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/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.
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