How to Deal with Your First Herpes Outbreak

If you’ve just gotten herpes and you are in a ton of pain physically and emotionally, I know what you are going through. 

Sometimes when I look back I think it’s the physical pain that is the most. And then there are other times I think, no, it’s the emotional pain. Regardless they are both there and you are probably feeling something that you have never felt before. 

First of all, I want you to take a deep breath and know that everything is going to be okay. I know it doesn’t feel that way but you will get through this. Remember, every storm runs out of rain. 

Let’s get back to how to deal with your first herpes outbreak. Hopefully you have been diagnosed, if not then the easiest way is going through HerpAlert. If you’ve been diagnosed then you have probably prescribed the antiviral. The good news with the antiviral is that it will start suppressing the virus and will help you to start feeling better. I’m not a doctor so I can not tell you to take it or not but typically the antiviral is prescribed to take 500 mg in the am and 500 mg in the pm. This way the medicine is in your system and is fighting the acute outbreak. 

Now that you are starting to feel better let’s talk about the emotional pain and trauma that you are experiencing. 

There are a ton of emotions that come up. Some are fear, betrayal, anger, hurt, scared, confusion. Then we start to wonder why me or how did this happen, when did this happen, who did I get this from and so on. I want you to know that all of these feeling are normal. And its okay to feel this way. The roller coaster of emotional are part of the diagnosis as well as part as the healing process.

We go through flight, fight or freeze. The people that ignore the diagnosis and are in the fight mode. It’s their way of coping with it. This can look like numbing the pain phically with substances or just never dealing with it. I’d like to encourage you to deal with your emotions. Eventually you will have to deal with your herpes diagnosis and it’s easier now while it is fresh and raw opposed to years down the way. 

I can remember thinking why did this happen to me. How is this possible. I thought I had done everything right and so therefore I’d never get a STI and especially herpes. 

Here is what helped me deal with the emotions head on. I learned how common herpes really was. 2/3 have HSV1 and 1 out of 6 have HSV2. With herpes being this common, it was a surprise that not more people were talking about it and that more people didn’t have it. When I started to realize that all herpes was was a stigma and that the only way to break away from this was to learn how to break away from the stigma.

I’ll be honest it took me 2 years of working on it before I got the confidence to break up and move on. But getting herpes was what I needed to learn who I was, gain my confidence and become the person I was supposed to be. 

There are other blogs where I talk about what types of products to use or take when you are first diagnosed but today I really wanted to talk about emotionally. So what I’m saying is it’s important to emotionally heal. It took me 2 years and that is not something I want for you so this is why I created the Secret Society. It’s our online community of people from all over the world who are living with herpes. We have 2 live calls a week and its a secret chat group.

You can learn more here