The smell is killing me

I was reading some post and someone brought up how neighbors are either cooking something good or it smells like burnt popcorn and sadness…

So about a month ago we got some new neighbors downstairs. I haven’t seen or met them. All I know is that they’re fucking loud and they slam all their cupboards every single day.

The day before Thanksgiving we started smelling this super strong incense or spice smell in our living room and it filled up our apartment so much it lingered for 7 hours until we went to sleep. It’s in our hair and couches.

A couple days later, it happened AGAIN! So my bf called the property management and just was concerned like we are getting this invasive strong smell in our apartment and it’s bothering us.

Another couple days later we started to smell it so we had a manager come in to smell it. Oddly, it went away before she got here. Before she came to our apartment she went and talked to our neighbors downstairs and she asked if they were burning anything and they said “nope, we’re just cooking”.

PM lady comes up and tells us that they are cooking and maybe it’s just something ethnic that we’re not used to, so she suggested we go talk to them ourselves because this is a tricky situation.

Last night it happened for 6 hours again, by this time I’m in full blown panic and crippling anxiety because I don’t want to go downstairs and talk to them about it I have no idea who they are, or if they’ll take it seriously. I need them to crack a window or use more ventilation because it seems that their cooking is exiting from there ceiling directly into our living room.

I couldn’t sleep til 5am last night I seriously have so much anxiety about this.

I was just eating lunch in the living room and I could smell the smell again so I had to leave and come to my room where it smells less like it.

I’m so torn on what to do, what to say, why can’t property management figure out a solution why do I have to? We’ve tried opening windows, turning on vents, air purifier, candles, air wicks. NOTHING helps. It is too strong. It’s giving me massive headaches, extreme anxiety, and now I’m having weird throat problems.

TLDR; neighbors cooking, using the same seasoning or spice and it escapes into our apartment and won’t go away. Mortified.