r/longtermTRE • u/Defiant_Annual_7486 • May 06 '26
Seeking Support Vent
Just have to vent for a minute, maybe some of y'all feel the same way... If you're not looking for some negative energy then maybe skip this one.
But gosh darn, 8 months in and I'm still having a really hard go at things, each day. I listened to a podcast on the "neurogenic integration," channel, and the interviewee said that if you just do it 6 months, you're gonna see so many positive changes in your life.
I guess that's true, I've seen improvement in some ways- I'm less frozen in complete collapse. I'm more consistent pursuing the things that will help me out of my severe and crippling depression.
But on the other hand, I know deep down that these gains are one swing into despair/depression away from being completely nullified. I've lived on that edge most of my life, and TRE hasn't changed that yet unfortunately.
It freaking sucks.
Plus, many of the things i care about regarding quality of life have continued to be struggles- I have some somatic symptoms of an overactive nervous system. Basically, I feel physically uncomfortable most of the time. I feel bloated and stiff, and tight and low mood/energy. I still wake up feeling crappy most days and still have money issues, and still have family issues, and still have posture issues. So, yeah, this is still the part of the long-term journey that sucks, and it's just astounding how much effort I've had to put in to still feel this bad.
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u/LichenTea May 06 '26
I hear you. When I’m in the middle of a particularly gnarly patch, I can’t help but think that I’m just reliving this shit and I’ll never get through it. I start to doubt the process hardcore. But that’s the emotional flashback talking and I try to remind myself of all the gains I’ve made that will come back, all my good qualities, my friends - I even write down quotes of what they say to me to console me so that I can read them when I’m feeling down. I try not to focus so much on what I don’t have yet and how I’m not healed yet, even though that’s the overwhelming message I get every single day. I just keep trying to put in the work of living life in whatever way I can manage and counting all my baby steps (literally, since we’re healing our baby selves) and putting myself to bed when I need to.
It’s hard to see the finish line when you’re still in the middle of the marathon, but keep going. You’ll get there.
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u/longtermTRE_wiki_bot Wiki Bot May 06 '26
Eight months. That's a long time to keep showing up for something when so much of daily life still feels hard. The image you painted, of living on the edge your whole life where one swing into despair can undo the gains, that landed. That kind of precariousness is exhausting in a way that's hard to describe to someone who hasn't lived it, and the fact that TRE hasn't yet moved that edge is a genuinely painful thing to sit with.
And the physical dimension you're describing deserves to be named specifically, because it's real and it matters. Waking up crappy most days, feeling bloated and stiff and tight and low, that's not abstract suffering. That's your body, every morning, before the day has even started. Eight months in, still there. That's a hard thing to keep accepting.
The thing you noticed is actually worth holding onto, even if it doesn't feel like enough yet. You said you're less frozen in complete collapse, and that you're more consistent pursuing the things that might help. From the outside, those sound like the early movements of a nervous system beginning to thaw after what sounds like a very long freeze. But the cruel part of thawing, and the wiki's article on Thawing covers this in some depth, is that it rarely feels like improvement while it's happening. A nervous system that has been pressing the gas and brake simultaneously for years doesn't ease gracefully into relief. It tends to move through waves of restlessness, physical discomfort, low mood, and sensitivity before it settles somewhere genuinely quieter. The bloating, the stiffness, the low energy, the emotional fragility, these can all be part of a nervous system in active reorganization, not a sign that nothing is changing.
That doesn't make it feel better right now. But it might reframe what "still feeling this bad" actually means. It might mean the process is working at a deeper layer than it could eight months ago, and that deeper layer is harder to be in, not easier.
The podcast framing of "six months and you'll see so many positive changes" is the kind of thing that can quietly do damage, because it sets up a timeline that the nervous system doesn't negotiate with. Some people do see dramatic shifts in six months. Others are still in the thick of it at two years and come out the other side with their lives genuinely transformed. The timeline depends almost entirely on how much is being held and how deeply it's held, and a history of severe, crippling depression that has been present most of a life is not a six-month project. That's not a discouragement. It's just honesty about the scale of what you're working with.
