u/steepgloss

I started my TRE practice quite recently - about a month ago. I'm really stuck on the underdoing/overdoing thing. And I seem to have hit a problem. I have posted about this before but I'm still stuck for the right way to deal with this.

As I know I'm sitting on a lot of cptsd stuff, and also coming at it post-EMDR, and after reading the wiki numerous times, I decided to start my practice at the very low duration: 30-40 seconds.

I've mostly been doing this once a week, but I've found that I seem to be stirring up a lot of excess tension that my tremoring duration isn't allowing to complete. I feel a lot of stuck tension and activation, especially in my legs and feet.

I'm getting spontaneous tremoring outside of my practice. 1 day after doing 40 seconds of TRE, I was so tense again that I just lay down on the mat in the butterfly position, and without doing any warm-up fatiguing exercises, the tremoring began and I completed another 40 secs. Since then I still feel quite dysregulated. I'm aware that this frequency is too much for my nervous system right not but the tension is wanting more release.

Today I started spontaneously tremoring in my arms during a mild fall-out with my partner. There's definitely a lot of tension very close to the surface here. But I'm at my capacity as far as what my nervous system can handle.

So my questions are, what do I do?

Do I allow all these spontaneous instances of tremoring to just happen, when they happen?

Is this a sign that my practice time is too short?

Do I need to increase frequency but not time?

Will this stirred up tension with nowhere to go settle down again or will I need to discharge it with tremoring?

Should the end of a session feel like it's naturally coming to an end and should there be a sense of relaxation, like you've got everything that was present at that time out? Cos it feels like I have to cut it off just as it's getting started, due to my sensitive nervous system.

For people who have also experienced this, what other ways have you found to alleviate this tension, other than more tremoring?

I'm doing mild yoga, epsom salt baths, walks in nature, grounding, massage, yoga nidra before bed, allowing meditations, breathing exercises etc but it’s still just right there humming away wanting me to release it. I know I probably need to back off and rest, but I want to know that this tension will either dissipate or whether it requires my attention. Sorry that this is a long ramble. Thanks

I have read the wiki top to bottom numerous times, paying particular attention to the section on sensitive people/those carryinfg a hefty trauma load.

I've just recently started my TRE practice after finishing EMDR (fixed period treatment via NHS in UK)

I began with 30-40 seconds of tremoring for a few weeks, and felt no noticeable adverse effects.

This week I increased to 50 seconds and experienced significant ill effects - feeling emotionally choked up, on edge, irritable, HRV is down etc but by far the most unpleasant sensation, and the the thing I wanted to ask here about is the tension I'm getting in my legs (and a bit in my arms). It's very uncomfortable and keeps me awake. There's just no relaxing my legs at all. Even the gentle yoga stretching, long slow walks and epsom salt baths I'm doing aren't helping.

I experienced this during EMDR integration too. Shortly after a session I would feel incredibly tense in my legs, like I'd run for hours. Now I'm getting the same sensation after ever so slightly increasing my tremoring duration.

I understand this is most likely stored trauma coming out of freeze and is now wanting to be discharged. But what I'm stuck on is the tremoring duration. I was careful to do only a small amount, and increasing to 50 secs proved that my nervous system reached capacity, but as far as the tension in my legs is concerned, it wasn't nearly enough and it feels there's a ton of tension waiting to come out. It's like my legs are screaming more more but my nervous system is cowering, demanding less less.

So did I overdo it or under do it?

I don't want to be in a situation where I have to over tax my nervous system in order to satiate some tension release in my legs. Nor can I stand the situation I'm in with legs that won't relax.

I really wasn't expecting such a disparity like this.

Nor was I expecting another 10 seconds of tremoring to be the tipping point.

Can anyone relate/shed any light?

Thank you