The noise came back at a lower volume and stayed there

The thing I would say is that this is worth talking about in therapy if you have access to it. Mine opened up a great deal that I had not connected to it.

Reading this properly rather than skimming, which is all I have to offer today.

What I would tell somebody experiencing this for the first time is that whatever it brings up is allowed, including the things that do not look like gratitude.

I noticed it first in the supermarket, of all places, standing in an aisle that had always been difficult and finding it was simply an aisle.

I had never described it to anybody before this circle because I had assumed it was universal. Finding out it was not was a strange afternoon.

What I found is that habits built around the noise outlasted the noise. I was still doing things for a reason that no longer applied, months later.

The relief was enormous and the adjustment was real, and I think people talk about the first and not the second.

Something I did not expect: I was less irritable within a fortnight, and I now think a good deal of my irritability had been the constant background negotiation.

What helped was writing down what the noise had actually been, while I could still remember it clearly. Six months later the memory of it had gone soft.

I have found the quiet made some things harder rather than easier. Boredom, mainly, which I had apparently not experienced in decades.

What nobody told me is that it comes back sometimes, in patches, and that this is ordinary rather than a sign anything has stopped working.

The hardest conversation I had was explaining to somebody who has never had it what it was like to have it. There is no good analogy.

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

What was underneath the noise turned out to be the actual subject. Once it stopped I had to look at what it had been covering, and that took a year.

I did not realise how much of my planning had been about this until it stopped. Entire structures in my week turned out to exist for a reason that had gone.