Have you ever gone somewhere, spent most of the time sitting down, and come home completely exhausted?

Maybe you met a friend for lunch. Went to church. Sat through a doctor's appointment. Attended a family gathering.

You weren't doing anything particularly physical.

So why did it take so much out of you?

Physical activity isn't the only thing drawing from your available capacity. Sometimes the world around you is asking your brain to process far more than you realize.

Noise. Light. Movement. Conversation. People. Background activity. Trying to listen while several other things are happening around you.

In The Hidden Energy Drains You May Not Be Counting, I talked about some of the less obvious demands on your energy, including thinking, decision-making, emotions, and task switching. But sometimes the energy drain isn't just coming from what you're doing. It's coming from what's happening around you.

And when you add social interaction to all of that, an activity that looks restful from the outside can become surprisingly demanding.

Your brain is processing more than you realize

A restaurant is a great example.

You might be sitting comfortably at a table, but your brain is doing a tremendous amount of work. There may be music playing, dishes clattering, people walking past, conversations happening at the tables around you, bright lights, smells coming from the kitchen, and someone across the table trying to have a conversation with you.

Your brain has to sort through all of that sensory information while figuring out what deserves your attention and what it can ignore.

And with Long COVID, that filtering process may not work the way it used to.

Sensory sensitivity and sensory overload are increasingly being recognized as part of the neurocognitive picture of Long COVID. Research has documented increased sensitivity to things like noise and light, which helps explain why environments you barely noticed before can suddenly feel overwhelming.

Think about some of the other places where this can happen. A crowded grocery store. Driving in heavy traffic. A waiting room with a television playing. A family gathering where several conversations are happening at once. Even sitting at home with the television on while you're scrolling through your phone and someone is talking to you.

You aren't necessarily doing anything physically strenuous.

But your brain is still processing.

This is why physical rest and sensory rest aren't always the same thing.

Reducing the sensory load

If sensory input is taking a lot out of you, start noticing which environments seem to leave you particularly depleted. You don't necessarily have to avoid them altogether. Sometimes relatively small changes can reduce the load.

You might shop when the store is quieter. Turn off the television when you're trying to have a conversation. Lower the brightness on your screen. Sit somewhere quieter in a restaurant. Use earplugs or noise-reducing headphones when appropriate.

I keep a pair of Loop earplugs in my purse for exactly this reason. I ring handbells at church, and without the earplugs, the bells are simply too loud for me. Wearing them reduces the amount of sound I'm dealing with while still allowing me to participate in something I enjoy. I also use them when the noise at a restaurant or other public place is a bit too much.

That's an important part of energy awareness. The answer isn't always, “I can't do this anymore.” Sometimes the better question is, “Is there a way I can change this so it costs me less?”

When you've already had too much input

Sometimes you don't realize you've had too much sensory input until you're already overloaded.

When that happens to me, one of the things that helps me settle things back down is listening to a podcast called 8 Hour Sleep Music (Apple Podcasts | Spotify | podcast website). Despite the name, I don't always use it for sleep. They have some episodes that are simply a steady soundtrack of rain and others that are pure brown noise, with no music added.

Not all of their episodes are like that, and I've found that the ones without music work better for me when I'm trying to recover from too much sensory input. Even relaxing music gives my brain something else to process. The steady rain or brown noise gives me sound without adding another layer of stimulation. When I’m having a total meltdown, I’ll connect it to the Bluetooth speaker in our bedroom, crawl under the covers, and turn the steady sound up enough that it blocks out everything else competing for my attention. I call it a hard reset of my brain. It sounds a little counterintuitive to add sound when I’m already overloaded, but for me, one predictable sound is much easier for my brain to handle than everything else coming at me at once. I haven’t had to do this often, but it’s quite effective for me.

That's what works for me. You may find that silence works better for you, or that another consistent, low-stimulation sound helps. This is another place to pay attention to how your own brain responds.

The goal isn't to eliminate sensory input from your life.

It's to recognize that processing all of that information is part of what your brain is doing throughout the day, and to have some tools available when you've had too much.

Social energy can be surprisingly expensive

Spending time with people you enjoy doesn't necessarily feel like work.

But that doesn't mean it isn't using energy.

Having a conversation requires you to listen, process what someone is saying, decide how you want to respond, find the words you need, and stay engaged. If you're dealing with brain fog or word-finding problems, some of those things can take considerably more effort than they used to.

Add several people to the conversation and the demands can increase even more.

Research backs this up. In a 2024 study that followed 376 people with Long COVID, greater social effort was associated with increased fatigue and changes in symptoms, including into the following day.

That doesn't mean socializing is bad for you or that you should stop spending time with people.

Enjoyable does not necessarily mean energy-neutral.

You can have a wonderful lunch with a friend and still need to rest afterward. You can enjoy spending time with your family and reach the point where your brain has had enough. You can have a great time at a party and still need to plan for the energy it will cost you.

Recognizing that cost actually gives you more options.

Maybe you meet a friend for an hour instead of spending the whole afternoon together. Maybe you choose a quiet coffee shop instead of a busy restaurant. Maybe you schedule some downtime after church instead of coming home and immediately tackling your to-do list.

You aren't saying the activity wasn't worth it.

You're simply accounting for it.

Sensory and social demands often overlap

One reason social activities can be difficult to account for is that you're often dealing with more than one kind of demand at the same time.

Lunch with a friend isn't just a conversation. You may also be processing restaurant noise, music, movement, smells, and other conversations around you.

A family gathering isn't only social interaction. It may include several conversations happening at once, people moving around, children playing, a television in the background, and a lot more stimulation than you normally have at home.

This is why looking only at the activity itself doesn't always tell you how much it will cost.

The setting matters too.

You might find that talking with a friend at home is much easier than having the same conversation in a crowded restaurant. Or that you can spend time with several family members more comfortably when the television isn't playing in the background.

You're not necessarily changing the thing you want to do.

You're looking for ways to reduce some of the extra demands surrounding it.

Put on your Personal Health Detective hat

Start paying attention to the environments and interactions that seem to take the most out of you.

Were you somewhere noisy, bright, crowded, or otherwise demanding?

Were several people talking at once?

Did you have to work especially hard to follow the conversation?

Did you feel better in a quieter environment?

Did shortening the visit make a difference?

You don't need to analyze every outing or start avoiding places because they might be too stimulating.

You're looking for patterns.

Maybe you realize that the restaurant matters more than the length of the lunch. Maybe you discover that earplugs allow you to participate in something that otherwise overwhelms you. Maybe you notice that you enjoy a family gathering much more when you give yourself permission to step into a quiet room for a while.

Those are useful clues.

And once you know what makes an activity more demanding for you, you can start experimenting with ways to change the cost.

The goal isn't to avoid the people, places, and experiences that matter to you. It's to understand which parts of the experience are taking the most out of you and look for ways to reduce those demands when you can.

Start by noticing

The next time you come home from somewhere feeling far more depleted than you expected, don't only ask, “What did I do?”

Ask:

“What was my brain dealing with while I was there?”

Think about the sounds, lights, movement, conversations, people, and other demands around you.

Then notice what happens when you change one of those things.

You don't have to solve everything at once.

You're gathering information about what works for you, one clue at a time.

Sometimes changing the conditions around an activity can make it more manageable without giving up the activity itself. The more you notice what your brain is dealing with, the more information you have to make those choices.

References

Physical, cognitive, and social triggers of symptom fluctuations in people living with Long COVID

Neurocognitive symptoms and sensory overload in Long COVID and ME/CFS

Post-COVID noise and light sensitivity