Can Indoor Air Quality Affect Sensory Processing?
When the world feels louder, brighter, and harder to tolerate.
I noticed it first with sound.
Then light. Then texture.
Everything felt just a little too much.
I hadn’t changed — my tolerance had.
Heightened sensory input didn’t mean my senses were broken.
Why sensory processing depends on nervous system capacity
Sensory input is constant.
Filtering it takes energy.
When capacity drops, the world feels unfiltered.
This helped me understand that sensory overwhelm can be a load issue, not a personality trait.
Sensory sensitivity can rise when the nervous system is already busy.
How indoor air strain can reduce sensory tolerance
When the body is managing background stress, it has fewer resources left.
Filtering becomes harder.
I wasn’t reacting more — I was buffering less.
This mirrored what I learned about environments keeping the body in a constant low-grade response, which I explored in how indoor environments can keep the body in a constant stress response.
Reduced capacity can make ordinary input feel overwhelming.
Why sensory ease often returns in different environments
In other spaces, my tolerance widened.
Sounds softened. Light felt manageable.
I didn’t have to brace for the world.
This place-based contrast was the same one I noticed repeatedly, which I described in why you feel better outside but worse the moment you come home.
Environmental relief can restore sensory balance without effort.
Why sensory changes are often misinterpreted
It can look like anxiety.
Or irritability. Or intolerance.
I blamed my reactions instead of questioning the load behind them.
This misunderstanding overlaps with why indoor air experiences are often reframed psychologically, which I explored in why indoor air problems are often dismissed as “psychosomatic”.
Sensory overwhelm doesn’t mean you’re overreacting.