What’s trivial to one person can be traumatic for another. He doesn’t sound reactive to ‘minor’ things eg kids, dog acting up, work etc.
True that it varies from person to person, but I’d have thought these are all every day type of issues and events. It depends what context and experience you have to measure it against, of course. If he’s been lucky enough to not yet have experienced a major stressful life event, these things may seem major to him. Or on the other hand, if he’s currently majorly stressed out about something, the minor things may be looming larger than their true proportion for him at the moment. If it’s the latter, for his own sake he needs to de-stress as far as poss. Difficult times, of course!
I too would have a strong negative reaction to a cat that was damaging my furnishings and carpets, leaving fine hair all over the house, knocking over ornaments and stinking my home out because it prefers a litter tray to going outdoors. Oh and bringing dead animals indoors. Those are not minor things to me, they’d cause me a lot of stress.
To me they are very minor. I guess it depends on your experience and value system. I like to live in a nice home, but I wouldn’t place that desire over and above the emotional needs of my loved ones. I value people (and pets!) over things. Others are more oriented to stuff. If I was that irritated about things being damaged I’d look to be working (further!) on my own resilience. Each to their own, of course, but the trouble here is that he doesn’t live alone, and his intolerance will negatively impact on his family.
If he has the time and money to afford hypnotherapy and acupuncture though. They are expensive and require a lot of sessions to see results. He probably just wants rid of the indoor cat instead of treating himself with therapy and alternative medicine. I don’t think even a hypnotherapist could convince him to like the indoor cat at this stage!
The acupuncture would need quite a few sessions, I’m guessing, so could be expensive, yes. The hypnotherapy would only need a few sessions, as it’s such a quick mode of therapy. So not that expensive. We don’t know if they can afford it or not, but £3-400 may well be doable, and why would he not do that if it means he doesn’t upset his wife and kids? It wouldn’t need to be about leaning to love the cat, but he could certainly learn not to get so riled up by it, and it could stop the allergy. I’d certainly expect my own DH to give it a try before I got rid of a much loved pet. I wouldn’t see it as a lot to ask, provided the money wasn’t completely out of the question.
I suspect we’ll never agree on this Hike, as we have such opposite views!