Ice, then nothing, then done

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

My anxiety was mostly about doing it wrong. Once my nurse watched me do one and said it was fine, most of it evaporated.

The first month I had a friend on the phone every time. By month three I did not need to, and she still asks about it.

The bathroom floor is a legitimate venue and I would like that on the record for anybody who thinks they are the only one.

Somebody here suggested breathing out during rather than holding my breath, and it changed the physical experience noticeably. Very small thing.

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

I still do not enjoy it, two years in. I do it in about forty seconds without thinking, and I do not enjoy it, and both of those are true.

Bookmarking this. Thank you.

What I would say is that the anxiety is not a sign you should not be doing this. It is a very common response to a genuinely unusual thing to ask of yourself.

What I got wrong was doing it last thing at night when I was tired and low. Moving it to a Saturday morning changed it completely.

Mine is now genuinely uneventful and I remember very clearly that it was not, and I would not want anybody to think it was uneventful from the start.

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

Coming back to say that the dread went. Not immediately, not tidily, but it went, and I have not thought about it in over a year.

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

The two hours before were always worse than the thing itself, every single time, for about four months. Naming that pattern was the beginning of it getting better.

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.

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.

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

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.