Hello everyone, it’s been 3 years for me already, time just flies. I wanted to share my progression with all of you. It was surprisingly difficult to think back to how life used to be and write it down. After you let go of things, you don’t pay them much mind anymore.
Baseline (Before TRE)
Looking back, I never considered myself traumatized or depressed, but my baseline was anything but enjoyable.
I used to be in poor health and had, and still have, the tendency to try to figure things out on my own using my own logic and tunnelvision. I managed to get to a better place physically, but despite no longer being sick and in constant pain, the fears I had accumulated stayed with me. No matter how much I tried to tackle my “mental” issues with my mind, I couldn’t penetrate them. Like a videotape set on repeat, certain situations would trigger my fears.
I was emotionally numb. I had very little nuance in how I felt. Expressing emotions was another fear of mine, something that even showed up in my dreams. I could only distinguish between feeling “good” or “bad.”
All I wanted was to avoid bad feelings, and I built my life around that as much as possible, avoiding social responsibilities, conflict, work, school, etc. I worried about the future and the past, constantly overthinking whatever came to mind. I was driven by fear. Fear and anxiety were the background I lived in.
In some ways, I had given up on fundamentally changing, it just seemed impossible. I was trying a lot of things, but nothing really moved the needle. I felt stuck.
I remember sitting on a friend’s couch once. He told me I looked very tense and that I should “just relax bro”. I told him that I thought I was relaxed. In reality, I had no reference for what relaxed even feels like.
I also had frequent brain fog and poor sleep. My one big crutch was video games. I can’t really judge myself for it, any escape from reality was welcome at the time.
Discovering TRE
Thinking back, it was pure coincidence that I came across TRE. I was getting sick of all the tension strangling me and ruining my sleep. I found some TRE videos on YouTube and was intrigued. It looked funny/weird, and although I was skeptical, I wanted to see for myself. Your experience is your truth after all. If it works for animals in the wild, it should work for me too, right?
I did my first few sessions alone at home. Nothing major happened, but I could tell I was more relaxed afterwards. Then I stumbled across this subreddit. Without it, I probably wouldn’t have committed to the longterm approach. Knowing that it can take a long time and what kind of state of being could be on the other side really captured me. The connection to energy work and spiritual practices also made me curious.
Big thanks to u/Nadayogi
Year 1
In the first year, I had a very strict practice of 20–30 minutes every day. I had strong ups and downs quite frequently. My emotions started unlocking. I could feel joy, sadness and, to my surprise, quite a lot of anger. Anger was very new to me. I had probably suppressed it my whole life.
The tremors were mostly in my hips and would wiggle up the spine, loosening the rest of the body. I also had spontaneous tremors outside of practice and allowed them as best as I could. Sometimes they happened at night or in dreams. It was hard to tell if I was dreaming or actually tremoring in my sleep.
I was very fear driven and wanted everything out as fast as possible. I tried different things to speed it up, but most of them fell away over time.
I had the mindset of “I can’t live my life until I’ve released all my trauma” and I constantly felt behind. No matter how much I did, it never felt like enough.
After a few months I had to travel by plane. I had always been terribly afraid of flying and expected the same reaction again. But while I was a bit nervous before, I was completely relaxed during the entire flight, which was 11 hours. That’s when I realized that maybe I could dissolve my other irrational fears too.
Year 2
In the second year, I felt much less urgency and had better emotional awareness. My sessions dropped to 10–20 minutes every other day. Less bruteforcing, more awareness.
I also started to understand what it meant to surrender to the process. Water can’t flow if you keep your hand on the lid.
I was still avoidant of social situations, and even though I wanted that to change this first, it persisted.
At the end of that year, I had an appendix surgery and a difficult recovery. It was in the middle of winter. I remember being unsure about tremoring after the operation because of the wounds, but the impulse to shake was definitely there as soon as I woke up. I tried to tremor as gently as possible with inflicting minimal pain.
The pain in the scar tissue stayed for quite a while, and my session time dropped to around 5 minutes every other day, sometimes with longer breaks. My body felt extremely tense again.
A few months later, a friend randomly invited me to jump into a nearby river as a challenge. It was still cold/snowy. I wasn’t in a great place mentally and physically, but still open to stupid/fun ideas, so I joined. I knew cold showers were beneficial, but this was something new for me.
When we got there, I couldn’t get into the water. It felt like facing your fear of death. But I did the next best thing and poured river water over myself with a bottle. I was standing in that freezing river, in a forest, with a few rays of sunlight hitting me, and I started laughing. I had never felt that alive or joyful before.
Year 3
Cold exposure became my all-around support tool. A short dip would leave me feeling content, energized and physically more relaxed for the rest of the day. It became a near-daily part of my routine.
I experimented a bit and found that cold exposure around sunrise, noon or sunset worked best. Doing cold before TRE didn’t work well for me, because the shivering reflex interfered with the release. But TRE followed by cold, then movement or stretching, worked best.
Since I still had some pain from the surgery and could only tremor very little, I focused more on reconnecting with nature. I spent time outside in the forest, often grounded, and got plenty of sun. Avoiding Technology.
From there, things started to flow smoothly. Life became less about working on myself and more about actually living.
I felt more confident, and my mind gradually became quieter. Sometimes I would feel random joy while walking, or a light sense of bliss. One by one, long held fears started to dissolve.
Social anxiety disappeared, and my fear of conflict faded as well.
I even went on my first date (I’m 28m) and had a great time. In the past, I would have been anxious for weeks beforehand. This time, I was only slightly nervous a few minutes before she arrived, which is normal I think.
At this point, my TRE sessions were usually 5–10 minutes, as the tremors would naturally stop after that and I would feel nice and relaxed.
I only had one or two bigger releases throughout the years. One was around the rib cage, and very recently I had a release during sleep, where the muscles around my neck and the atlas bone were tremoring. My neck had been twisting and stretching for up to a year already. It’s interesting to catch the body working things out on its own when you’re not paying attention.
Present
Life is good. My body feels like one whole instead of separate parts. Most of my chronic tension is gone, and what remains does not bother me on a daily basis.
I recover quickly from stress, and situations that used to overwhelm me now feel normal. As far as I can tell, all irrational anxiety is gone.
My mind is much quieter, with less noise and fewer fluctuations. I can feel and express a full range of emotions.
I’m comfortable with myself and no longer driven by the need for approval. I can face conflict and stand by my truth.
That light sense of bliss is now a fairly constant background state. Overall, I feel freer in my choices and less like a repeating script of anxiety trying to avoid life.
To my past self and the reader
Stay consistent with your practice and intention. Walk your own path of letting go of fear and uncover who you are beyond the mountain of trauma that binds your view. Connect with nature as a source of vitality and trust your body to take care of the rest.
Try not to obsess over where your trauma comes from or what it means. You are already in the process of letting it go.