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Somebody asked what my secret was and I froze

Started 25 May 2026 · 13 replies · 80 hearts · read 1.2k times

GwythFishguard, UK · 25 May 2026
2 months ago

Something I have been sitting with: Somebody asked what my secret was and I froze Not looking for advice so much as other people's experience.

I have been sitting on this for a month.

This is difficult to write and I have deleted it twice. I am posting it now mostly because leaving it in drafts has not made it any easier to carry.

What I want is company rather than an answer, and I have learned that this circle is one of the few places where asking for that is not strange.

That is all. Thank you for being the kind of place where this can be written down.

27

RinManchester, UK
#1

What I would say is that this is harder than the physical side and gets a fraction of the discussion. I am glad this circle exists for it.

8

ZenBristol, UK
#2

Photographs are difficult for me and I have stopped apologising for stepping out of them.

6me too 7

Obi OEnugu, NG
#3

Something that helped was reducing how much I looked. Not as a punishment. Just less often, and it made the looking less loaded.

5

JonahFacilitatorCork, Ireland
#4

Stepping in to say that stepping back from this circle for a while is always allowed and nobody will ask where you went.

11

DotFalmouth, UK
#5

Somebody in this circle wrote that a body is a place to live rather than a thing to display, and I have thought about that most weeks since.

6

ClémenceNantes, FR
#6

Dot has already said most of this and I want to add the one part that was different for me.

What I got wrong was expecting a change in circumstances to change how I felt. It did not. The feeling had its own history.

4

TavishIsle of Skye, UK
#7

Just marking that I read this properly rather than skimming it.

2

LulaBournemouth, UK
#8

Clothes were the practical version of this for me. Nothing fitting the way it used to, and the daily reminder of that was wearing.

6

GwilymCaernarfon, UK
#9

The thing that has helped most is spending time doing things where my body is useful rather than looked at. Swimming, mostly, badly.

3

OsricSalisbury, UK
#10

Tavish, thank you for that. It gives me somewhere to start from.

I would gently say that if this has become the main thing you think about, that is worth mentioning to somebody rather than managing alone.

4

NissaHaifa, IL
#11

I have stopped reading anything that presents bodies as a before and a subsequent state. That single decision improved my year measurably.

7me too 7

JonahFacilitatorCork, Ireland
#12

Holding for a moment. Nobody in this circle is required to justify the size of their own reaction, and if the thread has begun to read that way I would like to take that back out of it.

12

OrsolyaBudapest, HU
#13

What Jonah described happened to me too, in a slightly different order.

What surprised me was that the difficult feelings did not follow the timeline I expected. My hardest month was much later than I would have predicted.

6