My 7 year old has a bad cough right now and it is going to send me into a nervous breakdown. Every single cough just sets me on edge. We’ve tested twice and it’s not Covid. He can continue camp so it’s not like early days where a cough meant no child care for 2 weeks. But I think I’ve got some post-Covid trauma in the form of a tiny anxiety-rage whenever my kids cough. Just wondering if anyone else feels this way.
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YES, all coughs make me feel rage-y. I felt this way before covid though, so it's not really the anxiety part, just the micro-rage. (Although we've spent so much of the past 6 months being ill in one form or another any coughs or runny noses definitely make me feel dread).
I've explained this to my husband before and he thinks I am crazy, but I believe it's called misophonia? Like when people get angry at the sound of other people chewing? It makes me feel really guilty because I know no one is coughing on purpose and my response is completely irrational but it drives me up a wall.
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I definitely get triggered by it, but it’s less rage than anxiety/panic. My daughter nearly died at birth because her lungs weren’t strong enough and then a few months later Covid broke out, so probably some PTSD there. I do get ragey when other people cough near my kid though.
She’s vaccinated now (FINALLY) so I’m more confident that Covid wouldn’t kill her, but after two years of constant vigilance and that anxiety is just so ingrained now.
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Yes! But I've been like that since DS was a baby (and he's 9 now!). He had bad reflux and some feeding issues, so a bad cough meant choking and/or puking. He would also have a really hard time sleeping with a cough, so I got used to being on alert and not getting enough sleep if he had a cough. Now when my 2 year old coughs, I get so anxious, even though she sleeps through way more coughing than I even could and has no reflux issues.
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100%. So many feelings like what does this mean for child care, are you going down? Do you have a fever? Was that a fluke cough? Who have we seen recently? When should we test again? do you have a tickle, drink some water! Then my toddler thinks it’s funny to fake cough because he’s learned how and the 7 year old encourages it and I just want to lose it.
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So it's not a cough...but my 7 year old has chronic allergy issues and she's ALWAYS sniffling. The first year of the pandemic when she was basically home nonstop, I didn't think much of it since I knew she hadn't picked anything up (and even if she had, it at least wouldn't have changed our school/childcare situation since I was homeschooling). But once she went back to school and I had to think through if it's her "normal" stuffiness or a "getting sick" stuffiness, it became more of a thing. And we spent more money in covid tests than I even want to think about to be sure we could send her in to school and to be ready for the phone call from school when someone thought she was extra sniffly and needed to come home. We finally found an allergy med regimen that seems to be working, so I'm not second guessing it quite as much - fingers crossed it keeps working.
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Thanks for the sympathy, ladies. I felt like a horrible person because I was reacting to my son as if he was coughing on purpose to annoy me. I could tell myself he wasn't but then after a coughing fit I'd still lose my cool. UGH! Thankfully he's on the mend so the rage is subsiding - until the next cold.
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6 comments