r/longtermTRE

I definitely do.

And most people here seem to from what I read.

Is there some larger psychological background to this?

Like do people who tend to fawn gather or seek advice from books or internet? 🤔

I sometimes wish I had a more fight or flight response instead of just submitting to authority ( parents, teachers, lovers, etc).

Not to compare but I've noticed the ones with fight or flight responses seem to have a more 'complete' and fuller lives than those who fawn.

Like sure they have their own traumas and troubles but they atleast have interesting stories to look back at once they manage to resolve the situations instead of the ones who fawn for whom when I look back, it's just ... Empty.

The ones who completely remove themselves from bad circumstances by running away or aggressively hitting back can look back at these episodes as highlights of life.

I don't mean to say those people have it any easier(if any thing they probably had it harder - a situation that the ones who fawn tried to escape).

Just a random rambling that was on my mind and wanted to share 🙏

15 months of TRE, big-time screen user and reader all my life, used to be how I wound down in the evenings and my main coping mechanism besides food. I've had some awareness of the eye strain caused by looking at screens for a long time but was always able to ignore it. Two weeks ago something changed and I can't stand either reading or looking at screens for long anymore. In high-stress situations at work I can power through the discomfort, but at home the eye strain becomes too palpable for anything involving reading or looking at screens to be relaxing or enjoyable. I've tried many different types of screens, blue light filters, increasing font size, using big screens with greater viewing distance, kindle reader, projectors, etc, nothing eliminates the strain.

I used to spend hours every evening looking at screens and now I don't know what to do with my time anymore, there's only so many other mentally stimulating things you can do in the evening that doesn't involve looking at screens or reading. I practice dancing, listen to music, drive my car and take walks, but not being able to use screens to relax still leaves a huge vacuum.

Has anyone had a similar experience and did it pass or did it permanently change your relationship with screens?

Not sure yet, but i start to seem a connection between TRE and my mood going down a lot after, even with only 5 min every other day.

How likely is this?

I am neurodivergent/adhd/gifted/sensitive, i've read that this can affect it as well and positive + negative emotions are both quite intense for me. Example; i will also cry out of gratitude a few times per week or when the weather is really nice or i listen to good music.

I am already doing a lot of downregulating activities like walking in nature for 1 to 2 hours per day. Vipassana meditation. And generally try to slow down a lot.

Also have some gut an sleep issues (wake up in the middle of the night for a few hours, seems to be related to bloodsugar stemming from gut issues). Also good to know i can not really build muscle properly, i think this says something about the stress my system is under but probably also due to poor sleep.

I do not have a full time job anymore, i have restarted studying, which is not so stressful for me and doesnt require much time so i have alot of free time where i try to do thing i enjoy. I am 27 atm

I already scaled down on time a lot, but i would say i am in some way quite unstable. Even though my mood is good most of the time and stabilithy is increasing, sometimes in life i have setbacks through which i cope with smoking cannabis (mixed with tabacco) for a few days. Then my body needs to recover after quitting. Like now i had some recent smoking, but i quit 10 days ago, maybe thats too early also to start TRE again?

What do you think? All perspectives are welcome.

Edit: ok I will scale down in time even more. How do I know my dosing is right? I read I should feel integrated and grounded afterwards? Is that the main indicator?

Looking for input from people who've done TRE long term, especially anyone who took a while to get something out of it.

I started TRE last summer. Been doing it inconsistently since then. Sometimes weekly, sometimes twice a week, sessions around 20 minutes. Sometimes I'd skip a month. The tremor itself works fine, my legs shake.

But here's the thing. I have never felt a release. Never had emotion come up. Never felt unstuck after a session. The only thing I can clearly say it does for me is help me sleep a bit better that night. That's it.

I've also tried doing Yoga Nidra after TRE sometimes for integration. Doesn't seem to add much either.

The frustrating part is I'm exactly the kind of person it's supposed to help. I have nervous system sensitization issues. I get stuck in fight or flight after anxiety events and it lasts for weeks.

Right now I'm a week into one of these crashes. I've done TRE a few times this week trying to discharge the activation. Nothing. Same as always.

I've also been doing IFS with a therapist for over a year, no major progress because I can't feel parts in my body and my protectors don't move.

Questions for the longer term TRE folks:

Did anyone here go a long time without feeling anything and then suddenly start getting releases? How long?

Should I be doing longer sessions? 30, 40, 60 minutes?

Am I missing something on the setup side. Pre-session orientation, post-session integration, anything that might be the missing piece.

Honestly losing motivation to continue. A year of doing it and the only return is marginally better sleep. When I'm in actual dysregulation, which is what I started TRE for, it doesn't help me get unstuck.

Thanks.

Hello Everyone,

So as the title says I feel like I am stuck in my TRE journey. I practice for 15 months now, started off with a professional practicioner, but do it solo now.

The last time I tremored was about 2 months ago, I have no clue how you guys make it a weekly practice. Everytime I tremor, even for a few minutes I am sick for at least a week. My practicioner called it "Emotional Vomiting". I get this strong vomit urges even though nothing ever really comes out. It is such an intense experience.

