I want to skip ahead and I know that is a bad idea

Started 23 July 2024 · 24 replies · 270 hearts · read 4.9k times

StefanZurich, CH · 23 July 2024

2 years ago

Starting a thread on this because it keeps coming up in ones and twos: I want to skip ahead and I know that is a bad idea

I have been reading here for a few weeks and have not posted, so this is me posting.

I have written down what has happened, in order, because I find that more useful than my own summary of it. The summary always sounds either better or worse than the weeks actually were.

I am aware some of this may simply be what this stage is like. I would still like to hear from people who have been through it, because I have spent a fortnight assuming I am the only one.

Sorry for the length. If anybody has been at this point, I would very much like to hear how it went.

MargueriteQuebec City, CA

Halfway through I stopped reading anything outside this site and my own prescriber's advice, and my anxiety dropped noticeably within a fortnight. That was my single biggest change.

EsiFacilitatorToronto, Canada

What I would add is that this circle has a long archive of people at exactly this stage, and reading the older threads is often more use than a new one.

BramleyBath, UK

Something in the middle of this stretch will probably surprise you, and it will probably not be the thing you have been bracing for. Mine was sleep. I had prepared for everything except sleep.

KateBelfast, NI

Weeks four to eight were the steepest part for me. Everything was changing slightly every week and I could not tell which changes were the medication and which were just November.

11me too 6

OllieCardiff, UK

Bramley — yes, and the bit that took me longest to accept was the next part.

I reread my own notes from week two recently and I sounded genuinely frightened. I had forgotten that. Twelve weeks does more than I gave it credit for at the time.

OndineLausanne, CH

The most common question in this circle is some version of "is this normal for this stage", and the honest answer is usually yes, with the caveat that if it worries you, ask somebody qualified.

Obi OEnugu, NG

What I would tell my week-one self: the first twelve weeks are not a trial you pass. They are a period during which you find out how this works for you specifically.

9me too 3

NualaArmagh, NI

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

I had two completely uneventful weeks in the middle of this stretch and I found them oddly hard, because I had nothing to report and felt as though I should have.

BlueStroud, UK

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

Around week nine I stopped noticing it. Not because anything dramatic changed, but because it had become part of the week rather than an event in it.

8me too 6

NikoTbilisi, GE

#10

Sitting with you on this one.

TavishIsle of Skye, UK

#11

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

Something that helped me through the middle stretch: I stopped judging a week by the last day of it. Fridays were always the worst read on how the week had actually gone.

NellaUtrecht, NL

#12

My week six was much harder than my week two, which I had not expected at all. I had assumed it got monotonically easier and it does not always go in that direction.

IlyaAlmaty, KZ

#13

I would gently say that twelve weeks is not long. It felt endless from inside it and looks very short from here, and both of those readings are honest.

SindriReykjavík, IS

#14

The first twelve weeks are also when you find out what your prescriber is like when you ask a question between appointments. Mine was much more available than I expected and I had spent weeks not asking.

12me too 7

StefanZurich, CH

#15

My most useful early habit was writing down the question the moment it occurred to me, because by the appointment I could never remember what had been worrying me at eleven at night.

MargueriteQuebec City, CA

#16

No wisdom, just: I am sorry. That sounds genuinely hard.

Ozzy GWalsall, UK

#17

I found the second month harder than the first because the novelty had worn off and it had turned into something I had to keep doing. That is a very ordinary shape.

8me too 2

BramleyBath, UK

#18

Stefan said something I want to sit with for a second.

Weeks one to twelve for me were: strange, quiet, difficult, difficult, better, fine, fine, tired, tired, fine, good, and then a week where I forgot I was doing it at all.

KateBelfast, NI

#19

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

What changed for me around week ten was less physical than practical. I finally had a routine that fit my actual week rather than the week I wished I had.

OllieCardiff, UK

#20

If you are in the middle of this stretch and everything feels unresolved, that is the correct feeling for the middle of it. Nothing is meant to be resolved yet.

OndineLausanne, CH

#21

The weekly rhythm of this circle carried me through the first twelve weeks more than any single piece of information did. Turning up on a Thursday to say a small thing was enough.

9me too 8

Obi OEnugu, NG

#22

I asked here in week five whether I should be further along, and somebody replied asking further along than what. I did not have an answer, and that was the answer.

EsiFacilitatorToronto, Canada

#23

Gently: you have apologised three times in a post where you have done nothing that requires an apology. This circle does not need you to be further along than you are.

BlueStroud, UK

#24

Twelve weeks in I finally understood that the steep part is the learning, not the medicine. Once I knew how my own week worked, everything got quieter.