Watching everyone else move up while I stay put

Started 23 September 2024 · 16 replies · 185 hearts · read 3.7k times

GwendaEbbw Vale, UK · 23 September 2024

1.8 years ago

Starting a thread on this because it keeps coming up in ones and twos: Watching everyone else move up while I stay put

I do not know if this belongs in this circle. Move me if not.

Here is where I actually am. The medicine side has been more or less as described; the part nobody prepared me for is everything around it — what to say to people, how to plan a week, and how to tell an ordinary stage from one worth raising.

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.

Sorry for the length. If anybody has been at this point, I would very much like to hear how it went.

HeddaCopenhagen, DK

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.

BrammyBelfast, NI

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

What I found hardest was other people's timelines, not my own. Once I stopped reading week-by-week accounts elsewhere, my own pace stopped feeling like a deficiency.

TomásFacilitatorLisbon, Portugal

Thank you all for the care in here. When somebody arrives frightened, what this circle aims to hand back is experience rather than instruction, and that distinction is the whole reason it exists.

IdrisCardiff, UK

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.

10me too 8

DoraUtrecht, NL

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

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.

11me too 7

GwennoPwllheli, UK

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

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.

BevanSwansea, 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.

HalCambridge, UK

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

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.

BroganCumbernauld, UK

#10

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

12me too 2

GwendaEbbw Vale, UK

#11

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

The thing that changed my mind about pace was noticing that my worst fortnights all followed a step-up I had not really been ready for. That pattern was in my own notes.

HeddaCopenhagen, DK

#12

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.

BrammyBelfast, NI

#13

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

#14

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

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.

TomásFacilitatorLisbon, Portugal

#15

I want to say plainly that stopping, pausing and restarting are ordinary shapes in this community and nobody who has done any of them owes an explanation.

DoraUtrecht, NL

#16

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

Whenever somebody new arrives worried about being slow, I say the same thing: nobody in this circle is going to be impressed by speed, and nobody is keeping score.