So, last time was 2 months ago, and even today even as we speak I still feel this "pull" sensation on my stomach, I can barely eat without feeling sick, I am constantly tired and I kind of want to be in bed all day. And now I have it in my head that I did "half a session" last time, if that is even possible, and now I have activated a lot of energy without actually releasing it. But I am scared to do it. I am scared to go back to tremoring. I am scared that this cathartic experience is at hand, and I am scared to go trough it. And now I feel like I am stuck. Like I must have dealt with this fear, before I paradoxically can deal with this fear.

What do I do now? What am I supposed to do now? Should I wait even longer before tremoring again? Should I find a different way to practice? Help is very much wanted.

Hello everyone,

I'm in the middle of an emotional storm of anxiety right now and wanted to know if others had similar experiences and found healing with TRE of other modalities. I've been doing TRE sporadically here and there myself, but beside some shaking, nothing too intense came up.

For context, I'm 40m and I've been single my entire life. I've been living in my head a lot during all those years, thinking women don't really like me, having extreme shyness, a hard time being relaxed around them and also being at peace with my own masculinity I guess?

I've connected with a lovely women from work, during a recent work trip, and we're quite attracted to each other. She super beautiful, lovely, has great value, sexy, etc... Anything I could dream of, without putting her on a pedestal, of course.

Long story short, we've progressed to the point of dating outside work, went to restaurants, went hiking and also had sex, which surprisingly was great for both of us, even with my lack of experience.

I'm writing this post because I know I'm attracted to her, but I feel very much in my head when I'm with her as my heart seems closed off. It feels like there's this blockage around my heart and also sexuality when it's time for PIV... I've been giving her oral and used my finger and she enjoyed it very much, which is a relief.

But I don't know why I'm feeling this flat when the women of my dreams are with me?!

This past sunday morning, we made love and it was great, but I had trouble climaxing during sex and also oral, which she took a bit personally. I'm also having a difficult time staying hard for PIV, which I sense is very important for her. I guess due to my past, lack of experience and age, I've been having a hard time having this masculine drive to have intense sex, which I'm trying to understand and heal with either TRE or anything else, really.

I sense that she's becoming distant and I'm feeling down, thinking I'm losing her when it was wonderful only a couple of days ago.

I did TRE consistently for about 4 months. I haven't done it in about 2 months because I had to slow the pace down a bit. This weekend I did a trip and I spent the first 30-40 minutes of it experiencing intense tremoring in my body to the point my stomach and entire body were tremoring. This is with no effort from myself.

Today I am EXHAUSTED! Entire body feels like I did a triathalon this weekend.

Hi everyone,

Last year, while doing TRE (a fascia-based bodywork exercise, google it to know better), I heard a crack/plop/a sound coming from my right groin area. From that moment on I developed strange symptoms, such as a rotation in the penis (rotated on itself toward left), discoloration and ED (both of them probably because of the lack of blood flow), a forwarded (and slightly internally rotated) right hip and kind of compensations throughout the whole right side, from the middle of the foot to the kneee to the shoulder and the jaw, which seems to be “misplaced”.

Still have no idea what exactly happened, just a few hypothesis, still trying to understand and to fix everything.

Lately I realized that, if I contract enough my groin muscles, I can hear a plop in my jaw. How is it possible? Is it fascia related?

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 will do the best I can to describe all this. Over time I've definitely reached a place which is way beyond the domain of words. But I do feel motivated to try to write about this experience.

I got into TRE in 2022, and at a certain point reached a sticking point. Recently, this big blockage which had been there for a few years actually cleared, and I'm making some progress again.

After struggling with this blockage for a while, I got the idea to try tense-and-release with the blocked areas. That's what opened things up again. So I decided to implement that throughout my whole body, using an audio that guides me through each body part, one at a time.

What I have found is that moving my awareness into certain parts of my body has such a direct effect on the tremor pattern. For example, when the audio brought me to my left arm, and I moved awareness into my left arm. My whole left arm and hand started to go wild instantly. The same thing happens with my legs. Like the connection between putting awareness in that area, and tremors appearing there, is so instant, and easier to observe with the audio guiding me part by part.

So then the next part is also really amazing me. After I loop through the progressive muscle relaxation enough, it reaches a point where I can remain totally open to more tremors if they do want to happen, but the tremors are "finished". So then I am laying there in this very relaxed, open state, continuing to follow the progressive muscle relaxation. What I then feel is very, very subtle tremors and subtle energy, not strong enough to cause a physical motion, but definitely something there.

I think that "second stage" of practice, of just being there in the relaxed/open state, and even experiencing the subtler tremors, is actually really important. I didn't get to it very often because my blockage would come up before the tremors "finished".

I'm wondering if someone else does it this way or has any "strange" poses they want to share?

I lie on my back and have a yoga block under my sacrum. My feet and calves are up on my couch. It kind of looks like the tremor inducing wall sitting pose, but on your back.

I've found this to reach parts of my pelvis and deep hip muscles the tremors couldn't reach in other poses. Sometimes I listen to music and hum along the melody, the humming helps release as well.

One day I just tried a bunch of different poses to reach those parts that always wanted to tremor but that I just couldn't reach.

