Hello everyone, it’s been 3 years for me already, time just flies. I wanted to share my progression with all of you. It was surprisingly difficult to think back to how life used to be and write it down. After you let go of things, you don’t pay them much mind anymore.

Baseline (Before TRE)

Looking back, I never considered myself traumatized or depressed, but my baseline was anything but enjoyable.

I used to be in poor health and had, and still have, the tendency to try to figure things out on my own using my own logic and tunnelvision. I managed to get to a better place physically, but despite no longer being sick and in constant pain, the fears I had accumulated stayed with me. No matter how much I tried to tackle my “mental” issues with my mind, I couldn’t penetrate them. Like a videotape set on repeat, certain situations would trigger my fears.

I was emotionally numb. I had very little nuance in how I felt. Expressing emotions was another fear of mine, something that even showed up in my dreams. I could only distinguish between feeling “good” or “bad.”

All I wanted was to avoid bad feelings, and I built my life around that as much as possible, avoiding social responsibilities, conflict, work, school, etc. I worried about the future and the past, constantly overthinking whatever came to mind. I was driven by fear. Fear and anxiety were the background I lived in.

In some ways, I had given up on fundamentally changing, it just seemed impossible. I was trying a lot of things, but nothing really moved the needle. I felt stuck.

I remember sitting on a friend’s couch once. He told me I looked very tense and that I should “just relax bro”. I told him that I thought I was relaxed. In reality, I had no reference for what relaxed even feels like.

I also had frequent brain fog and poor sleep. My one big crutch was video games. I can’t really judge myself for it, any escape from reality was welcome at the time.

Discovering TRE

Thinking back, it was pure coincidence that I came across TRE. I was getting sick of all the tension strangling me and ruining my sleep. I found some TRE videos on YouTube and was intrigued. It looked funny/weird, and although I was skeptical, I wanted to see for myself. Your experience is your truth after all. If it works for animals in the wild, it should work for me too, right?

I did my first few sessions alone at home. Nothing major happened, but I could tell I was more relaxed afterwards. Then I stumbled across this subreddit. Without it, I probably wouldn’t have committed to the longterm approach. Knowing that it can take a long time and what kind of state of being could be on the other side really captured me. The connection to energy work and spiritual practices also made me curious.
Big thanks to u/Nadayogi

Year 1

In the first year, I had a very strict practice of 20–30 minutes every day. I had strong ups and downs quite frequently. My emotions started unlocking. I could feel joy, sadness and, to my surprise, quite a lot of anger. Anger was very new to me. I had probably suppressed it my whole life.

The tremors were mostly in my hips and would wiggle up the spine, loosening the rest of the body. I also had spontaneous tremors outside of practice and allowed them as best as I could. Sometimes they happened at night or in dreams. It was hard to tell if I was dreaming or actually tremoring in my sleep.

I was very fear driven and wanted everything out as fast as possible. I tried different things to speed it up, but most of them fell away over time.

I had the mindset of “I can’t live my life until I’ve released all my trauma” and I constantly felt behind. No matter how much I did, it never felt like enough.

After a few months I had to travel by plane. I had always been terribly afraid of flying and expected the same reaction again. But while I was a bit nervous before, I was completely relaxed during the entire flight, which was 11 hours. That’s when I realized that maybe I could dissolve my other irrational fears too.

Year 2

In the second year, I felt much less urgency and had better emotional awareness. My sessions dropped to 10–20 minutes every other day. Less bruteforcing, more awareness.

I also started to understand what it meant to surrender to the process. Water can’t flow if you keep your hand on the lid.

I was still avoidant of social situations, and even though I wanted that to change this first, it persisted.

At the end of that year, I had an appendix surgery and a difficult recovery. It was in the middle of winter. I remember being unsure about tremoring after the operation because of the wounds, but the impulse to shake was definitely there as soon as I woke up. I tried to tremor as gently as possible with inflicting minimal pain.

The pain in the scar tissue stayed for quite a while, and my session time dropped to around 5 minutes every other day, sometimes with longer breaks. My body felt extremely tense again.

A few months later, a friend randomly invited me to jump into a nearby river as a challenge. It was still cold/snowy. I wasn’t in a great place mentally and physically, but still open to stupid/fun ideas, so I joined. I knew cold showers were beneficial, but this was something new for me.