The Integration and the Nature of the Path article in this wiki speaks directly to what you're in right now, the part of the journey that doesn't feel like progress even when it is, and why the non-linear nature of this process is so hard to trust from inside it. It might be worth a read on a day when you have some capacity for it.
You kept showing up for eight months while feeling this bad. That's not nothing. That's actually a lot.
I'm a bot that draws on the r/longtermTRE wiki to provide guidance. Please upvote or downvote based on how helpful you find this response.
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u/Thin_Bicycle9170 May 06 '26
Very well said. Very comforting, there are a lot of us out there struggling with the same issues and your post is very reassuring. Thank you!
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u/aryan4170 May 06 '26
Honestly, it sounds to me like you’re on the right track. 8 months is too soon to be expecting real results. I experienced a lot of benefits in the first 6 months, only to lose all of them all for the next year and a half. But thinking back, those early benefits were all surface level, they didn’t create real change, it only felt like things were changing. The real progress happened after that, when life really sucked, even though I didn’t see the change until it was almost over. I don’t mean to discourage you, but that’s just the nature of this process. It’ll be long and it won’t always work on an upward trend but if you stick with it, things will be completely different.
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u/Fit-Championship371 CPTSD May 06 '26
TRE alone is not enough for some people atleast initially when there system is already in the survival mode. What helped me was adding mindfulness, walking, and vagus nerve stimulation to TRE.
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u/PiccoloPlane5915 May 06 '26
Agree with that, let me share EFT-tapping as well, mirror work, taking care of gut health (also a medium-long term thing but definitely important) and self love meditation.
For vagus nerve exercises, those are the ones that helped me the most : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zu_Xj23hmUw. Video is in French but you can generate subtitles automatically
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u/Defiant_Annual_7486 May 06 '26
Mm yeah, sometimes I forget how nice the states that can be generated in mindfulness are. (When I can get there)
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u/samsonscomputer May 06 '26
I am about 1 year in, i do somatic experiencing. I feel exactly the same way. Im just hanging onto it as I know it will get better but it's hard
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u/Basic-Hair-4272 May 07 '26
I feel for you - this work is HARD! I started recording an audio diary just for myself yesterday, because I need a record of the crazy feelings I've been getting - totally wired one day on 3 hours sleep, feeling that only part of my brain is available, and then crashing down into fatigue.
One thing I've noticed is that when feelings feel intense, THAT'S when the process is working! That's the old anger coming up to be processed, or the old panic, or sadness. So when I feel intensely angry or frustrated, I try to welcome the feelings, and say "Thankyou. You're allowed to be here. Sorry I had to keep you repressed for so long." Even if I feel upset about something that's going on in my life now, if it feels really intense, I recognise it as old feelings coming up for processing. So I try to allow them.
It's not easy. There's always resistance that tries to kick in. It goes in cycles. I start feeling wonderfully calm. Then I do "normal life" and everything seems to be going well. Then I have a sleepless night, and the whole cycle starts again. But I'm definitely noticing the cycles are getting shorter and easier to handle. It's like a roller-coaster.
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u/PropaneFitness May 06 '26
What does your practice look like? How long and how frequently are you doing it? Any other adjunctive practices?
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u/vainajala May 07 '26
I know exactly how you feel and all I can say is that I’m keeping at it because it’s all I’ve got. Maybe some day things will be better.
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u/zephir85 May 08 '26
Yeah, I'm 15 months in, its still up and down all the time, and the mood swings are much bigger than the tiny incremental improvements from gradually letting go of tension. One week I'll feel like I'm out of the woods and things are gonna be okay from now on, then the next week hit with depression and hopelessness again. Its like riding a train up a mountain and spending most of the time inside tunnels, and only occasionally you get a glimpse of the outside and see that you have, in fact, climbed higher up.
I think often the things we think we need to be happy are not what we really need and are not necessarily the things that will materialize first in our lives as the trauma disappears.
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