Anxiety Causing STD Symptoms - Help!
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Hi so I'm in a bit of a predicament. I'm a 21 year old female have had anxiety for years, and I think it's starting to give me physical symptoms of an STD. A little bit of a backstory - I contracted oral HSV 1 three months ago. I got antivirals and everything, and it cleared up in about a week and a half. Two weeks after the breakout (I don't think I had any open sores at this point) I had a sexual encounter and used my spit as lubricant. Now I know you can pass it to yourself genitally but in the moment completely forgot. I made the mistake of doing extensive internet research about a month after, yet I had no symptoms present. As soon as I started doing my research, I started getting symptoms such as itchiness, but never had a sore. I got two different bumps checked out by two different doctors and both ended up being ingrown hairs They swabbed them and everything and it came back negative.
I also have sciatica, which gives me lower back pain and hip and groin tingling and numbness. All the sites say tingling precedes a herpes outbreak, so naturally I panic every time I get tingling, even though the tingling in the groin is the same side as the sciatica is on so it makes sense that the sciatica causes it. The tingling is also never followed by any sort of blister or anything, but I've convinced myself it's genital herpes. I've been pretty itchy down there recently as well, but logically itchiness isn't exclusively herpes. I religiously examine myself multiple times a day, take pictures, an obsess over this issue. I've also stopped all hair removal because every time I have an ingrown hair I think it's herpes. Even the most minor, nonpainful bumps down there that never manifest into sores/blisters/etc. send me into a panic and crying and I start getting symptoms like tingling and itching.
It just seems that my overthinking causes me to get physical symptoms. When I talked to my OB he said that if I haven't had a breakout then there isn't anything to worry about but I can't stop convincing myself that I'm asymptomatic. I know a blood test wouldn't do anything because I'd come up positive for HSV1 since I have it orally. I haven't been sexually active since that encounter 3 months ago either, so I wouldn't have contracted it from anyone else. I can't help but feeling like my anxiety is causing my symptoms. I've also had a second oral breakout when I got the flu so I feel like I would've had a genital breakout at the same time since my immune system was down, but like I've mentioned I've never had any sores. All the signs point to my anxiety (and sciatica) causing the "herpes" symptoms yet I can't shake the feeling that I gave myself genital HSV1, despite no actual symptoms except general ones like itchiness. The problem too is that itchy genitals can be caused by lots of things. Has anyone else experienced something like this? Could my anxiety (and maybe the constant poking around down there) be manifesting itself into physical symptoms?
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