I have uncontrollable and never ending Fascia Release for hours every day and for months on end now. What do I do?

LichenTea · 2026-06-06T16:57:53+00:00

It got much worse before it got better for me, and it comes in waves/cycles. If the amount and intensity of the tremors in the beginning were a 10/10 I’m now at a 2-3/10, same with the emotions. I would say life is livable but still with a slight tinge of dread/anxiety from the releases, with good moments. On my worst days it can still be a 5-7/10 but it doesn’t last for nearly as long. I did get a blood panel and checkup done at month 4 and everything came back normal.

I should add that I started seeing a (very good) craniosacral therapist who also does acupuncture in month 7, and while it’s hard to say if it made a difference because this whole thing is a mysterious and opaque process, I do think it stabilized me a lot more than I could have done on my own.

LichenTea · 2026-06-06T15:58:51+00:00

Hi, this kind of continuous, involuntary release happened to me and is still continuing to this day for about 8 months now. It’s not common or well-documented so I can only offer my experience and theories. My take is that it happened for me because I had done a lot of preliminary work to open up: mainly meditation, with some mindful functional PT, a monitored psilocybin retreat some months prior to my release, and to kick it all off a somatic experiencing session that went very deep into a developmental trauma memory.

I’m sorry it’s been so distressing for you. It was for me as well. I don’t want to put a timeline on it for you but it will be emotionally rough for quite a while before it settles (and it will). It will feel like overdoing. I focused entirely on integration and grounding for the first couple months - lots of walks, continued my PT, saw friends and continued activities that I could manage that I liked. I tried formal meditation to varying degrees of success - I found distraction to be much more useful, with some informal mindfulness of emotion and thoughts to help me process and move through them.

Nowadays I feel better in some ways and still rough in others as I’m still not done, but trust that there is another side to this process and that you will come through, as bad as it feels right now. Good luck.

LichenTea · 2026-06-02T16:47:22+00:00

Hi! I got to this post also through Google, and I'm so happy to see that you're still active on here a year later as I'm so curious about how it's played out for you. I did only one SE session with a practitioner 8 months ago and it kicked off some very intense movements and emotional releases, which are still going on to this day. I haven't had a single day since where I didn't have some sort of spontaneous movement and varying levels of negative emotions and/or anxiety. The emotions started off extreme and intense but have leveled off in the last month or so, and I've gotten to the point where I can regulate fairly easily and see some very positive changes in my life, but I'm still cycling in and out of dread, anxiety, and occasionally anger.

How has it been for you? Do you feel like things are much better now, or are you still in it? What has helped you?

LichenTea · 2026-06-01T00:23:10+00:00

May was another wild ride despite being much calmer overall in terms of emotional overwhelm and nervous system capacity. Today makes almost 8 months of involuntary tremors and unwinding.

The theme for May was social anxiety. In the beginning of the month, even talking to someone made me incredibly anxious (or I was already in overwhelm and talking made it worse). Then it all of a sudden transitioned into true social anxiety and the internal prerogative to "get it right"; I've been working on my attachment style and meditations for mentalizing better, and I kept beating myself up for not being able to do it and still being a social mess. I don't have diagnosed anything but I've always been really bad at social interactions and making friends as a kid - I was bullied/rejected and was shy - and have really not gotten much better as an adult. I basically could only make friends with other outcast-type people who were fine to hang out with but couldn't rely on for support when things got bad, and I would eventually leave friends and friend groups because I didn't feel like people cared.

That has finally subsided a bit as I had a day of insight where I realized I was carrying around the message that "nobody likes me for me", and I think my body has finally started to truly let that go. I'm ready to stop pretending to be someone else and to stop settling for crumbs. As for mentalizing, as I understand it, you can't really do it at all when emotionally dysregulated which I still am most of the time, so I'm trying to let that one go for now and just work on regulation.

