Good. I thought it would all be negative.
For people who believe they have herpes despite repeated negative testing it is very difficult to get them to believe otherwise, honestly. It is a syndrome that I have witnessed over all my years in this business. I think usually there are a few things at play:
1) some kind of sexual experience outside of their normal sexual experiences that they don’t feel good about or comfortable about.
2) they read symptoms of herpes on the internet and pick and chose which symptoms they have that fit what they see on the internet and decide that must be what they have
3) They are extremely unwilling to give up the idea that they are infected with herpes
I suggest to people that if they want to believe that they have herpes despite testing to the contrary, they can decide to live as though they have herpes. I mean, what else is there to do? They need to tell sex partners they believe they have herpes, they have to purchase medicine for herpes, they have to avoid sex when they have the symptoms they believe are herpes, all of that. Sometimes once they start all of that, they decide that it is ridiculous and give it up. But sometimes, they decide to live as though they have herpes anyway. The thing is, you have to live one way or the other. Being in limbo about herpes is not fun. However, some people live that way anyway. I really don’t pretend to fully understand this. Sometimes people chose to see therapy to help them work with this problem and that can work too.
Best,
Terri