Comparing notes on the fortnight after a change

Started 14 February 2025 · 19 replies · 189 hearts · read 3.6k times

BrammyBelfast, NI · 14 February 2025

1.4 years ago

A question rather than an update: Comparing notes on the fortnight after a change

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

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.

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.

No rush on replies. I am not going anywhere and neither, apparently, is this stage.

HeddaCopenhagen, DK

I hold at a step for as long as it is still teaching me something. When a step gets boring, that is usually my sign to talk about the next one.

FlorrieBlackburn, UK

Brammy, answering your question directly rather than going round the houses.

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.

TomásFacilitatorLisbon, Portugal

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.

BroganCumbernauld, UK

I read this twice. The second time was for the last paragraph.

10me too 2

DoraUtrecht, NL

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

The one thing I would say is to write down why you are holding where you are. Six weeks later I could never remember whether it had been a symptom, a work trip or just nerves.

GwendaEbbw Vale, UK

Every step up for me came with about ten days of adjustment and then nothing. Knowing that the ten days were coming made them much easier to sit through.

GwennoPwllheli, UK

Going slowly did not stop things changing for me. It just meant the changes arrived one at a time and I could see each one.

6me too 8

IdrisCardiff, UK

Gwenda has already said most of this and I want to add the one part that was different for me.

I have watched people here move at four times my pace and do beautifully, and others move at half my pace and do beautifully. There is no schedule that is correct in the abstract.

GwynethAberdare, UK

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

I do not think going slowly is universally better. I think it was better for me, and I am very cautious about turning my experience into anybody's rule.

12me too 2

HalCambridge, UK

#10

My step-ups are all in April and October now, entirely because those are quiet months in my working year. That is a completely legitimate way to plan it.

BrammyBelfast, NI

#11

Reading and nodding. Nothing to add, and I wanted you to know somebody had read it.

HeddaCopenhagen, DK

#12

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.

FlorrieBlackburn, UK

#13

My prescriber and I settled on longer gaps between steps and shorter gaps between conversations, which I would recommend to anybody who finds the schedule stressful.

BevanSwansea, UK

#14

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.

10me too 1

BroganCumbernauld, UK

#15

The thing that finally let me relax was realising that staying put is an active choice with a reason behind it, not a lack of a decision.

DoraUtrecht, NL

#16

I went back down a step once, deliberately, and it was not a failure. It was the most sensible fortnight of the year and my prescriber agreed without hesitation.

GwendaEbbw Vale, UK

#17

Somebody in this circle described their pace as "geological" and I have thought about that phrase very fondly ever since. Mine is similar and nobody minds.

11me too 5

TomásFacilitatorLisbon, Portugal

#18

I want to name the thing this circle does when somebody says they have stopped: it treats it as ordinary. That is not automatic anywhere else and it is worth saying out loud here.

IdrisCardiff, UK

#19

I asked my prescriber directly what the cost of going slowly was and she said, in effect, time. That was a trade I was happy to make once it was stated plainly.