I have read too much and now I am frightened of everything

Started 24 February 2026 · 17 replies · 117 hearts · read 1.3k times

SaskiaThe Hague, NL · 24 February 2026

5 months ago

Something I have been sitting with: I have read too much and now I am frightened of everything Not looking for advice so much as other people's experience.

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

Here is where I am. The medication side has been more or less as described, and the part nobody prepared me for is everything around it: what to say to people, how to plan a week, and how to tell the difference between a thing to endure and a thing to raise.

My prescriber has been fine, genuinely. The problem is that I get nine minutes twice a year and there is no version of nine minutes that covers this.

Anyway. Thank you for reading this far. Any experience gratefully received, and I promise to come back and say what happened.

SephNorwich, UK

Have you got anyone who can be with you when you do it? It made an enormous difference to me and I felt silly asking.

4me too 7

PerduMontpellier, FR

The thing that changed it for me was going slower, agreed with my prescriber. I am not suggesting you do that. I am saying the conversation exists.

EsiFacilitatorToronto, Canada

I want to slow this down a little. There are four different answers flying about and they are all somebody's real experience, which makes them true and not necessarily relevant to the person who asked.

SerenLlandudno, UK

Reading the reply above, I recognised more of that than I expected to.

Practical, boring answer: write the three questions down before you go in. I have never once remembered them otherwise.

OsipTbilisi, GE

Coming back to this a fortnight later to say it settled. Leaving the update because I hate reading threads that stop.

CormacWaterford, IE

Reading the reply above, I recognised more of that than I expected to.

I am the person who had the frightening version of this. I went in, it was investigated, and it was not what anyone feared. Going in is the whole of my advice.

8me too 2

OllieCardiff, UK

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

My experience was very boring, which I offer as data. Some of us just get a dull time of it.

DelphiThessaloniki, GR

What helped was lowering my own expectations of the week rather than trying to hold the week together.

TychoLeiden, NL

Please do not read the comments under news articles about this. I lost a fortnight to that.

BodhiByron Bay, AU

#10

Reading the reply above, I recognised more of that than I expected to.

I asked my nurse the same question and she said something I have repeated ever since: that the aim is to keep you on treatment, not to get you up the schedule.

TasnimBradford, UK

#11

Similar here, and mine turned out to be a completely unrelated deficiency picked up on bloods.

TorinBelfast, NI

#12

the reply above said something I want to sit with for a second.

I did exactly the same and felt terrible about it. You have not done anything wrong.

CarlMiddlesbrough, UK

#13

I have been in this circle a year and this question comes round every few months. It is not a silly question. It is the question.

SaskiaThe Hague, NL

#14

Yes. All of this. I had the same in my third month and I remember thinking there was something specifically wrong with me, which there was not.

SephNorwich, UK

#15

Mine lasted about seven weeks and then lifted over a few days. I cannot tell you why. I can tell you it lifted.

EsiFacilitatorToronto, Canada

#16

Two things, both boring. First, none of us can tell you what to take. Second, the conversation you want to have is with your prescriber, and we can help you write it down.

TommieEly, UK

#17

What the reply above described happened to me too, in a slightly different order.

Two things that helped me, neither of them clever: small amounts more often, and drinking a lot more than felt necessary.