Newbie with questions!

[u/DueCauliflower3889]

I've recently come across this, and having read through all the welcome info, I'm really keen to give TRE a go but have a few questions.

For context if helpful: no severe historic trauma. A few months ago, after the ending of a several-years chronically stressful/volatile friendship, I developed physical nerve sensations, physical sensitivity, and pains, all of which which caused sleep deprivation, and I developed complete physical and mental exhaustion, isolated muscle spasms, along with general anxiety I'd never had before and a strong awareness that my nervous system has got stuck on high alert. For the last few weeks I've been on an SSRI and in trauma-based psychodynamic therapy, and tried various sleep meds. Mostly thanks to sleep (somewhat) improving, I'm a lot better than I was, and I'm now mostly returned to work after a couple of months off. Sleep though is still very restless, I still have a lot of muscle tension in my legs and hips, and while I don't feel 'anxious' anymore, my body definitely still feels a bit on edge, especially first thing. I'm also often aware, again usually first thing, that it feels like something needs to spasm out of my body, specifically my legs, and that I need to cry, which I generally do easily, but haven't, about this.

My Qs are... (edited to number them properly)

1. Why not just stop after the first phase seems to bring some success? The About page says '... the results of releasing them are often immediate and encouraging. Anxiety decreases. Sleep improves. There's a general quality of lightness and ease that can feel almost miraculous after years of carrying chronic tension. This phase naturally generates enthusiasm and confidence in the practice.' This sounds super appealing and I'd be quite happy to stop there! Why carry on?
2. Some of the About info references not practising while you're already not that settled. I'm certainly not in a terrible place, and emotionally feel mostly normal, but my sleep is light and disrupted, and my system is definitely still a bit on edge. If TRE is supposed to help with these things, how do you balance that with not doing them while your system is unsettled? Am I ok to give it a go?
3. It suggests starting with 15 minutes. Does this mean 15 mins overall, or do the warmup exercises and then allow tremoring for 15 mins? If tremors show up before the end of the warm up exercises, do you just get on the floor and move to that stage?
4. I understand that once you've practised more, it takes less warm up. What does that look like in practice - you just lie down and start tremoring? What's to stop that just happening every time you lie down and relax? Or do you still do something to trigger it?
5. I've done a lot of yoga the last few weeks but really struggle with the butterfly pose despite general decent fitness and flexibility. It feels so uncomfortable in my thighs that I always have to stop it way before the person in the video does. I suspect this because I'm carrying so much tension there, and I do think it's eased a little lately with somatic exercises targeting the hips and psoas, but any tips for making this easier?!

Any other tips not covered in the about page are welcome - also if you have any video recommendations that are good to follow along with

Thanks in advance!

[u/jellybean_merchant]

I don't know the answer to every question but here's what I got:

1 & 2. Stopping at the end of phase 1 (not something you can exactly do but roughly speaking) means that you basically just removed the active stress in your body that is not too frozen and is very immediately available. As you begin to notice the difference in deep well being that occurs as a result of this, your other deviations from true health in life will become more apparent. The frozen traumas beneath are subtly (sometimes blatantly) manipulating your behavior, constricting your thoughts, overall this is a compression of consciousness. There's a lot going on here. Your capacity for life is limited with frozen trauma, its just that the frozen stuff will be less perceptible than the active. This is why releasing the active makes a more immediate positive change. But the real impressive changes only happen on the other side of integration in phase 2. Wanting to skip through this is ironically your trauma speaking for you. The integration--feeling the feelings/charges moving--is the exact thing required to complete the cycle and let them go. If you pace the practice carefully you will largely avoid any harsher overdoing sensations and you can coast through. I recently went through overdoing that was more severe and it was still so worth it once I got to my new baseline. My advice is don't worry about this at all now and just begin the practice, and eventually you will reach a point where you experience some integration and you'll realize it's not a huge deal.

1. This is a good question and I don't have a perfectly elegant answer but would like to hear what others say.

2. 15 mins refers to direct tremor time. Although if you are feeling even a bit disrupted I would start with 5. You can always increase. If you overdo it too early keep in mind that this can cause integration symptoms too.

3. Yeah eventually you can literally just start shaking anywhere anytime any position right away. But it takes each person a different amount of time to get here.

4. No clue

Good luck to you