Telling my partner why I was crying in the bathroom

Started 1 December 2025 · 13 replies · 114 hearts · read 1.4k times

FabianBasel, CH · 1 December 2025

8 months ago

Starting a thread on this because it keeps coming up in ones and twos: Telling my partner why I was crying in the bathroom

Something is going on with my body and I would like to know whether it is ordinary.

What I cannot tell is whether this is the ordinary tax or the sort of thing that needs somebody today, and that distinction is the whole of my question.

I have written down when it happens and how long it lasts, because I could not answer either of those questions when my GP asked and I felt foolish.

I have avoided asking about this for six weeks out of pure embarrassment, which is ridiculous given that this circle exists precisely for it.

Thanks in advance. Even a one-line "yes, me too" would help more than you would think.

OsmanAnkara, TR

The drain was how I found out. I had noticed nothing until then and then I noticed everything, constantly, for about a month.

NyreeChristchurch, NZ

Mine started at about month four, went on for three months, and has completely regrown. That timeline was the thing I could not find anywhere when I needed it.

AdaFacilitatorManchester, UK

Holding a boundary: we do not swap remedies in this circle as though they were prescriptions. Describing what happened to you is welcome; telling somebody what to take is not.

20me too 5

MargueriteQuebec City, CA

Picking up Ada’s point rather than starting a new one.

Coming back at the year mark to say it regrew. I promised in my first post that I would come back and say either way, and I am glad the answer was this one.

DillyNewport, UK

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

Two years on mine is back to how it was, slightly different in texture, and I no longer think about it at all. That is my whole update.

OttoPrague, CZ

I got a scalp check because I was worried and it was straightforward and reassuring and took ten minutes. I had built it up enormously.

AnnikaStockholm, SE

What kept me going was reading the older threads here where people posted at the start and again a year later. The year-later posts are the useful ones.

MairéadMayo, IE

Mine was patchy rather than general and that turned out to be a different question worth asking about specifically. Please do describe the pattern accurately.

6me too 1

PerrinNice, FR

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

Something I read here that steadied me: shedding is often a response to a change several months earlier rather than to what is happening this week.

7me too 2

GroverPortland, ME

#10

I stopped washing it less, which I had been doing on the theory it would help, and it made absolutely no difference except that my hair was greasy.

BlySheffield, UK

#11

I asked about it at a review half expecting to be dismissed and instead got a proper explanation, a blood test and a plan. Worth asking.

AdaFacilitatorManchester, UK

#12

Adding this thread to the circle's standing resources, because it is the clearest account of this we have and the question comes back every few months.

GudrunAkureyri, IS

#13

Somebody here described the shedding phase as grieving something small and constant, and that was exactly right and I had not had words for it.