Scared To Tell You’re HIV Positive — Especially Friends, Partner Etc

I wanted to share some tips I learned along the way that helped me overcome this fear of rejection by Disclosing my HIV status, and I hope they help you too.

Figure Out:

The first tip is to figure out why you are scared to tell them what you want to do. Here it will be a little bit of an interactive exercise to help you out. Take a piece of paper and pen out. I was hoping you could write down precisely what aspect of the hiv disclosure worries you the most. The basic concept here is that you need to understand the origin of the problem before you try to tackle it to find the correct solution.

So, for example, let’s say it’s your first time disclosing your hiv status, and you have no idea what to tell the solution. You would need to practice until you get comfortable enough with it that you can go out on your own and disclose your status. That’s going to be a tip.

For example, what if someone already rejected you and now you’re worried that someone else will leave you that? Everyone is different; just because one person refuses doesn’t mean everyone will reject you. So try to have an Optimistic, positive mindset towards the disclosure, and of course, the list goes on, and you could always think of reasons. Why you’re scared to tell someone, you’re hiv positive but in essence, find the problem before you try to tackle it with an excellent solution to that particular problem.

Face Your Fear:

Face the fear of what happens if you don’t because that’s scarier, and that should be giving you more worries when you think about the consequences of not addressing your fear of rejection. You begin to realise that not only are you hurting yourself more, but you’re also hurting other people around you. So it is not a win-win situation, and it’s just a lose-lose situation. Two key examples come into mind that have personally affected me.

The first one is you never fully open yourself to the idea Of love and being vulnerable with someone when you think about it when you’re too scared to tell someone you’re positive. The easier route is to avoid that situation entirely, so maybe you get close to someone to the point where you could tell them you’re positive and be physical with them, but what’s so much easier is not facing that potential rejection.

So, I’m going to take a step back and avoid that altogether when you realise you’re just self-sabotaging a relationship and you’re choosing to end that relationship. You find out that you’re missing out on a massive part of life because you will never be able to love or be vulnerable with someone entirely, and when you let that sink in a little bit, that’s just sad, like you want to experience life to the fullest. By being too scared to tell someone, you’re HIV positive.

Disclose Before Involving In Sex:

You’re never allowing yourself to get there now. For the second example, you risk putting yourself in a situation where you have to tell them after having sex instead of telling them before when you think about it. If you’re too scared to tell someone before having sex because you’re scared to get rejected, only imagine how terrifying this fear will become when you have to say it to them afterward, like you’re digging yourself a grave. So you might as well tell them before and Address this fear of rejection, so all of this is working against you. Try to wrap your mind around that, so what can you do about it? Get ready for this one because it is a game changer, but it took the most work.

Focus on You:

The third thing is to focus on you and not on HIV. The more attention you put on HIV, the more you allow others to put that attention on HIV, and this can be especially detrimental if that attention is negative towards HIV. This is genuinely a Huge mindset shift, and it will not happen overnight. This requires a lot of work to change the way your mind approaches or thinks about you being HIV positive, I often think, at least at the beginning for me. I always felt like HIV was defining me rather than explaining what it means to be hiv positive, so the way I think about it.