Indoor Air Quality

Indoors, my body could pause — but it never completed the pause. It felt like settling started and then stopped halfway, leaving me suspended in a state that never fully resolved.

Nothing bad was happening — yet indoors, my body stayed subtly clenched, as if it needed to be ready. The tension wasn’t loud, but it never fully let go.

Indoors, breathing happened — but release didn’t. Even in quiet moments, my body stayed subtly tight, as if it never reached the point of letting go.

It wasn’t just “indoors” — it was how closed the space felt. Smaller rooms, lower ceilings, and tighter environments intensified symptoms in a way open spaces never did.

I tried to accept the anxiety explanation, but it never accounted for why my symptoms followed spaces instead of thoughts. What felt dismissed was actually a pattern no one was asking about.

The relief wasn’t dramatic — it was quiet and unmistakable. Stepping outside didn’t fix me, but it showed me something important about where my body felt safest.

I couldn’t understand why my body unraveled indoors while every test said I was fine. What I eventually recognized wasn’t a medical mystery — it was an environmental pattern no one had taught me to look for.

Once things improved, I felt an unspoken pressure to return to who we were before. But chasing “normal” made me miss what my body was actually asking for — integration, not acceleration.

I kept chasing variables. School. Stress. Schedules. Sensitivity. Everything changed except one thing — and it took me longer than I’d like to admit to notice what never did.

I wanted one clear explanation. One cause I could point to and fix. Instead, what I found was a repeating context — and understanding that changed how I read everything my kids were showing me.