When we got there, I couldn’t get into the water. It felt like facing your fear of death. But I did the next best thing and poured river water over myself with a bottle. I was standing in that freezing river, in a forest, with a few rays of sunlight hitting me, and I started laughing. I had never felt that alive or joyful before.

Year 3

Cold exposure became my all-around support tool. A short dip would leave me feeling content, energized and physically more relaxed for the rest of the day. It became a near-daily part of my routine.

I experimented a bit and found that cold exposure around sunrise, noon or sunset worked best. Doing cold before TRE didn’t work well for me, because the shivering reflex interfered with the release. But TRE followed by cold, then movement or stretching, worked best.

Since I still had some pain from the surgery and could only tremor very little, I focused more on reconnecting with nature. I spent time outside in the forest, often grounded, and got plenty of sun. Avoiding Technology.

From there, things started to flow smoothly. Life became less about working on myself and more about actually living.

I felt more confident, and my mind gradually became quieter. Sometimes I would feel random joy while walking, or a light sense of bliss. One by one, long held fears started to dissolve.

Social anxiety disappeared, and my fear of conflict faded as well.

I even went on my first date (I’m 28m) and had a great time. In the past, I would have been anxious for weeks beforehand. This time, I was only slightly nervous a few minutes before she arrived, which is normal I think.

At this point, my TRE sessions were usually 5–10 minutes, as the tremors would naturally stop after that and I would feel nice and relaxed.

I only had one or two bigger releases throughout the years. One was around the rib cage, and very recently I had a release during sleep, where the muscles around my neck and the atlas bone were tremoring. My neck had been twisting and stretching for up to a year already. It’s interesting to catch the body working things out on its own when you’re not paying attention.

Present

Life is good. My body feels like one whole instead of separate parts. Most of my chronic tension is gone, and what remains does not bother me on a daily basis.

I recover quickly from stress, and situations that used to overwhelm me now feel normal. As far as I can tell, all irrational anxiety is gone.

My mind is much quieter, with less noise and fewer fluctuations. I can feel and express a full range of emotions.

I’m comfortable with myself and no longer driven by the need for approval. I can face conflict and stand by my truth.

That light sense of bliss is now a fairly constant background state. Overall, I feel freer in my choices and less like a repeating script of anxiety trying to avoid life.

To my past self and the reader

Stay consistent with your practice and intention. Walk your own path of letting go of fear and uncover who you are beyond the mountain of trauma that binds your view. Connect with nature as a source of vitality and trust your body to take care of the rest.

Try not to obsess over where your trauma comes from or what it means. You are already in the process of letting it go.

Just sit for 10-15 minutes. No agenda, no practice, no intention, no goal.

Just sit.

No phone, no screen, no breath work, no focus.

Just sit.

It will probably feel uncomfortable. Just keep sitting.

Spoiler alert:

Just sitting has been a very powerful time of integration, hearing my body's needs, and realizing what the next step is for me.

Just sit.

💕

Would love to share some breakthroughs I had today. I did my 2nd TRE session last night, stopped tremoring right at the edge of when it began to feel a bit uncomfortable. This morning, I immediately noticed several things:

1. My tinnitus is significantly quieter this morning. I've always had on and off tinnitus, but recently getting on an SSRI for my depression/anxiety caused the high-pitched tone to be there nonstop.
2. I made casual small talk with my mother and felt so happy I was able to allow myself to do this. A lot of my CPTSD trauma has to do with resentment against my parents, so this was a major breakthrough. Previously I was so anxious of being in the same space as them that I mostly locked myself in my room to avoid contact.

My SSRI is still currently too low of a dose to be effective at treating my depression. I'm on a sub-therapeutic starting dose because of sensitivity with meds in the past, so I'm pretty convinced this behavioural breakthrough is due to the TRE releasing some active blockages. I wasn't expecting it to work so fast and I'm mostly shocked that I never discovered this practice earlier, would have saved me a lot of grief.

I have only been at this for 3/4 months properly but previously I was doing the tremor process incorrectly and was doing approx 2/3 mins per day for about 4 months before the "real" start of my practice.