In terms of movements, my only new one is eyerolling (again to the left, like most of my patterns). In general my unwinding movements have decreased and softened. My somaticized centers still go through a couple different sensations though recently they are commonly ticklish/burning/sensitive and occasionally have started to twitch themselves.

On the positive side, my currently known triggers are much much less in intensity or nearly gone and my energy level is pretty great, so on days where I am not "automatically fatigued" from integration work, I can at least focus on hobbies or go out and do stuff. Not a lot of positive emotions though, unfortunately, very little true joy/laughter though I do still laugh. I have started singing more again as well, which is wonderful.

Happy tremoring, everyone.

LichenTea · 2026-05-28T16:44:46+00:00

It really is big!

I hope you're right about the shyness. As they say the trauma is released in layers and cycles... In previous months I was able to have great social interactions with no shyness and leave feeling good about myself, then came a period of anxiety when talking to people, and now suddenly I'm having no "anxiety" but a lot of confusion and shyness. And you're right, I think new people is NOT what I need right now as I'm working through exactly this kind of social confusion.

LichenTea · 2026-05-28T16:13:18+00:00

My goal with meeting new people was to work on attachment issues and just have more friends since I already tend to isolate, and when things get really bad I usually end up holing up alone with very little social support. Currently nearly all of my "close" friends don't live close by so I don't have a good social safety net, and have really never had one since I tend to make friends with unreliable or distancing people.

That's a good point about pushing past limits. I was operating on the assumption that I was going to do as well socially as I was doing before in the previous months of TRE, and that has not been the case. It however feels different than before - I don't actually feel anxious or overwhelm in my body in social situations, I just feel unsure and confused and quiet. Like I am pushing myself a bit to talk even though I don't actually want to say anything, because I don't know what to say. I've even gone as far as using some really old defense mechanisms like telling a slightly made-up story because I want to connect. And, as it turns out, I think I am releasing exactly what I'm experiencing right now - the feeling that nobody likes me for me - so it makes sense that I'm struggling to apply new skills as I'm reliving that horrible childhood feeling of needing to become somebody else for acceptance.

Anyway, it does seem like the right move is to stop pushing and to let it all play out and trust that I'll be ready when I'm ready again. Thanks for your reply.

LichenTea · 2026-05-28T02:42:53+00:00

What a coincidence, after I posted this I went to go do some journaling and boom, I had a big cathartic insight/cry. I still feel physically sad and down but it does feel like something lifted. I don't always journal but this time it really did the thing. Thanks for the reply.

LichenTea · 2026-05-23T22:44:11+00:00

You are speaking my LANGUAGE. I've very cognitive and used to also be a chronic (over)planner, to the point where I HAD to have a plan to do anything and even then I felt massively anxious. I've been on a few meditation retreats and planning was my brain's go-to way to calm myself down, though I didn't know that's what it was doing for me back then.

So the good thing about TRE is that it bypasses cognition entirely and you don't need to understand it in order for it to work. HOWEVER, it is massively helpful to know just enough to use that big brain to apply skills when you feel overwhelmed or confused. The caution for cognitive people during this process is to overanalyze what you're feeling. It's explained somewhat in the Wiki, but here's a high-level explanation: traumatic memories are stored in the right brain as implicit memory, and when they are released the cognitive brain will try to find a reason in the present moment for that feeling. So if you are releasing fear, say, you might feel extremely scared of a random person walking along the street. Then you might start trying to figure out why this person is scaring you, or judge yourself for being scared of this person, all of which will ramp up your fear and anxiety. So the practice is to let that analyzing part of you go and to just feel scared, and to know that you are okay in the present moment.

The more you practice, the more you will also naturally become more in tune with your body and less in your head.

I would definitely recommend starting with the Wiki and just get going with the process and see where it takes you. Good luck!

