Hii .....i m facing a new problem 3 days ago I had dropped a neighbour boy on my bike to some destination at my town.today I came to know that he is a hiv infected patient....now I m afraid of contracting HIV...this thought troubles me a lot ....

@girin I do agree that it is, but I also don't think it's practical to spend our lives in the dark whenever a question which happens to cause us anxiety. Like, if it actually was highly contagious and the best thing to do would be to stay away from the boy, it would be highly advisable to find that out and take the sensible precautions. I also answered so as to educate, both them and the community- I have a degree partly in the sociology of health and illness, it's shocking how many people don't know anything about HIV or its history and behave in a prejudiced way out of reflex.

@girin If after my comment or after speaking to a Dr, he still mulls over whether somehow the boy had his own blood or semen on him and the OP came into contact with it, then ate his dinner without washing his hands, etc, then he definitely needs to sit with it without asking for reassurance or imagining worst case scenarios or trying to get tested, etc. I just do think that it should be ok to look for the preliminary answer to something we genuinely don't know.

@Scoggy Exactly! The desire for knowledge on a topic you’re not familiar with is not just NON-pathological, it’s entirely normal and healthy. OCD is an anxiety disorder, not a personality disorder. The problem isn’t that we want to know, it’s that we have an inordinate amount of difficulty ACCEPTING what we know. This is why I dislike defining OCD as “an intolerance for uncertainty” and much prefer phrasing like “a skewed perspective on probability” and “a difficulty with accepting likelihood.” One could argue that they all end up meaning the same thing in the end, but I like where the latter two place the focus better than the traditional.