The second plateau was easier than the first

Started 22 May 2024 · 22 replies · 275 hearts · read 5.5k times

MattNottingham, UK · 22 May 2024

2.2 years ago

A question rather than an update: The second plateau was easier than the first

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.

What I would find most useful is not advice. It is somebody describing what their version of this stage was, and how long it went on for before it changed.

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

NissaHaifa, IL

Somebody here described the plateau as the part where you find out whether you are doing this for a number or for a life, and that landed harder than I wanted it to.

TorKeswick, UK

Mine went on so long that I forgot it was a plateau and just got on with things, and I think that is genuinely how most of them end — not with a change, but with you stopping watching.

NazneenDhaka, BD

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.

AdaFacilitatorManchester, UK

Before anyone offers a schedule: what has been described here is a conversation for a prescriber rather than a thread. I am going to be firm about that, kindly.

25me too 7

BrunoMilan, IT

The practical thing I did was set a date twelve weeks out to review it properly, and then deliberately stop thinking about it until that date. It gave me the fortnight back.

11me too 6

TobinCork, IE

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

Mine ended the week I stopped keeping a spreadsheet about it, which is either a profound insight or a coincidence and I genuinely do not know which.

NikitaYerevan, AM

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

I asked at my review whether a long flat stretch meant something was wrong and was told, gently, that bodies are not linear and the assumption that they should be is the odd bit.

PersisBristol, UK

Recognition rather than advice, if that is any use at all.

ShadeIbadan, NG

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.

PerrineStrasbourg, FR

#10

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

Twelve weeks of nothing here too. I remember the exact fortnight when I stopped believing anything would change, and then it did, and I still cannot tell you why.

15me too 1

PerduMontpellier, FR

#11

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

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.

MimiHong Kong

#12

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.

BibiRabat, MA

#13

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.

PetuaKampala, UG

#14

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

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.

12me too 1

NolCork, IE

#15

Mine lasted nineteen weeks. I want to say that plainly because when I was in mine, every account I found described eight and I thought I was broken.

NkosiJohannesburg, ZA

#16

Thank you for the update. Threads that stop are the worst kind.

OsmanAnkara, TR

#17

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.

11me too 5

LinneaTurku, FI

#18

I nearly stopped during mine, and the only reason I did not was that I had promised to come to a circle call on the Thursday and did not want to arrive having quit on the Tuesday.

OmarAmman, JO

#19

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.

12me too 8

OttilieCheshire, UK

#20

Reading back through this circle's older threads was what got me through mine. Dozens of people, all convinced theirs was the permanent one, all still here.

AdaFacilitatorManchester, UK

#21

If anybody is wondering whether this was a silly thing to ask: it was not. It is the question that opens this circle every few months and it has never once been treated as small.

TamzinPoole, UK

#22

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.