I cannot look at the box, let alone open it

Started 28 September 2025 · 15 replies · 152 hearts · read 2.9k times

WinkleWeymouth, UK · 28 September 2025

10 months ago

Starting a thread on this because it keeps coming up in ones and twos: I cannot look at the box, let alone open it

Something is going on with my body and I would like to know whether it is ordinary.

Something is going on and I would like to know whether other people have had it, mostly so I know whether to raise it or wait it out.

What I cannot tell is whether this is the ordinary tax or the sort of thing that needs somebody today, and that distinction is the whole of my question.

This started at the same time as two other things, which is why I cannot attribute it to anything with any confidence.

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

BramwellRipon, UK

Mine improved and then regressed during a very stressful autumn, and I had to accept that it is not a linear thing and I had not failed.

TaaviTallinn, EE

What changed it was doing it at the same time every week with the same person present, for about ten weeks. Repetition with safety, rather than repetition alone.

8me too 7

DelythBala, UK

Distraction did nothing for me and preparation did everything. I have watched other people here find the exact opposite.

EsiFacilitatorToronto, Canada

A standing thank-you to anybody who returns to a thread with the outcome. Threads that simply stop are the ones that leave the next person stranded, and one sentence months later prevents it.

Ollie OPeterhead, UK

A phobia is a different thing from being nervous, and I spent a year being told to just get on with it before somebody used the right word for what I had.

11me too 2

IslaOban, UK

Coming back to say I did it alone, calmly, last Tuesday, and then sat down and cried a bit. Both parts are the update.

PerrineStrasbourg, FR

Please do not let anybody, clinical or otherwise, make you feel unreasonable about this. Mine was dismissed twice before it was taken seriously and the delay cost me a year.

HéloïseGeneva, CH

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

I keep a small written plan of my own steps and I still read it sometimes, eighteen months in. It costs me nothing and it steadies me.

Bryn MNeath, UK

Agreed, and I have nothing to add to it.

BronLincoln, UK

#10

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

Graded exposure over about three months got me there. Slowly, in small steps, with somebody who knew what they were doing, and none of it was dramatic.

BassCoventry, UK

#11

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

Lying down changed everything for me. My nurse suggested it in about ten seconds and it solved a problem I had had for twenty years.

TavitaApia, WS

#12

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

BessLouth, UK

#13

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

Mine is still there. I have a set of things I do that make it manageable, and the fear itself has not gone, and that is an honest description of where I am.

6me too 1

EsiFacilitatorToronto, Canada

#14

Thank you all. Somebody arriving embarrassed and being answered without a trace of it is the whole reason this circle is worded the way it is, and it takes everybody to keep it that way.

BramwellRipon, UK

#15

I found the anticipation ran for two days beforehand, which meant a weekly thing was taking up two sevenths of my life. Reducing the anticipation was the whole project.