My personal stress alarm (phantom smells)

Do you always know when you’re stressed or affected by something?

I thought I did, until a few years ago, when it felt like my mind and body got together and played a trick on me.

Several years ago, I started smelling cigarette smoke intermittently in the house. As an ex-smoker, I enjoy the occasional faint smell of tobacco. I didn’t think anything of it and put it down to it being from one of the neighbours. A few weeks passed and I noticed the smell at random times and places I wouldn’t expect to smell smoke.

Sometimes, the smell was so strong that it made me sneeze. Occasionally, I had to hold my breath or covered my nose to stop smelling it! It started to bother me. But later I noticed that, when I paid attention to the smell and focused on it at the tip of my nose, it disappeared, as if it was teasing me! Did I imagine it?

I almost broke Google quietly searching for answers and couldn’t find anything conclusive, so I concluded that:

A. I’m possibly dying - brain tumour

B. I’m having a breakdown

C. I’m being haunted by evil spirits and they’re trying to tell me something (perhaps this was my deep-rooted Asian influence)

An article by Dr DeVere (2012) in Brain&Life explained the two types of olfactory hallucinations. The one that comes on suddenly and lasts for a few minutes is usually due to an electrical fault in the brain, and can be caused by a brain tumour, stroke, or head injury. The other type where the smell lasts longer than a few minutes or hours can often be caused by damage to the olfactory system due to an infection, nose/head injury, or tumours. Walsh (2020) published in The Harvard Gazette some interesting findings from Venkatesh Murthy, a Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology,

“Odors take a direct route to the limbic system, including the amygdala and the hippocampus, the regions related to emotion and memory.“

This theory lends itself to the article from anxietycentre.com, which reported that many people suffering from anxiety also experienced phantom smells, and the root cause is related to the stress responses that affect our physiological functions. (Folk, 2022) The symptoms reported by anxietycentre.com are more closely aligned with mine, but I needed to be sure. Eventually, I saw a doctor and had various tests and a scan. Frustratingly, the results confirmed that nothing was physically wrong with me. Instead of feeling relieved, I was disappointed at the lack of concrete answers - OK, I’m not dying, now what?

Some time went by and I mentioned it to my counsellor. Strangely, I never felt this was relevant to bring up when it all began. Looking back, I believe I felt that my physical health wasn’t a priority in the therapy room at the time. But together with my counsellor, we began to look at it more closely, from a non-medical perspective. It came to light that the phantom smell started not long after I learned about my dad’s terminal illness, which coincided with starting my personal therapy. I thought I had been ‘handling’ life just fine; I didn’t think I was any more stressed or affected than expected.

Was I running on my reserve tank and that was running low? Was I stressing out my engine without knowing it?

My counsellor, who by then, knew me pretty well, highlighted that considering my childhood and life experiences, my tolerance to certain situations may be quite high, which could give an impression that I was fine. Maybe I have been more affected than I realised? When I thought about it, smelling cigarette smoke felt very fitting! Back in another life when I was a smoker, I would have turned to cigarettes as a way to relax and decompress. If I was honest with myself, self-care wasn’t my top priority at the time. I also didn’t fully allow myself to connect with certain aspects of my relationship with my dad and his inevitable death.

More time went by, and the smell came and went as it had been. Sometimes, it was just for a very brief moment, other times, it lasted days or weeks. It seemed this strange phenomenon wasn’t going to go away.

So if it wasn’t going away, how can I live with it differently, without stressing about it? The only thing I knew I could control was my relationship with it.

I thought about how shallow breaths and racing heart often meant I was anxious or stressed; I wondered what the phantom smell was trying to tell me. I decided to stop fighting or getting annoyed with it. Instead, I acknowledged it and talked to it - “Hi. Ok, so I know you’re here. Are you trying to tell me something? Something I need to look at?”

When I gave it time and openly tried to understand it, I wasn’t surprised by what came up. I feared to admit how much I loved my dad, despite our fractured relationship, and I secretly hoped he would become the father I wish I had, despite my age and that he was dying. I avoided sharing this with my counsellor for a while. At the time, I felt silly and weak to have those hopes and feelings. But we got it all out and worked through it until the feelings shifted from shame to sadness.

Eventually, the smell became my internal alarm system and I think of it as a concerned friend.

When it was present, I acknowledged it and thanked it for signalling me to pause, reflect, and assess my external and internal world, to see if anything was bubbling underneath the surface. I’m pleased to report that I don’t smell the smoke as often these days, and when I do, I can identify quite quickly why. I noticed that, lately, when it visited, it has been when I haven’t given myself enough mental downtime, or time and space to connect to the sadness I held for certain situations.

I would like to acknowledge though that, my experience with phantom smell could have been an undiagnosed medical condition which had improved by itself. But as nothing was medically identified, the most impactful for me was the meaning I gave it and my relationship with it - these helped to soften my internal struggles. If you experience any unexplained physical symptoms, please seek medical advice in the first instance.

Have you experienced something similar? What was it like for you? If you want to work through it together, please don’t hesitate to get in touch for a free 15-minute intro chat.