for the help you guys. you have no idea how much this is helping me, but i just get so scared, like i can hardly eat today, and im so tired, and even my vision seems messed up. this the waiting for this test will kill me before anything.

oh and can this anxiety and stress that i have cause those purplish red marks i was taking about? theres only two, and theyre close together on my side just about my hip. they're not very big and i haven't noticed them before and theyre not going away.

here is a pic of them, they're a little hard to see but if you look close they're there...they were darker before...

http://img261.imageshack.us/my.php?image=dsc00526xx1.jpg

Post Edited (needadvice_1717) : 4/15/2007 3:40:36 PM (GMT-6)

needadvice, i'm really glad you are finding the anxiety forum helpful, but could you please keep your questions to either the hiv forum or the anxiety forum, and not both? its just that we have rules about duplicate posts. thanks for understanding!

gah i know, its tough to see...my camera isn't the best, but they're deffinately there. i was in the hiv forum for a while and it only takes 2-4 weeks for symptoms to show up. but my question isn't if that is hiv related. i just want to know (whether or not you guys can see them) if anxiety can cause blemishes under the skin?

ok well thank you anyway. and people with hiv get symptoms of it 2-4 weeks in, then they feel fine. they may not get sick until 10 years later...when they develop aids.