Punch Drunk

It's been a week of ups and downs. For the most part, Cactus has been managing much better with getting up, ready and out into the car for the school run. Her brothers have taken to wearing headphones in the car too, so journeys are pretty much silent bar the occasional leakage of music from a badly fitting earbud.

But we've also seen ourbursts of hurtful, spiteful venom when the Miso Monster is triggered. However much I explain to the boys (and to myself) that these flashes of anger and disgust are reflex and involuntary, it still hurts to be on the receiving end. "Shut up!" "You're disgusting!" "You're revolting!" "Shut up or I will slam your face into the f'ing table!"

In all the reading I've been doing about misophonia the emphasis is - quite rightly - on understanding and supporting the sufferer. But I've found very little on supporting their siblings, the ones who are usually their main triggers and thus the targets for the Miso Monster's wrath. Me? I have skin like a rhino but it gets to me, and even as I try my very best to understand and help Cactus I recognise the steady drip, drip effect of repetitive trauma in my other 2 children.

Imagine someone you loved had a condition that caused them to punch you repeatedly in the face. It was a proper medical condition, and you knew they couldn't help it. And you had little choice but to stand there and take it. And you loved that person, and you thought they loved you. And you understood completely that they weren't doing it deliberately. And yet they kept punching you in the face.

Would each punch hurt any less?