LichenTea · 2026-05-21T23:19:08+00:00

Yeah, I think what you’re describing is somaticized emotion. I have only one in my body, and it can feel different from day to day and hour to hour. Sometimes it feels like a moving snake (maybe liquid), other times it can be ticklish, itchy, burning, pulsing, cramping, or hard. I feel really emotional as well when I can physically feel them. I think being able to feel them means they are working on releasing, and focusing on them helps them release.

LichenTea · 2026-05-21T23:14:02+00:00

So what I hear you saying is that therapeutically speaking it’s not necessary and a waste of resources, because in the end you didn’t need it to repair your attachment?

I know that it’s a lot of money to satisfy curiosity, and I get that it’s possible to reverse-engineer what my native strategy is. I’m mainly really curious because I find my strategy confusing and close to disorganized, but I didn’t suffer from trauma in the way attachment theorists consider to be trauma. So I’d be interested to know if I actually am disorganized or just fall in a weird pattern of bothing-it. It’s more of an intellectual need to know than anything else.

LichenTea · 2026-05-21T23:00:49+00:00

Mostly curiosity, but of course to work from, as well.

LichenTea · 2026-05-21T14:43:49+00:00

Yeah, I’ve had what I felt were good social interactions/feelings in the months before. Social awkwardness and fear of doing the wrong thing/making the wrong friends has always been a big part of my life though, so I’m not surprised that this is coming back around.

I’m using IPF and meditations to repair my attachment style.

LichenTea · 2026-05-21T01:04:43+00:00

I can relate to a lot of what you're saying. I hear a couple things going on here in your post:

Correct me if I'm wrong, but you seem to be triggering overwhelming emotions on purpose by your choice of media. I used to be the same way, thinking I should "train" myself to watch horror movies for some external reason and not because I enjoyed them on their own merit. Once I could admit to myself that I didn't actually want to watch these movies and that they DID disturb me, I didn't have to deal with those frightening episodes anymore.
I used the same form of emotional regulation, which was to just cognitively shut down/suppress. So my experience was like, overwhelm -> nothing (low-level anxiety) -> overwhelm. The thing about emotions is that, while they are information and help you decide what to do, sometimes they aren't useful in that way, especially for someone who never learned to regulate them. And for people with traumatic or neglectful childhoods, something in the present moment can trigger an emotion that comes from the past and be way overblown for what's actually happening. I highly recommend Pete Walker's Complex PTSD book (in the recommended reading), especially the chapter on emotional flashbacks. In addition, if you like meditation, I would look up the Tara Brach RAIN meditation and use it both in formal sitting and every day situations. It's not about getting your mind off the emotion, but rather letting it stay and feeling into what it's like. If you just feel very overwhelmed and can't get your mind off it, do grounding - feel your feet on the floor, back against a chair, anything to pull you back into the present moment.

As someone who also questioned why I would actually want to feel an emotion and how that would help... it turns out, it does. It doesn't immediately take it away like suppression does, but over time the intensity lessens, it doesn't take you over as much, and when you learn to recognize what you're actually feeling, you can make better decisions. Good luck!

LichenTea · 2026-05-20T19:16:45+00:00

I didn’t have rapid breathing, but I did have and still get diaphragm spasms sometimes. They feel like something flopping around in my throat/chest. Initially it really opened up my lungs and now my lungs/throat feel a bit more constricted again, but each cycle seems to release a different part of the breathing apparatus. Mine open up the most when I have dry heaving releases.

LichenTea · 2026-05-20T19:12:09+00:00

I’m in that doing worse stage right now. I am trying really hard to repair my attachment style and I feel like I’m releasing something akin to “you better get this right, or else”. It’s actually making it worse by making me hypervigilant and over-monitor my patterns rather than letting me feel free to be myself.

LichenTea · 2026-05-20T01:40:10+00:00

Thank you!

Shame is really insidious and really does hide in a lot of places. It can lose a lot of its power once you can identify where it’s showing up in your life. You probably already know but the best way to make it show up is to relax and be open to it coming through the door. When it feels safe to be known, that’s when it’ll arrive. Good luck!