This is a pretty niche post, but maybe someone will relate. On my healing journey, I’ve noticed that lots of women (on Reddit at least 🤣) have overlapping symptoms and conditions, particularly some combo of:
-ADHD or AuDHD
-PMDD
-endometriosis
-CPTSD
-Anxiety
-chronic pain and autoimmune disorders

I’ve been going crazy trying to figure out the cause of the overlap and wondering why TRE is the fist thing that has actually helped me. Then I started looking at low vagal tone and the research is there- low vagal tone is linked to all of these conditions. Why haven’t we heard anything about this?

Has anyone had TRE and/ or vagal nerve exercises help with any of these conditions?

If you consider the universe as a closed system, every energetic imbalance across space is just energy concentrated somewhere (e.g. trauma, stuck in the body) and perhaps depleted elsewhere (e.g. someone experiencing anger). The total energy doesn't change — it just distributes unevenly.

In a trauma-free system, there would be no volatility, since the nervous systems of all people would be perfectly balanced — sympathetic and parasympathetic responding normally to external stimuli. Though maybe I'm wrong about there being no emotional volatility, because no-trauma doesn't mean a constant state of neutrality. I speculate there'd still be sadness, anger, etc.

But this raises a deeper question: how would an 'external stimulus' even exist if everything is in balance? What drives change in a system where nothing is stuck? If all energy is flowing freely and nothing is concentrated or depleted, what creates the difference that sets anything in motion? Maybe it's just time itself — the one thing that moves even when everything else is in equilibrium. Though I'll say, when I took mushrooms, time simply stopped making sense — which makes you wonder how solid that assumption really is.

And honestly, I'm not sure I fully understand what factors drive oscillations in the universe — the perception of everything moving, evolving, changing. But perhaps, assuming time does exist and is the fundamental driver of change, what's actually happening with energetic contractions in the body versus outside the body is this: when you're trauma-free, you move in sync with external energy and nothing gets stuck — as long as you're able to feel the waves of feeling fully until the body returns to baseline.

Anyway, these are half-formed thoughts. Curious if any of this resonates or if someone can poke holes in it.

I won't go into it but I am all by myself at 32 years old in a new country after finally breaking free.

Therapy for few years now. EMDR now. Working through somatic stuff. Man you can see it all on my face.

14-27 I've just lived a life of a abuse. A scapegoat. A doormat. Attacked. Weak. I wish I could cry. I plead to the sky to help me. I've been so incredibly used. All the people I thought were friends just were taking from me. I some how was making good money in my 20s and just spent it all away now I'm nearly pay check to pay check.

Everyone seems to have had great 20s. I've lost mine. Now is like the time to start a family whilst I'm surviving. It's not fair. Not being a victim. Life isn't fair.

Worse when you have people who've grown up in huge family homes, loving families, everything bought for them (I moved out at teenage years and paid rent since) telling me to like suck it up and just treating me like shit. I feel so ugly.

Like I'm nothing. It wis what is F*cking is. But does anyone have advice? I genuinely don't know how I'm ever here

EDIT: Also is there a recommended place to do TRE classes online? I can't find any locally which I would prefer to do in person but online will do

Recently discovered a lot of abdominal tension through my TRE practice.

To work with those areas, should I just rely on the unfolding of the TRE sessions and subsequent deep stretches, or could I add deep tissue abdominal massage by a practitioner (Chi Nei Tsang massage)?

Hi everyone, I’ve been aware of TRE for some time but a few days ago I came across it again and tried it on a whim! Despite having a self-inquiry background (vipassana, various forms of meditation, psychedelics, IFS) I was skeptical that I would tremor but boy was I wrong, it went on for half an hour and my mind was blank for most of it which felt so good. Then I got kind of freaked out and very mildly nauseous so I stopped, although the tremors would continue on their own in subtle ways. I definitely overdid it as the next 1-2 days I was exhausted, headachy and sensitive. I’ve been on and off crying which has felt amazing, purging ambient grief that sometimes doesn’t even feel like mine. I’ve been tired so letting myself rest. I felt good enough to do another small session today (just 15 min) and it was normal, nothing to report. I’m an anxious person and occasionally get panic attacks, and although I’m pretty comfortable feeling/releasing emotions and crying intuitively I know that I needed something for my nervous system. Just reporting in to say that I’m excited for the journey ahead and trying my best to not overdo it at this beginning stage!

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.

I've been doing Tre for a week now and it seems to only happen in my legs and a bit of hip. Does movement in other parts happens later in the practices?

I do it for about 30 minutes including the warm up

i’m always overwhelmed and tired even when i’m doing absolutely nothing. i’m in this constant freeze when i literally can’t do anything even when i’m motivated and excited for something….

i’m wondering if TRE can help with this?

It might be too far fetched, but is it possible? All the males in my family are bald or going bald, including a younger brother of mine. But I don't, I might have a small circle going in my head but it might just be becuase of my hair color. Comparing that to my younger brother who has lost more than that. For context I've been doing tre for 2.5 years and I'm 23-24 yo. There aren't other things beside tre I've been doing differently than my siblings, and my life can get pretty stressful too, so it's not the lack of stress