What if it is not only the person that tips over, but the room as well?
Mental distress is usually considered something deeply personal. Depression, anxiety, irritability, aggressive impulses, withdrawal, or family conflicts are often understood as consequences of biography, personality, or overload. But what if the environment also plays a larger role than previously assumed? What if the air in indoor spaces influences mood, stress tolerance, and interpersonal behavior more strongly than we realize?
In Dicke Luft, we tell of a disturbing question that emerged only very late: could something outside ourselves have influenced our moods, the dynamics of our arguments, and our psychological crashes? Could it be that some of what we interpreted as personal character, relationship problems, or mental illness was at least partly also connected to polluted indoor air?
When Conflict Becomes Normality
Many patterns of behavior are quickly turned into identity in everyday life. One person is seen as irritable, another as oversensitive, someone else as aggressive, depressed, or difficult. That is exactly how our book portrays it too: misunderstandings, accusations, conflicting perceptions, and the feeling of living in two different realities. What looked like a purely relationship or family problem only later took on another dimension for us.
Arguments that begin indoors
At some point, the question changed for us. No longer just: why are we arguing? But: where do the arguments begin? The answer was frighteningly simple. In rooms. Our conflicts began strikingly often indoors and ended differently outdoors, calmer, more solvable, less destructive. Even in childhood, the book describes a similar pattern: outside, games remained peaceful; inside, the mood became irritable and conflict-ridden more quickly.
Family Conflict as a Warning Signal
That is exactly why family conflicts belong here thematically. The book describes not only tensions between us, but also how, in another household, depressive mood, chronic fatigue, anxiety, and family conflict changed noticeably under altered air quality. Father and son, who had previously done little but argue, suddenly began solving problems together. That is what makes the question so uncomfortable: what if some family tensions are shaped not only psychologically, but also physically and environmentally?
Indoor Air as a Possible Amplifying Factor
We are not claiming that mental illness or family conflicts are generally caused by poor indoor air. It is not that simple. But Dicke Luft asks another question: could indoor air be a relevant amplifying factor in some cases? Could it influence thinking ability, sensory processing, sleep, mood, and conflict behavior in such a way that people enter a state they can only experience as personal or family failure? The book explicitly understands itself as a personal search for clues, not as a simple final explanation.
Why We Are Writing About This
Dicke Luft is a true story about mental crises, irritability, family conflicts, and the disturbing possibility that we were looking for the cause in the wrong place. The book connects personal experience with scientific indications of the health relevance of indoor air and invites readers to view mental strain, patterns of behavior, and relationship conflicts from a new perspective.
Perhaps the Search Begins Somewhere Else
Perhaps in many cases psychological problems and conflicts are exactly what psychology currently understands them to be: complex states with many causes, biographical imprints, and situational triggers. But perhaps polluted rooms also lower the threshold at which irritability, overload, and conflict come to the forefront. Perhaps indoor air is not the whole explanation. But perhaps it is a missing piece of the puzzle.
And perhaps the crucial question begins not only in the psyche, but also in the environment that unnoticed shapes our mood, resilience, and behavior.
