The room got loud and we had to slow it down

Where the room started

Warm and fast. Nobody was unkind. That is what makes this failure mode difficult to catch — it is generosity with the brakes off. Several of the longer-standing members have found something that worked for them and genuinely want to hand it over, and a new person with a small question looks like a place to put it.

The tell, when I finally noticed it, was that the person who asked had not spoken for eleven minutes while six other people discussed her titration.

Where I got it wrong

I let it run because the energy felt good and I mistook volume for usefulness. I should have come in at the second unsolicited dose suggestion. Instead I came in at the fifth, and by then the person who asked had already decided she was a nuisance. I said so on the call and I am saying it again here.

What I did next was ask everyone to stop and put one question to her: what did you actually want to know. She said: whether it settles. Two people answered in two sentences each. That was the useful part of the hour and it took ninety seconds.

What we agreed

A working rule for this circle, which the room wrote rather than me. If you want to talk about your own dose, say I, and say who told you. If nobody has asked for a plan, do not build one. And if you have a mechanism you love, take it to the reading group, where enthusiasm about mechanisms is the point.

I rang her the next day. She is still coming. She has asked to be the one who says the working rule out loud at the start of the next call, which I think is exactly right.