I delayed by three days and felt terrible about it

Started 30 October 2025 · 15 replies · 125 hearts · read 2.5k times

SableCape Town, ZA · 30 October 2025

9 months ago

I delayed by three days and felt terrible about it Writing it down partly to work out what I actually think.

I have avoided asking about this for six weeks out of pure embarrassment.

Squeamish subject, so I am going to be plain about it and get it over with. It has been going on for long enough now that I would like to know whether it is ordinary.

Nobody warned me about this specifically and I am starting to think that is because it is common enough that everybody assumed I knew.

I have had a fortnight of this and then three good days and then another fortnight, and the pattern is the bit I would most like to understand.

The figure in the title is not rhetorical: three days is what my own notes actually say, counted back through them this evening rather than estimated.

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

OmarAmman, JO

Mine was never about pain. It was about doing something deliberate to myself, and once I understood that, all the advice about pain was beside the point.

Ozzy GWalsall, UK

Have you got anyone who can be in the room? It made an enormous difference to me and I felt ridiculous asking, and I would ask sooner if I could do it again.

EsiFacilitatorToronto, Canada

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.

ZoëHackney, UK

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

What worked for me was a ritual. Same place, same order, same music, and about six weeks of that turned it from an event into a routine.

BrodyDunfermline, UK

Counting down out loud sounds silly and was the only thing that stopped me hovering. Three, two, one, done, and the hovering was where all the fear lived.

TabbyMargate, UK

The dread built through the day and peaked about an hour before, so I moved mine to first thing in the morning and cut the anticipation to ten minutes.

7me too 8

SaraOslo, NO

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

My nurse talked me through the first one on the phone and stayed on the line, and I have never been more grateful for nine minutes of somebody's time.

BrackAlnwick, UK

I was three days late twice because I could not face it, and I want to say that here because I felt like the only person that had ever happened to.

NadirCasablanca, MA

I found having everything laid out in advance helped enormously. Rummaging for things while working myself up was where it always went badly.

DelythBala, UK

#10

Reading this at half past six with a cup of tea and nodding at every line.

GaelanInverurie, UK

#11

I did the first four in the bathroom sitting on the floor. There is no correct place and nobody is watching.

CatoAntwerp, BE

#12

What helped was letting it be a big deal at first rather than insisting it was not. Pretending it was nothing made it worse for about two months.

PerrineStrasbourg, FR

#13

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

Cold hands made mine worse. Warming up for a minute beforehand genuinely changed the experience and I found that out by accident.

EsiFacilitatorToronto, Canada

#14

Facilitator note: everything described here is a matter for you and whoever prescribes for you. We are here for the company and for the vocabulary.

GavinDundee, UK

#15

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

The anticipation faded for me at around week ten. Not gradually — I just noticed one week that I had done it without the preceding hour of dread.