What I wish someone had told me on day one

Started 22 January 2025 · 19 replies · 201 hearts · read 2.5k times

OllieCardiff, UK · 22 January 2025

1.5 years ago

What I wish someone had told me on day one Writing it down partly to work out what I actually think.

Writing this partly to ask and partly because writing it down usually tells me what I think.

My honest position is that I do not know whether to change something or wait, and I have been going round that question for three weeks without getting anywhere.

The thing that has surprised me most about this stage is how much of it is about other people rather than about me.

What I would find most useful is not advice. It is somebody describing what their version of this stage was, and how long it went on for before it changed.

Not looking for a plan. Just company, and whatever anybody found at the same stage.

SerenLlandudno, UK

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.

EsiFacilitatorToronto, Canada

Facilitator note: if this thread has landed close to home for you while reading, our support resources page lists the kinds of service worth finding. No obligation and no drama.

CarlMiddlesbrough, UK

My prescriber gave me one sentence at the start that I have repeated to about nine people since: if something worries you enough to search for it at midnight, it is worth a call in the morning.

TychoLeiden, NL

Carl has already said most of this and I want to add the one part that was different for me.

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.

DelphiThessaloniki, GR

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.

CormacWaterford, IE

Delphi said something I want to sit with for a second.

Mine started on a Sunday because I wanted a quiet day after, and I still do it on Sundays two years later. There is no correct day, only the one you can keep.

TorinBelfast, NI

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

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.

OsipTbilisi, GE

Nothing to add except that I am glad this thread exists.

9me too 3

TommieEly, UK

Ordinary early things nobody had mentioned to me: I was much more tired at four in the afternoon, I noticed water tasted different, and I forgot to eat lunch twice in the first week and then felt awful.

TasnimBradford, UK

#10

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

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.

12me too 4

PerduMontpellier, FR

#11

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

A thing I wish somebody had told me: you can ask your pharmacist all of the boring questions without booking anything. Mine spent ten minutes with me at the counter and answered four things I had been too embarrassed to ask.

12me too 5

BodhiByron Bay, AU

#12

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.

SaskiaThe Hague, NL

#13

My first fortnight had one genuinely rough afternoon in it and the rest was uneventful. I mention the rough afternoon because if I only tell you about the uneventful part it will not help you when you get one.

OllieCardiff, UK

#14

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.

SerenLlandudno, UK

#15

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.

SephNorwich, UK

#16

Seren has already said most of this and I want to add the one part that was different for me.

I found the waiting harder than anything else in the first fortnight. Waiting to see whether I would feel something, waiting to see whether it was working. The waiting was the whole of my first two weeks.

9me too 8

CarlMiddlesbrough, UK

#17

Gently disagreeing with Ollie, or rather adding the other half of it.

Nothing about my first fortnight was interesting enough to write down at the time, and I now wish I had written it down anyway. It is the period you remember least clearly and get asked about most.

EsiFacilitatorToronto, Canada

#18

Stepping in to say that nobody here is behind. There is no schedule this community keeps and nobody is measuring anybody against one.

DelphiThessaloniki, GR

#19

Please do ask the silly questions here. I asked one about storage in my first week that I was mortified by, and four people answered it kindly, and two of them said they had wondered the same thing.