A peer support community, independent and not for sale. Since February 2024.

GLP CircleA peer support community

Restarting after a break

How I told my GP I wanted to try again

Started 28 January 2025 · 17 replies · 211 hearts · read 2.2k times

MableBolton, UK · 28 January 2025
1.5 years ago

A question rather than an update: How I told my GP I wanted to try again

I have been reading here for a few weeks and have not posted, so this is me posting.

I nearly did not post this because it feels like a small thing to be stuck on. It has taken up most of my thinking for a month, so apparently it is not small to me.

The practical side has settled and the rest of it has not, and I would like to hear how other people at this stage handled the part that is not practical.

I will report back either way, because other people's follow-ups have helped me more than their questions.

70

OttilieCheshire, UK
#1

What I got wrong the first time was doing it alone. The restart had a circle, a buddy and a proper conversation attached, and it went completely differently.

6me too 4

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.

19

Gwen DAberystwyth, UK
#3

Read, understood, and glad you are here.

15

BobbieRochdale, UK
#4

I kept everything from the first time and it made the restart conversation extremely short. The notes were worth more than I would have guessed.

12

NerysRhyl, UK
#5

Restarting after a cost break here. The situation changed, I went back, and nobody at the surgery treated it as anything other than routine.

14

InêsPorto, PT
#6

The thing I would say is that a break is information. Mine told me a great deal about which changes had been the medication and which had become mine.

9me too 7

AurelBucharest, RO
#7

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

I was frightened that going back meant the first attempt had not counted. It counted. It was a year of my life and it taught me most of what I know.

10

ZoraSarajevo, BA
#8

My restart went slower than my first attempt by choice, and it has been much more comfortable. I would do it that way again.

11

MableBolton, UK
#9

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

What surprised me was how quickly the routine came back. Muscle memory for where things go, when I do it, what the week looks like. Three days and I was back in it.

14

OttilieCheshire, UK
#10

I have restarted twice. The second break was shorter and the second restart was easier, and I think that is because I had stopped treating either one as a verdict.

9

NikolaiSofia, BG
#11

You have described the bit that nobody warns you about.

8

Gwen DAberystwyth, UK
#12

The conversation I dreaded took under five minutes and contained no judgement of any kind. I had spent a month rehearsing for it.

12

BobbieRochdale, UK
#13

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

10me too 2

NerysRhyl, UK
#14

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.

10

InêsPorto, PT
#15

I came back to the same circle I had left and three people remembered me. That mattered more than I would ever have predicted.

14

BenediktFacilitatorVienna, Austria
#16

I want to slow this down a little. There are four different accounts of the same stage in this thread and they are all somebody's real experience, which makes them true and not necessarily relevant to the person who asked.

22

ZoraSarajevo, BA
#17

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

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.

16