A shortage forced my gap and my body noticed

Started 27 February 2026 · 13 replies · 91 hearts · read 1k times

Gwen DAberystwyth, UK · 27 February 2026

5 months ago

Starting a thread on this because it keeps coming up in ones and twos: A shortage forced my gap and my body noticed

Long one, sorry. I have been chewing on this for a fortnight.

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.

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.

Thanks all. Genuinely. This circle has been better company than I expected to find anywhere.

BobbieRochdale, UK

I restarted after fourteen months and the hardest part was entirely in my head. The practical side took one appointment and a fortnight.

8me too 7

OttilieCheshire, UK

Coming back a year into my restart to say it held, it was ordinary, and the break in the middle is now just a gap in my notes rather than a fault line.

ZoraSarajevo, BA

My prescriber's first sentence when I asked about going back was that plenty of people do, which deflated about six weeks of dread in one go.

BenediktFacilitatorVienna, Austria

Adding a marker so the thread does not lose it: when the same practical thing gets named twice by two people who have never met, that is usually the sentence a newcomer needs, and it is rarely the one at the top.

InêsPorto, PT

I restarted at a lower step than I stopped at, on purpose, and stayed there for six months. Slowly was the correct speed for a second attempt in my case.

NikolaiSofia, BG

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

A break does not undo what you learned. That was the thing I most needed to hear and the thing I least believed at the time.

3me too 3

MableBolton, UK

If you are hovering, the only thing worth doing is booking the conversation. Everything after that is much smaller than it looks from here.

NerysRhyl, UK

No advice, only that you are not the only one who found this part hard.

Gwen DAberystwyth, UK

What worked was making the restart small and boring. One conversation, one step, one week at a time, no plan beyond the next fortnight.

BobbieRochdale, UK

#10

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

The gap between deciding to restart and actually doing it was four months for me, almost entirely because I was embarrassed to ask. Please do not lose four months to that.

OttilieCheshire, UK

#11

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

Restarting is an ordinary shape. I did not believe that when I was doing it and I believe it completely now, having watched about thirty people here do the same.

BenediktFacilitatorVienna, Austria

#12

Speaking as a facilitator rather than as a member: what has been described is well within the ordinary range, and the only person who can say so about your body is the one who knows it.

AurelBucharest, RO

#13

The shame was the worst of it for me, and the shame was also the least justified part. Nothing about a break requires an apology.