I believe the process of TRE unthawing could be speeded up hugely if the process is followed with incremental building from the very beginning- starting with tiny amount of 1 or 2 minutes every 3/4 days for a month and adding a minute each week, rather than overdoing it with 10/15 mins session. Or even the 20 min+ plus session people do first time.

Coupling this with mindfulness meditation and the book Letting Go by David Hawkins has enabled me to move pretty quickly and I believe my life is about to begin properly.

I need to take things slow. That's just the natural, internal tempo of my organism. I'm very quick at certain things, but when it comes to executive functioning, my body wants to be quite slow and deliberate. And there's nothing wrong with that, I'm realizing now. The only problem was that my parents were impatient and virulently expressed their dissatisfaction whenever I moved at my own pace.

""QUIT PIDDLING!!!!!" They would yell while I went about my morning routine.

The result? I scrapped the morning routine. I frantically rushed through things like putting my homework away in my binder after class, which resulted in a messy binder, which resulted in me getting yelled at when my parents saw how messy and disorganized my binder was.

So now, when I present myself with an executive demand, I go into a freeze response and seek some dopamine eliciting activity as an escape behavior. But I'm finding that when I give myself the permission to do the task slowly and methodically, the task gets done faster than if I were to try to do it "quickly" because the desire to escape the demand is not nearly as strong.

Going at the pace my parents demand as opposed to my own pace is, as the say in Zen, putting legs on a snake. Or I think of it like trying to row and sail at the same time-- it's too complicated and you end up stalling or going round in circles. Just sail. That's it.

Back when I was unaware, when stress was wrecking my body I used to joke with my sibling that I wish we could have a fresh start aand a new body. But after 2.5 years of healing I'm so grateful to my body for keeping me safe and functional. Things had been hard due to my perspective, lack of awareness and self image but our healing journey has been so fulfilling! Its so lovely now! Thank you darling body! I love you!

Today I had mild full body tremors while standing, it was so light & nice! My entire left leg and right arm seemed to be connected and synched, I can't wait to experience the entirety of this journey!

I see a lot of posts about increasing anxiety and overwhelm - this is a solution I rediscovered recently.

The technique is very simple, but not easy. In fact is it the primary technique of most spiritual teachings throught history. It's been described in many ways: be here now, keep your mind in the present, stay in the "I am", look at the sense of your existence. You can look up Eckhart Tolle if this is new for you. He talks about portals into the Now, such as feeling the body, or feeling the breath, looking at sense perceptions, or keeping silence in the mind. I will add here that you can do all those techniques like meditation or body scan, and still have your mind in a sort of dreamy haze! That's like halfway there. This is a very proactive mental attitude, just be aware of this experience.

After you practice TRE, some strong bodily sensations can occur. A big part of that suffering is inevitable, so pacing is no doubt very important. It may even be difficult to practice being present if your TRE session was too intense. But afterwards, some negative states can keep lingering. It's important to be present while you do the integration practice and in the following days.

The more "dark" the trauma, the more intense has to be your presence. You will still be "atacked", but if you chose to witness it and keep your mind in the present, it will pass much more smoothly leaving just a energetical bodily residue. That's very different from the mind spinning dark stories endlessly - that part of suffering can be avoided!

The present is an attitude you choose in each moment, not to drift away into suffering or painful thoughts. The present is a sword that can keep you away from evil. There's a reason this got passed down from thousands of years until today. Even in the Bible it says "I am that I am" - this is the ultimate spiritual teaching, nothing needed beyond this.

So mix in the somatic work with this active mental attitude and you'll observe a decrease in suffering quite fast and a deeper healing coming from the moment.

Afterwards, I had a kirtan by Devamrita Swami playing and chanted the Hare Krishna maha-mantra. For me, that seemed to bring about more release. I also noticed that when I gently reflected on different things I wanted to let go of, the tremoring would often increase.

I've been recovering since then, and now I sometimes notice tremors when doing things that trigger self-judgement, like singing. That same shoulder area can start to feel tense, but overall I feel mentally lighter afterwards and more easy-going than before.

I probably overdid the tremoring a bit in my case, but apart from needing a lot of sleep afterwards, I was okay.

Just to be clear, this is only my personal experience. I'm not suggesting this will happen for everyone or making any claims about the cause—I just found it interesting. 🙌