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I went up because I felt I ought to and it cost me a fortnight

Started 5 February 2026 · 7 replies · 269 hearts · read 5.3k times

BodhiByron Bay, AU · 5 February 2026
5 months ago

Confession thread, gently. I have been the person in this circle telling everyone that standing still is fine, and then in December I went up a step for reasons that had nothing to do with my body.

What actually happened: my brother started three months after me, went up on schedule, and by Christmas was describing changes I had not had. Nobody said anything unkind. He was just cheerful about it at a table full of relatives and I sat there feeling like the slow child.

So in January I asked to go up. My prescriber said we could and asked whether anything had changed for me. I said no, not really. She said fine, then, and wrote it, and I went home with a decision I had made out of a feeling at a dinner table.

The fortnight after was bad. Not dangerous — I want to be clear, no red flags, nothing that needed anybody — but flattening, and I lost two weeks of work and one weekend away that I had been looking forward to since October. I have gone back down. I am fine. I am also embarrassed, which is why I have taken three weeks to write this.

The reason I am writing it: I read a lot of posts in here about people being pushed up by clinicians. I have not read one about somebody pushing themselves up out of comparison. I suspect I am not the only one.

90

TomásFacilitatorLisbon, Portugal
#1

Bodhi, this is a hard thing to post and it is going to be useful to a lot of people, so first: thank you, and second, there is nothing here to be embarrassed about. You made a decision with your prescriber, it did not suit you, you went back. That is the system working, not a failure of character.

The mechanism you have described — a decision made in a feeling and executed three weeks later in a clinic — is extremely common and almost never named. When somebody asks me what I actually worry about in this circle, it is not people going too slowly.

One thought, offered and not prescribed: the question what has changed for me is a good one to be able to answer before an appointment rather than during it.

47me too 13

AnnikaStockholm, SE
#2

Almost gave up in month four, and the reason was almost exactly this. My cousin. Same medicine, three weeks apart, wildly different experience, and I spent a whole spring believing something was wrong with me.

There is nothing to compare. Different bodies, different starting points, different everything. I know that. I still could not hear it in April.

36me too 11

LilPreston, UK
#3

Me and my sister started the same week, so we are the natural experiment nobody asked for. Same house growing up, similar builds, same medicine. Her first six months and my first six months looked nothing alike.

We had to make an actual rule about it, out loud, in the kitchen: we do not compare weeks. It has saved the pair of us.

42me too 8

LuPreston, UK
#4

The other half of the Preston pair, confirming the rule and adding that I am the one who broke it. Twice. Once in a car park and once over the phone on a Sunday.

Both times I felt worse for about three days afterwards, and neither time did it change one single thing about my own body or my own week. All it did was make me watch my sister sideways for a fortnight, which neither of us deserved.

28me too 6

JontyOxford, UK
#5

Overthinking it professionally. What you have described is a decision made under social pressure and then laundered through a clinical appointment so it looked like a medical decision. I have done the same thing with a house, a job and a bicycle.

Not a criticism. It is just worth knowing that a prescriber can only work with what you tell them, and if you say nothing has changed, but I would like to go up, most of them will reasonably assume you have your reasons.

33me too 7

KaiVancouver, CA
#6

Trying to speak to myself the way I speak to friends, which is the whole of my contribution here.

Bodhi, if a friend told you this story, you would not use the word embarrassed. You would say they had a rough Christmas and made a reasonable call with a doctor and then corrected it quickly. Try that sentence on.

44me too 9

BodhiByron Bay, AU
#7

Kai, that landed harder than I expected. I have said versions of that to other people in here and could not say it to myself.

For anyone finding this later: the weekend away is rebooked for April. Two weeks of my life and one lesson. Not the worst trade I have ever made.

39me too 4