How long before you noticed anything at all

Started 13 January 2026 · 13 replies · 101 hearts · read 801 times

DelphiThessaloniki, GR · 13 January 2026

6 months ago

Something I have been sitting with: How long before you noticed anything at all Not looking for advice so much as other people's experience.

I do not know if this belongs in this circle. Move me if not.

I have been reading this circle for months and everybody else's account of this stage sounds much tidier than mine, which is either reassuring or the wrong conclusion entirely.

What I am trying to work out is whether this is a phase with an end to it or the shape of things now, and I do not think I can tell that from inside it.

No rush on replies. I am not going anywhere and neither, apparently, is this stage.

SaskiaThe Hague, NL

I did not tell anybody for the first month. I do not regret that and I would not recommend it either. It was simply what I could manage at the time.

TychoLeiden, NL

What I remember most from the first two weeks was how much room it took up in my head. That does fade. It is now something that happens on a Wednesday and I think about it for four minutes.

6me too 4

PerduMontpellier, FR

I remember reading a thread like this before I started and thinking everybody sounded much calmer than me. Two years on I can tell you that most of them were not calm either. They were just further along.

EsiFacilitatorToronto, Canada

Before anyone offers a schedule: what has been described here is a conversation for a prescriber rather than a thread. I am going to be firm about that, kindly.

CormacWaterford, IE

The bit that surprised me was how much I wanted to talk to somebody who was two weeks ahead rather than two years ahead. That is what this circle is actually for.

OllieCardiff, UK

You have said something a lot of us have not managed to. Thank you.

TorinBelfast, NI

Somebody here told me early on to stop trying to predict how the next week would go, and it was the single most useful thing I was given. I was spending more energy forecasting than living.

BodhiByron Bay, AU

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

You will read a lot of very confident accounts of the first fortnight. Mine was not confident. It was fine, and it was not confident, and both of those were true at once.

TasnimBradford, UK

Nothing dramatic happened to me in the first two weeks, which I found unsettling, because the internet had led me to expect either a miracle or a disaster. It was neither. It was Tuesday.

SerenLlandudno, UK

#10

Building on what Torin wrote rather than answering the original question.

My honest answer to what the first fortnight was like is that it was mostly admin. Working out where things go, when I do it, and who needs to know.

TommieEly, UK

#11

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

I came into this circle on day three and did not post for a month. Reading was enough at the time. If that is where you are, that is a perfectly good place to be.

EsiFacilitatorToronto, Canada

#12

Thank you all for the care in here. When somebody arrives frightened, what this circle aims to hand back is experience rather than instruction, and that distinction is the whole reason it exists.

OsipTbilisi, GE

#13

The first fortnight is also when everybody else is at their most curious, which nobody warns you about. You do not owe anybody an explanation, including people who ask kindly.