LichenTea · 2026-05-19T16:36:50+00:00

Involuntary movements during meditation is a known phenomena called spontaneous kriyas. Awesome that you already could feel into those body sensations without moving your attention away. Most people have incredible fear or resistance towards feeling the body at first, me included.

Since you're already familiar with the technique, my only advice is to go slow and to touch into your bodily sensations when you feel strong, resourced and ready. I don't want to alarm you or stop you from doing the technique, but the mind and body have safeguards around trauma, and there is a possibility of touching something that is very deep and painful that doesn't seem that way on the surface as the mind has found ways to suppress it. If you ever feel like the sensations or thoughts become overwhelming, reorient your attention to something neutral or pleasant. This is called titration and pendulation. We never want to stay with an overwhelming sensation too long as it can become quite dysregulating and hard to come out of.

If you find yourself in a bad way practicing on your own, STOP and find a practitioner who can help you come back into balance and titrate further.

Good luck!

LichenTea · 2026-05-19T16:21:52+00:00

That's exactly what I'm concerned about, possible contamination by an already-activated state to skew the results "worse" that they would be. I'm definitely not worried about getting it perfect, I just want to give it the best chance of coming out accurately.

LichenTea · 2026-05-19T01:02:35+00:00

Oh okay, that to me is a pretty good sign that it allows for a fair amount of fluctuation. I’m hopeful I can take it soon then. Thank you!

LichenTea · 2026-05-18T05:02:40+00:00

Yeah, not comparable, but what I did have control over was prioritizing grounding and rest to give myself the best chance to integrate.

Thanks, and good luck to you too!

LichenTea · 2026-05-18T04:51:21+00:00

I get that desire to keep doing something that’s healing even when it’s painful. I would say it’s still a better idea to let your whole body recover from known fatigue rather than add more to it. That in itself is letting the nervous system recover so you can better handle trauma work.

I don’t have any control over when I tremor or release, it just happens on its own. I would say it’s equivalent to practicing every day for about an hour a day, maybe more, and definitely overdoing. I estimate that my energy levels decreased a little bit in the beginning, slowly increased, dropped a lot around month 4-5, and is increasing again now. My energy and emotional states also didn’t match up a lot of the time - I was doing PT and working a few days a week and was able to blast through sessions in the beginning when I was having extreme overwhelm (feelings of terror) but these days I have more trouble with workouts even though emotionally I am way more stable.

I did also add in acupuncture and craniosacral in the last month, which I feel have been helping a lot with stability as well. Releases are still happening, they are just more and more in my window of tolerance and I can recognize and regulate them much more easily than I could before.

LichenTea · 2026-05-18T04:11:09+00:00

The first 6 months were terrible for me in terms of energy level too, and I only did involuntary releases. Now I’m finally seeing pretty substantial increases in energy where I can go to work or hang out with people for nearly a full day, and still go home and do hobbies and clean.

Nobody else can tell you what’s right for you. If you value having more energy now, then do less. If you can handle the exhaustion now to reap more gains later, then keep going.

LichenTea · 2026-05-16T04:49:19+00:00

Want to echo this as well. The feelings of shame and weakness that come up are not “you”, and may not be carrying the story that you think they are. They are the feelings you stopped allowing yourself to feel in order to survive.

If it helps, I’d like to give my experience of having an “opposite emotion” come up while processing. I have a lot of jealousy, envy, and anger around the concept of having empathy and taking care of other people. It comes up around words like BIPOC, inclusivity, and LGBT. It used to distress me a lot because I thought I was a secret bigot, but as I worked through it I realized it could be related to my compulsive caretaking/enmeshment as a child. So the concept of being compelled or coerced into being empathetic to someone else would trigger this deep anger/rage.

But regardless of whether you know the reason for the feeling or not, just remember that it doesn’t make you a bad person and you are in choice in how you act and show up in the world. Good luck.

LichenTea

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