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Maintenance

Holidays in maintenance are just holidays now

Started 24 August 2024 · 20 replies · 228 hearts · read 2.6k times

RomyVienna, AT · 24 August 2024
1.9 years ago

Starting a thread on this because it keeps coming up in ones and twos: Holidays in maintenance are just holidays now

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.

I have written down what has happened, in order, because I find that more useful than my own summary of it. The summary always sounds either better or worse than the weeks actually were.

Sorry for the length. If anybody has been at this point, I would very much like to hear how it went.

76

EdwynNewcastle, UK
#1

Maintenance is where the non-scale things came into their own for me. All the things I noticed in year one turned out to be the things that stayed.

6me too 8

BenediktFacilitatorVienna, Austria
#2

A reminder that this circle holds every stage at once, which is its strength and occasionally its difficulty. Somebody in year three answering somebody in week three needs to say which they are.

25

EsmeAix-en-Provence, FR
#3

Romy, I have been where you are and I would rather say so than stay quiet.

The conversation I found hardest in maintenance was about how long. My prescriber's answer was that we would keep reviewing it, which is honest and was not what I wanted.

8

TychoLeiden, NL
#4

I reduced, held, and then reduced again eight months later, both times slowly and both times after a proper conversation. Neither move was dramatic and both were fine.

10

CassWakefield, UK
#5

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

What I did not anticipate was becoming a person other members ask questions of. I still feel like I am making it up, and apparently that never entirely stops.

11

GethinMerthyr Tydfil, UK
#6

My maintenance has had two wobbles in it, both around big life events, both of which passed. I mention them because a smooth account would be a dishonest one.

13me too 3

PrueChester, UK
#7

Reading this properly rather than skimming, which is all I have to offer today.

9

PerryCardigan, UK
#8

Two years in and the only thing I actively do now is a note in my phone once a week and a review once a year. Everything else has become automatic.

11

RowanInverness, UK
#9

I still come to this circle in maintenance because the newer members ask the questions that keep me honest about what I actually know.

14

Ozzy GWalsall, UK
#10

The practical shape of my maintenance is: one review a year, one set of bloods, one conversation about whether anything has changed. That is genuinely all of it now.

9

FlossieShrewsbury, UK
#11

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

My prescriber reduced me and we have held there for fourteen months. It has been the most uneventful fourteen months of my adult life and I am not complaining.

14

TeganNewport, UK
#12

What changed in maintenance for me was the questions. They stopped being about symptoms and started being about how long, and what happens next, and nobody has a very good answer to either.

7

BelCroydon, UK
#13

I am two years and four months in and my journal entries have got extremely dull, which I now consider the best possible outcome.

10

BobbieRochdale, UK
#14

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

The thing that caught me out about maintenance was the absence of a finish line. I had built the whole thing around arriving somewhere and then arrived and found there was nothing to do.

8

TressaSt Austell, UK
#15

What I did not expect was how much of maintenance is about other people forgetting. The interest fades and you are left doing the same thing quietly, which is fine, and is also lonely sometimes.

13

SadieSalford, UK
#16

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

I have been in maintenance long enough to have had two dull years and one difficult one. The difficult one had nothing to do with the medication and everything to do with my life.

11

ZenBristol, UK
#17

Nobody prepared me for the strange flatness of it. Not sadness. Just the absence of a project, after two years of having one.

12

GusStirling, UK
#18

Maintenance is where I finally had to deal with things the earlier stages had let me postpone. That was harder than any of the physical adjustment.

8me too 6

BenediktFacilitatorVienna, Austria
#19

I am going to gently redirect. The original question was about how long, and we have spent nine replies on what to do instead. Both are worth discussing and only one was asked.

17

RinManchester, UK
#20

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

Something that helped: I decided to keep journalling weekly in maintenance even when there was nothing to say. Those entries are how I noticed a slow change I would otherwise have missed.

12