I asked to go back down and felt like a coward

Started 10 June 2024 · 14 replies · 172 hearts · read 3.2k times

GwynethAberdare, UK · 10 June 2024

2.1 years ago

Starting a thread on this because it keeps coming up in ones and twos: I asked to go back down and felt like a coward

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

I am aware some of this may simply be what this stage is like. I would still like to hear from people who have been through it, because I have spent a fortnight assuming I am the only one.

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.

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

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.

HeddaCopenhagen, DK

I would gently add that slow is not the same as stalled. I moved twice this year, both times deliberately, both times after a conversation. That is progress with a handbrake, not no progress.

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

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

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.

9me too 6

BrammyBelfast, NI

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

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.

BevanSwansea, UK

Coming back a year later to say the slow route held. I am still on treatment, still comfortable, still having ordinary weeks. That was the entire point of going slowly.

BroganCumbernauld, UK

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.

15me too 2

HalCambridge, UK

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.

DoraUtrecht, NL

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

I found I needed about three weeks at each step before I knew what that step was like. Two weeks always gave me a half-formed impression that I then acted on.

GwendaEbbw Vale, UK

#10

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.

8me too 7

GwynethAberdare, UK

#11

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

A practical note: I keep a single line per step with the date I started it and the date anything settled. It is the most useful piece of paper I own for these conversations.

12me too 9

GwennoPwllheli, UK

#12

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.

TomásFacilitatorLisbon, Portugal

#13

Facilitator note: this circle is deliberately quiet about numbers and a couple of replies have started to drift that way. Nothing wrong intended and I am steering us back.

FlorrieBlackburn, UK

#14

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

My prescriber described the aim as staying on treatment comfortably rather than reaching a particular step, and once I heard it that way the pressure evaporated.