The western blot looks for antibodies to HSV 1 and 2. Half the adult population under 49 has HSV 1 and more as people age. It’s very common. If you have received oral sex in your lifetime, it could either be oral or genital but with no sores to swab anywhere, we cannot know the location of your infection. The good news is that if you have it genitally, it is rarely shed from that location and rarely recurs. If you have it orally, it will be shed a bit more often but without symptoms, you will shed virus less than the person with recurrent cold sores does. You can stop looking inside your mouth. Cold sores will show up most often externally or in your nose.
I think that you and your therapist should be working on 1) the commonality of the virus 2) the likelihood that you will not shed often as it is currently asymptomatic and 3) accepting that we all have stuff we wish we didn’t – many are things we cannot see like meanness or cheapness or obsessions. But this one, you have and so does have the population.
This is new to you and you need time to adjust but thankfully, your blot was negative for HSV 2. Good news and good for you for getting the blot.
You asked your doctor for an STI screen – they were thorough and did more than many and you aren’t happy about the results, but you’ve been living with this for a long time and you’ve been OK all that time. You will be again.
Terri