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Recovery-aware circle

Weight-blind appointments and how I asked for them

Started 8 January 2025 · 19 replies · 206 hearts · read 4k times

PádraigGalway, IE · 8 January 2025
1.5 years ago

A question rather than an update: Weight-blind appointments and how I asked for them

Not asking anyone to fix this. Mostly saying it out loud somewhere it will be read kindly.

I have told nobody in my life about this part of it, which after two years is starting to seem like the problem rather than a way of managing it.

I do not have a question exactly. I have a thing I have noticed about myself and no idea whether it is worth mentioning to anybody.

Thanks. Saying it here first has made the idea of saying it to somebody else considerably less impossible.

69

OsricSalisbury, UK
#1

What I would say is that a support community is not treatment. This is company alongside the people who actually know my history.

8

JonahFacilitatorCork, Ireland
#2

I want to name what it costs to meet something frightening calmly rather than rushing at it. It takes practice, this circle has it, and none of us had it at the start.

20

SableCape Town, ZA
#3

I have been challenged here once, gently, in a way I did not enjoy and needed. Nobody piled on. One person said one thing and then supported me.

10me too 5

RenataKraków, PL
#4

The hardest part for me has been other people's enthusiasm. Well-meant, and it lands somewhere I cannot always manage.

12

QuinGuildford, UK
#5

I have found it useful to write about how I am rather than what I have done. The distinction is small and it changes what I notice.

6

OrlaithDonegal, IE
#6

Reading Sable, I recognised more of that than I expected to.

What helped was being asked how I was doing rather than how it was going. Two different questions and only one of them was about me.

9

BramwellNottingham, UK
#7

Gently disagreeing with Orlaith, or rather adding the other half of it.

Somebody here said that recovery is not a straight line and nobody in this circle expects it to be, and I read that on a very bad evening.

11

SadieSalford, UK
#8

The absence of comparison in this circle is the reason I stayed. Everywhere else I found, people were measuring themselves against each other.

13me too 9

GrizelKirkcaldy, UK
#9

Coming back to what Bramwell wrote further up, because it is the bit I keep thinking about.

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.

10

RunaAarhus, DK
#10

I have read this twice now. Thank you for writing it.

6me too 5

BroganCumbernauld, UK
#11

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

GwionBangor, UK
#12

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.

10

NanNeath, UK
#13

Reading Gwion, I recognised more of that than I expected to.

The thing I would say to anybody arriving is that you are allowed to be here and to be uncertain about being here.

9

PádraigGalway, IE
#14

I have found the structure of this circle protective. The agreements are not decoration and I have watched them being held.

13me too 1

OsricSalisbury, UK
#15

Quietly agreeing from the other side of the country.

10

OllieCardiff, UK
#16

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.

4

SableCape Town, ZA
#17

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.

8me too 5

JonahFacilitatorCork, Ireland
#18

Two things, both boring. None of us is a therapist. And the fact that we are not does not make company worthless — it makes it company rather than treatment.

24

QuinGuildford, UK
#19

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

I keep in regular contact with my team and I tell them what I am reading and where. That transparency has kept me safe more than once.

13