A plateau at the same time as a bereavement

Started 6 January 2026 · 16 replies · 123 hearts · read 1.5k times

GrizelKirkcaldy, UK · 6 January 2026

6 months ago

Something I have been sitting with: A plateau at the same time as a bereavement Not looking for advice so much as other people's experience.

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

I have read the guides here, which were more useful than anything else I have found, and I still have a question about the timing that they do not cover.

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.

PetuaKampala, UG

I want to add the unglamorous version: mine was boring rather than distressing. Weeks of nothing, mild irritation, and then it moved. Not every plateau is a crisis.

OttilieCheshire, UK

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

What I say to anybody in one now is that you are still here, still on treatment, still doing the thing. That is the whole of what a flat stretch asks of you.

NissaHaifa, IL

Coming back six months later to close the loop, because I hate threads that stop. Mine lasted seventeen weeks and then quietly ended and I did not notice for a fortnight.

AdaFacilitatorManchester, UK

Something worth noticing whenever it happens in a thread like this: somebody puts down the difficult version rather than the tidy one, and nobody flinches. That is not automatic and it is most of what we are for.

11me too 6

PersisBristol, UK

The plateau was not the hard part for me. The hard part was what I started telling myself about the plateau after about week five.

IlyaAlmaty, KZ

Something that reframed it: a flat stretch is weather, not a verdict. Somebody wrote that here two years ago and I have carried it around ever since.

BrackAlnwick, UK

Nothing to add except that I am glad this thread exists.

TobinCork, IE

What got me through was measuring things that were not the scale. Stairs, sleep, how far I could walk before I wanted to stop. All of those were moving while the number was not.

ÖzlemIzmir, TR

My flat stretch coincided with a genuinely difficult period at work, and I now think the two were related in ways I will never be able to separate out.

AbelAddis Ababa, ET

#10

If you are in one, the thing I would ask is whether you are still doing the things that were helping before it started. I quietly stopped several of mine and only noticed in hindsight.

7me too 3

VeraRiga, LV

#11

Every plateau thread here has somebody saying theirs lasted longer than they thought possible and then ended. I did not believe them. They were right.

TiborBratislava, SK

#12

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

10me too 2

TiernanOmagh, NI

#13

Gently disagreeing with Tibor, or rather adding the other half of it.

The bit that was hardest to say out loud was that I felt cheated. Not sad, not discouraged. Cheated. It helped enormously to name it accurately.

ZoraSarajevo, BA

#14

I stopped weighing anything during mine, entirely, for three months. It was the single kindest decision I made that year and my prescriber was fine with it.

AdaFacilitatorManchester, UK

#15

Stepping in to slow the pace. Four replies in twenty minutes is enthusiasm rather than a problem, and the person who asked has not had room to answer yet.

Obi OEnugu, NG

#16

Mine broke without me changing anything. I had changed four things by then, obviously, so I have no idea which of them did it, and I suspect none of them did.