The plateau · call recap
What a plateau is and is not
16 May 202411 attendedHeld by Ada
The circle's second call and the one where we worked out what it is for. Eleven people, most of them six weeks or more into nothing changing, and every one of them arriving with the same unspoken question: is this the end of the road. We did not answer it, because none of us can. What we did instead was separate the flat weeks from the story people were telling themselves about the flat weeks, and the second one turned out to be doing most of the damage.
Where the room started
Braced for bad news. Mark said he had stopped looking at week eleven and felt worse for having stopped, which is a very common shape and I have never heard anyone describe it that neatly. Two people had already decided the dose was wrong. One had decided her body had adapted and this was simply over.
I asked what each person had actually been told by a clinician. In nine of the eleven cases the answer was some version of wait, and in seven of those nine the waiting had been the intolerable part, not the plateau.
What came up
The distinction that gave the circle its purpose. A plateau is a period of time. The verdict people attach to it is a separate object and it is optional. Mark put it as a plateau is not a verdict, which has stuck and is now more or less our house phrase.
We also looked at what people had stopped noticing while they watched one thing. Wilf's blood pressure had come down over the flat four months and his GP had said so at a review he had walked out of feeling like a failure. Two people had got stronger. One had slept properly for the first time in a decade and had not mentioned it to anybody because it did not seem like the point.
Where we left it
Not fixed. Company, and a slightly longer view. I said the thing I say in this circle every time: I am not here to end your plateau and I could not if I wanted to. I am here so that you have somewhere to be during one.