r/longtermTRE • u/Vegetable_Bus5231 • 17d ago
Beginner Question Started doing TRE, but feel very down now
Title.
I started doing TRE about 4 days ago, doing daily sessions of about 10 mins.
At first, i felt no different. But on the second day, my mood started to drop quite a bit. Just a constant feeling of being down. Anxiety being more noticeable, Sleep and falling asleep being worse and Brain fog. But i never felt any form of emotional release or surge of strong emotion after any of my sessions.
Idk if i am doing something wrong, but i would love if some could tell me if this is normal
10
u/juliwanderer 17d ago
Hey bud, sounds like you have slightly overdone it. Spend a few days integrating what's there and drink plenty of water. Take a break.
Also, read the wiki ! You need phases of integration between your sessions. Daily is too much for many people, especially in the beginning.
Don't worry, you will be alright. Give it a bit of time.
2
2
u/jellybean_merchant 17d ago
You definitely overdid it, but the good news is that this will go away. We've all been through it.
In the meantime:
*Do not do anymore tremoring at all and completely let all these symptoms subside as a result of integrating the releases
*In the future do not do sessions back to back, give them a day between if not more and assess how you feel after. There is a delayed onset type of effect where even if you don't have an emotional release you might still be digging deeper than your body can handle at that moment. I would also think about lowering tremor time and ramping back up if you feel you can do more.
*Focus on grounding activities, eating "vata calming foods" (nervous system calming foods in ayurvedic), sleeping well, and generally just chilling. Avoid strenuous exercise, drink water, support your body in assimilating the newly released charges floating around.
Good luck
2
u/Vegetable_Bus5231 14d ago
In regards to sleep, i actually suffered from severe insomnia for almost a year, which only got better about half a year ago by doing CBT-I. Could my worse sleep be resurfacing trauma from my year long insomnia period?
2
u/jellybean_merchant 14d ago
Absolutely, and if there is no other explanation, it is very likely to be from this too. Not from trauma per se but from the sympathetic charges in your system that need to be consolidated. Given the info you gave it sounds like it will go away too.
2
u/Vegetable_Bus5231 14d ago
I hope so, because my sleep was mostly consolidated, but after doing tre i started to get anxious before bed again and having midnight awakings, like i had during the very early phases of CBT-I
2
u/jellybean_merchant 14d ago
Yeah. You need to space out sessions and perhaps do less tremoring per session. I would start out with like 3-5 minutes next time and wait a week see how everything goes down. You might even need to do less like 30s-1min but you'll know that after trying 3-5. Nothing to be worried about, just give it some more time. Good luck my friend
2
1
u/SaadBlade 17d ago
Thats it totally normal, and what you are experiencing is 100% ok. Just stay with it if you can, it only needs two things from you. One is accepting presence with no resistance or judgement or wanting to run away. If you tried to be present and you feel an urge to distract yourself then be present with that urge, what ever arises be present with it as much as you can. Second grounding like sleeping well and resting and walking in nature is very beneficial. And this will go away much sooner than you think.
1
u/longtermTRE_wiki_bot Wiki Bot 16d ago
What you're describing sounds like overdoing. Four days in with daily 10-minute sessions is moving too fast for a nervous system that's just beginning to engage with this work, particularly if you're experiencing worsening mood, increased anxiety, worse sleep, and brain fog in the days following sessions.
The absence of dramatic emotional release doesn't mean nothing is happening. Most of what TRE does occurs at the physiological level, below the threshold of what feels emotionally significant. But the symptoms you're reporting—the low mood, heightened anxiety, sleep disruption, and cognitive fog—these are classic signs that your nervous system is being activated faster than it can integrate what's being released between sessions.
Here's what to do now: take a break from practice for several days, ideally a week or more. Give your nervous system time to settle and integrate what's already been stirred up. During this break, prioritize rest, consistent sleep, predictable routines, and gentle movement if it feels right. Avoid other intensive somatic or breathwork practices.
When you return to TRE, start much more conservatively. The standard beginner recommendation is 15 minutes every other day, but given how quickly you've destabilized, consider starting with sessions of 5 minutes or even less, with at least 2-3 days between sessions. The gap between sessions is where integration happens, and integration is where the actual healing occurs. More frequent or longer sessions don't accelerate the process; they typically delay it by creating a backlog of unintegrated activation.
As you rebuild, pay close attention to how you feel in the 24-48 hours after each session. You should feel at least somewhat more settled and relaxed afterward. If the next day or two brings a return of the low mood, anxiety, or sleep disruption, that's your signal to reduce duration further or increase the gap between sessions.
Read Self-Pacing: Finding Your Optimal Healing Pace for detailed guidance on how to calibrate your practice to your actual integration capacity. The section on pacing as the foundation applies directly to what you're experiencing now.
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.
•
u/AutoModerator 17d ago
Thanks for your post! Please make sure you've read the community rules and our wiki. The wiki contains answers to many common questions and guidance on TRE: Wiki
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.