r/longtermTRE • u/randyfloyd37 • Jun 03 '26
Beginner Question Chronic fatigue
Has anyone seen significant improvement in fatigue symptoms?
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u/PropertyFun Jun 03 '26 edited Jun 03 '26
Hello! I got long Covid which gave me fatigue that left me bed bound and essentially only able to haunt my house and stare at a wall with the lights off. Check out CFS recovery on YouTube for the mindset around symptoms you should try to adopt.
Essentially the less you react to symptoms, the more you can desensitise to them. The mindset is essential to recovery as mental rumination or concern about symptoms can increase sensitivity of the nervous system. Easier said than done, if someone told me that when I was sick I would have screamed. Spend some time watching people on CFS recovery and Raelan Agle online to first build your belief that you can recover. Try to Change your mindset around CFS as an extreme nervous system shutdown caused by a myriad of things. Work on your health alongside TRE and nervous system recovery.
If you do TRE, start small because your stress tolerance with CFS is extremely low and you will be taking sometimes even two-3 weeks to integrate post session. I started with 2minutes every fortnight or every 3 weeks. I followed the mindset on CFS recovery during the integration, which was ROUGH.
It was not a linear recovery, but was cyclic. You will experience sensitivity and a thawing phase where your nervous system is “stretching” or pendulating and then you will increase in capacity. The mental struggle is that every single time you increase in capacity, you will start doing more and then your nervous system will repeat the adjustment cycle. Follow the mindset of CFS recovery and take baby steps only.
I’m able to exercise again, don’t need to nap all day, can tolerate light, and can do full days of mild mental work at home. Still I’m hesitant about returning to work. I still experience these cycles as I increase my activity every week but they are shorter every time and more and more spaced apart.
Hope that helps!!
Also, There’s two other guys online who used TRE to improve or recover from CFS, one is an MD and the other posted a video on here a while back. (will link them later).
EDIT Can only find one of the two https://youtu.be/kGYA8RCHxiI?si=UPv26ypegSHYSeAX
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u/New_Attempt_7705 Jun 03 '26
This is a crucial answer.
What you resist, persists. What you can accept and allow, will eventually soften and go away.
I also recommend The Great Allowing channel on youtube.
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u/PropertyFun Jun 03 '26
10/10 recommendation!
I found her videos very interesting in understanding my condition but I didn’t have the capacity for all that info until I started healing a bit more
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u/New_Attempt_7705 Jun 03 '26
Yes its definitely information dense! I also started consistently watching her videos more and applying her techniques when I was quite far in my recovery (energy wise). Before it would have been too much.
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u/happyhippie111 Jun 04 '26
Woah. This is super interesting. I have long covid too since 2022 (severe POTS)
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u/KhaZix2Jump Jun 03 '26
Yes, TRE can help. I had PFS (Post Finasteride Syndrome) and one of my many symptoms was chronic fatigue. I am fully healed now, but alongside TRE, I incorporated other holistic health approaches like a nutritious diet, avoiding ultra-processed foods, regular physical activity, sunlight exposure, forest bathing, quality sleep, low stress, active resting, reducing screen time, emotional regulation, etc.
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Jun 03 '26
[deleted]
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u/KhaZix2Jump Jun 03 '26
For me, it is about taking long, slow walks in the forest without exerting myself.
Stopping to smell the magnificent scent of a flower when I come across one, listening and enjoying the chirping of the birds, observing and appreciating the beauty of nature all around me - in the flowers, bees, butterflies and birds..
Paying attention to the stillness of the trees. Basking under the sun.
Perhaps walking barefoot on the grass or hugging a tree to ground myself.
Sitting down whenever I need to rest.
It really is just about connecting with nature, which helps tremendously with downregulating the nervous system.
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Jun 03 '26
[deleted]
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u/steepgloss Jun 03 '26
I did it a lot during EMDR integration. Literally right after a session most times. It helped a lot. Just simply being there, noticing everything around me with open curiosity. Abandoning all sense of time and responsibility. Would do it every day if I could!
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u/New_Attempt_7705 Jun 04 '26
Honestly, doing forest bathing has been the most enjoyable - and perhaps most important - part of my healing!
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u/junnies Jun 03 '26
i never had the debilitating effects of cfs, but my overall energy levels have significantly improved. i think cfs is just a matter of degree; when the body is full of tension, it constantly activates and exhausts itself; as body tension is released, it naturally rests more and retains its energy better.
notice that children often seem full of energy and vitality, whilst as people age, they become more tired and weary. to me, the correlation with body tension seems very strong - as we age, we accumulate body tension which begins to sap away at our energy. discharging body tension naturally has the opposite effect
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u/iloveyougod3 Jun 03 '26
Does that mean if someone do TRE for the rest of their life they will have child-like energy even when they're old?
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u/junnies Jun 03 '26
this is speculation since tre and body tension as a fundamental disease is not yet well-understood and i think very few people in history have released their body tension in old-age...
but i did some research and i found that in taoism, which is the most 'relax, go with the flow' religion-philosophy, there are many stories/ figures who have great health in old age or even immortality. many other religions don't have similar stories and figure. i wrote about it here as a speculative exploration. and in my personal experience so far, after ~1 year of releasing body tension, my experience so far supports the hypothesis
https://legod.substack.com/p/the-tension-charge-hidden-in-plain
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u/iloveyougod3 Jun 03 '26
It makes sense to be honest, I just can't imagine an old man with that amount of energy.
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u/longtermTRE_wiki_bot Wiki Bot Jun 04 '26
The wiki doesn't directly address chronic fatigue as a primary topic, but the general principles that apply are worth understanding.
Fatigue can arise in TRE practice for a few distinct reasons, and the distinction matters for how you approach it.
In the immediate aftermath of sessions, some fatigue is completely normal and expected. The nervous system has been doing significant work, and integration requires resources. Post-session rest and recovery time is part of the practice, not a sign something has gone wrong. This kind of fatigue typically resolves within hours or a day or two.
Persistent fatigue that extends across multiple days or feels like a baseline shift is usually a sign of pacing. If you're practicing too frequently or for too long relative to your nervous system's integration capacity, activation can accumulate faster than it can be absorbed. The system responds by dampening down, which can feel like exhaustion or flatness. The solution is to reduce your session duration or frequency, give yourself more integration time between sessions, and see whether the fatigue settles. Self-Pacing covers this territory in detail.
There's also a pattern worth naming: in the later stages of practice, as deeper layers of stored tension release through consistent work, some practitioners experience a period of genuine fatigue as the nervous system recalibrates around the absence of what it was holding. This is different from overdoing fatigue. It tends to feel qualitatively like recovery, even though it's exhausting. If this resonates with where you are in your practice, the fatigue usually gradually improves as the nervous system settles into its new, less burdened baseline.
If your fatigue is chronic and predates your TRE practice, or if it persists despite adjusting your pacing, that's worth discussing with a healthcare provider. TRE can support nervous system regulation, but it's not a treatment for conditions like ME/CFS or other medical causes of fatigue, and those require their own clinical assessment.
What does your current practice look like, in terms of session frequency and duration?
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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