Why Noise Feels Louder Than It Used To
By Wren · July 5, 2026
Who was the Cailleach? The short version, for anyone who wants it.
The Cailleach is ancient. She shaped the mountains by dropping rocks from her apron as she strode across the landscape. She conjures storms. She has been doing this since before recorded time and she does not, it is safe to say, have much patience left for things that waste it.
She is pronounced kal-yuhk, by the way. And she would like a word about the grocery store reorganising the tinned goods aisle.
They moved everything again. The pasta used to be next to the sauces, which made sense, and now it’s on the other side of the store next to the rice, which doesn’t. You know this because you walked the wrong way with a basket for four minutes before you found it. The whole trip took twice as long as it should have and by the time you got to the checkout you were unreasonably irritated about it.
Ten years ago you would have shrugged. Now it feels like a genuine affront.
Is this getting old? Is this becoming your mother? Or is something else going on?
Less Filtering, Not Less Function
Here is the part that is actually interesting. The irritation isn’t imaginary and it isn’t a personality flaw. As we age, the brain’s ability to filter out irrelevant sensory information genuinely changes.
Research from Western University found that older adults’ brains remain sensitive to all sounds in an environment, loud and soft simultaneously, where younger brains can dial down background noise and focus on what matters. The older brain isn’t less capable. It’s actually processing more. It just can’t shut the rest out as efficiently as it used to. ¹
The supermarket, with its announcements and its music and its trolley wheels and its screaming toddler in aisle seven, is a lot. And your brain, unlike it did at 25, is receiving all of it at full volume.
The noise is the same. Your filter is different.
It’s Not Just the Noise
Sound, itchy clothes, overpowering perfume in a small space, the commitment that felt fine when you made it and feels impossible now.
You know your list.
None of these are new. What’s changed is that you used to absorb them without much thought, and now they land differently. The buffer is thinner. The cost is more visible.
This is not you becoming difficult. This is you running an accurate spreadsheet.
If It Feels Like It Got Worse Fast
Age alone shifts the filter. But if yours feels like it fell off a cliff rather than gradually thinned, there are two things worth knowing about.
The first is perimenopause. Oestrogen isn’t only a reproductive hormone. It’s a neuroactive compound that directly influences how the nervous system regulates sensory processing, stress response, and emotional regulation. As levels fluctuate unpredictably during perimenopause, the nervous system’s buffering capacity drops. The grocery store that was merely annoying last year becomes genuinely hard to be in. Call it biology, not drama. ²
The second is ADHD, specifically the version that went undiagnosed for decades because you were female and functional and managed to hold it together through sheer force of will. A lot of women in their 40s are only now getting a diagnosis, partly because perimenopause strips away the coping strategies that masked everything. If sensory sensitivity has been a quiet undercurrent your whole life and it’s suddenly a roar, that context matters.
Neither of these are required. Age does this on its own. But if you’ve been wondering why it feels so sudden, that’s probably why.
So Is This Intolerance, Or Is It Just Honesty?
Here’s where it gets ambiguous. Some of what we call intolerance as we age is genuinely neurological. But some of it is something else: a recalibration of what we’re willing to spend our energy on.
The Cailleach didn’t get ancient by tolerating things that didn’t serve her. She shaped mountains. She had a storm to run. She was not going to stand in the wrong aisle.
By 40 something, most of us have developed a reasonably accurate sense of what costs us and what doesn’t. The nervous system keeps the bill. It’s bookkeeping, not a character flaw.
Calling that intolerance frames it as a failing. It might just be accuracy.
The Bit Where We Don’t Become Antisocial
To be clear: none of this is a case for hermitage. Other people remain, on balance, worthwhile.
But there is a difference between tolerating things because you genuinely don’t mind them and tolerating things because you think you should. The second one is exhausting and there is less reason to do it as you get older, not more.
The Cailleach didn’t avoid people. She just stopped pretending the wind wasn’t cold. She shaped the whole landscape and nobody asked her how she coped with it. She already knew.
¹ Research from Western University found meaningful differences between how younger and older brains respond to competing sounds. Older adults process more sensory input simultaneously but struggle to filter irrelevant noise, which explains increased sensitivity to busy, loud environments. My Hearing Centers has a clear summary of the research.
² Oestrogen plays a significant role in regulating sensory processing, sleep, and stress response via the nervous system. As levels fluctuate during perimenopause these systems become less buffered and more reactive. Aerchitect has a well referenced overview of the nervous system changes during perimenopause, and a peer reviewed paper in PMC covers the neuroscience in depth for anyone who wants to go further.