A peer support community, independent and not for sale. Since February 2024.
A question rather than an update: Old thoughts arriving with a new mechanism
I have been sitting on this for a month.
I have been sitting on this for a month and it has not got smaller, which I gather is how these things usually go.
I do not think anything is wrong exactly. I think something is different and I have not caught up with it yet.
Thanks. Saying it here first has made the idea of saying it to somebody else considerably less impossible.
60
I have found the structure of this circle protective. The agreements are not decoration and I have watched them being held.
13me too 7
To the opening post rather than to the thread: Grizel, this is my version of it.
The thing I would say to anybody arriving is that you are allowed to be here and to be uncertain about being here.
9
Reading this properly rather than skimming, which is all I have to offer today.
11
Gently: you have apologised twice in a post where you have done nothing that requires an apology.
14
Orlaith — yes, and the bit that took me longest to accept was the next part.
I came here because everywhere else assumed a relationship with eating that I do not have, and the assumptions themselves were difficult.
8
Quietly agreeing from the other side of the country.
10
My treatment team were involved from before I started, which I would say is the single most important thing in my whole account.
11
Reading Renata, I recognised more of that than I expected to.
Somebody noticed something in what I had written, said so once, kindly, and then stayed. That is the best thing anybody has done for me here.
6
Coming back to what Pádraig wrote further up, because it is the bit I keep thinking about.
What I appreciate is that this circle does not talk about food in the way the rest of the internet does. That is a deliberate choice and it works.
9
My history meant a lot of the standard guidance was not appropriate for me, and having a team who knew that was what made this possible at all.
10
My clinician and I agreed in advance what I would do if things became difficult, and having that written down before I needed it was the whole point.
8
I have nothing to add and I did not want to leave it unanswered.
6
What Sable described happened to me too, in a slightly different order.
What has helped is that nobody here treats appetite as a moral matter. That absence is doing a lot of work and I do not think it is accidental.
10
I stepped back for four months on advice and came back, and nobody asked me where I had been in a way that required an answer.
8me too 6
Sable has already said most of this and I want to add the one part that was different for me.
The facilitators in this circle have training in this specifically, and I checked that before I posted, and I am glad it was easy to find out.
12
Something I have had to be careful about is how much time I spend reading. There is a version of research that is not research and I know mine.
6
I want to name the sequence this circle is built to hold: somebody is challenged, gently, and then supported, in that order and by the same people. It is difficult and it is why the agreements are worded as they are.
21me too 1
I would gently say to anybody here that if a conversation has started to feel like it is feeding something, that is worth saying out loud rather than managing alone.
9