Got Bed Bugs? Bedbugger Forums » Psychological and Health problems caused by bed bugs (besides bites)
Feeling like a head case
(3 posts)-
AwakeAllNight
newbite
Joined: Jul '09
Posts: 5
Posted 3 months ago
Tue Aug 4 2009 23:27:23
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We've been bed bug free for a week! (yay!) I've been sleeping through the night amazingly until last night. I received a mosquito bite as I was walking in the door from work. I am highly highly prone to bug bites. (They must find me to be yummy, I guess) The bug bite began itching while I was of course laying in bed last night, unwinding in front of the TV. I knew that it was not a bed bug bite. I was absolutely sure because no one in my family has seen a bedbug in my house for a week now. I of course, was awake every hour on the hour checking my bed and my sheets. Help! Does this ever go away. I feel as though I'm psychologically scarred from my ordeal with bed bugs. I was the only one in my family to get bit other than my grandmother. Shes fine and sleeps through the night. Is there something wrong with me? My ever patient boyfriend thinks I'm crazy and my mom is worried about me. What do I do?!
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spideyjg
oldtimer
Joined: Jul '08
Posts: 1,405
Posted 3 months ago
Tue Aug 4 2009 23:34:23
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It gets better but you will always get hypervigilant whenever an insect bites or stings you.
Consider it a post traumatic reaction that all BB victims can have. Throughout life you will have bumps, bites, stings, rashes and all manner of skin reaction that will induce concern.
It will get better I promise but vigilance is warranted if you do not know what caused the reaction.
Jim
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buggyinsocal
oldtimer
Joined: Jun '08
Posts: 1,130
Posted 3 months ago
Wed Aug 5 2009 10:26:32
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I got hypervigilant a week ago when a friend of mine had bug bites on her leg at a theater. I'd gotten bitten by bed bugs (90% sure) a few months after my treatment, and the friend in question was staying with my friend who had stayed at the hotel I think I got the bugs from.
I put all those pieces together and had a moment of "Oh my God, my friend has really had bed bugs this whole time and doesn't know it and now I've been exposed again."
I must confess, somewhat embarrassingly, that I took my theater clothes off and put them into a ziplock before bed.
I tell you that story because I got rid of my bed bugs over a year ago with thermal in one treatment, so I should have a lot less lingering anxiety than people who struggled for months, right?
It is true that everyone reacts differently emotionally to bed bugs. Some of us who are already anxious types are far more prone to anxious responses long after. Depending on how old your grandmother is, it's also possible that she remembers bed bugs from her childhood. If that's true, she's not also dealing with the "Oh my God, gross, I didn't even know they existed" factor that some of us have to deal with, you know?
I can tell you this. It does get better over time. I still get a little more cautious now when I develop a bug bite than I did before I had bed bugs. Unlike, say, eight months ago, however, a bug bite now does not send me into an inspection frenzy and make me unable to sleep. Now I just watch the bite for a day, and so long as it doesn't get to be the size and level of itching that my bed bug bites did, I don't do anything differently.
Hang in there, and know that you're not crazy or irrational. You've just been through something that produces a heck of a lot of anxiety in some people, and you're having a perfectly normal response to that. As your brain becomes more and more convinced that the invasion of blood-sucking parasites really is over, it'll stop turning the panic up to 11 at every single possible sign of more. And as fewer of those possible signs of more cause for panic turn up, you'll get less hypervigiliant than you are right now. (Although you'll probably be more vigilant than before, but vigilant is not necessarily a bad thing.)
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