The relief of not being in a race

Started 7 November 2025 · 13 replies · 128 hearts · read 1.8k times

IdrisCardiff, UK · 7 November 2025

8 months ago

A question rather than an update: The relief of not being in a race

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.

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.

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

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

BroganCumbernauld, UK

I have been at the same step for eleven months, agreed with my prescriber, and it is the best decision I have made in this whole business. Slow was not a compromise, it was the plan.

5me too 8

TomásFacilitatorLisbon, Portugal

What I would add is that this circle has a long archive of people at exactly this stage, and reading the older threads is often more use than a new one.

DoraUtrecht, NL

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

Slow titration is not the cautious version of this. For some of us it is simply the version that works, and I have stopped framing it as a hedge.

GwennoPwllheli, UK

Thank you for writing this down. It helped.

HeddaCopenhagen, DK

What worked for me was agreeing a review point rather than a step-up date. We would look at it in eight weeks and decide then, which took the whole thing out of my head in the meantime.

HalCambridge, UK

I stayed where I was for four months because it suited me there, and the only pressure to move came from me. Not from my prescriber, and certainly not from anybody here.

BrammyBelfast, NI

Going up slowly meant I could actually tell what each change did. When I moved faster at the start, everything happened at once and I could not attribute anything to anything.

GwendaEbbw Vale, UK

Coming back to what Hedda wrote further up, because it is the bit I keep thinking about.

The schedule on the box is a default, not a deadline. My nurse said that in my second month and it reorganised how I thought about the whole thing.

BevanSwansea, UK

What Hal described happened to me too, in a slightly different order.

I was surprised how much better my reviews went once I arrived with a clear account of why I wanted to stay put. It turned a negotiation into a plan.

FlorrieBlackburn, UK

#10

Somebody asked me whether slow titration is just fear management, and honestly, partly. It is also symptom management and life management, and I have stopped ranking those.

IdrisCardiff, UK

#11

Adding a name to the list of people this helped.

TomásFacilitatorLisbon, Portugal

#12

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.

19me too 5

GwynethAberdare, UK

#13

Nine months at one step here and my prescriber has never once suggested moving. She said the schedule is a scaffold and I am not obliged to climb it.