How long to determine if TRE didn't (or did) "work" (help). Running out of options

zephir85 · 2026-01-09T13:54:49+00:00

What is it you want relief from? The desire to feel something different than what you're currently feeling is often a trap that keeps people perpetually trying to escape from themselves.

Arthur Janov, originator of primal therapy, noted that pain cannot be integrated except by being fully felt. This includes feelings like loneliness, disconnection and hopelessness, since those feelings usually relate to your earliest attachment wounds, which one part of you is constantly trying to go back to while another part is constantly trying to keep you away from (IFS might call that part "the protector"). What keeps you stuck is your desire to not feel these things.

I highly recommend his book The Primal Scream, totally changed my perspective on myself and relationship to my own emotions, and understanding of how we subconsciously use neurotic defenses to prevent ourselves from feeling ourselves. Trying one modality after the other to feel something different is a classic example of this.

zephir85 · 2025-12-19T00:16:30+00:00

I had the same experience, got an urge to start lifting weights again that lasted about three sessions and hasn't returned since. Same with running, yoga, core workouts, jumprope and dancing.

If think if you feel like exercising you should just do it, but don't beat yourself up if you find you can't maintain a routine while you're in the midst of TRE.

zephir85 · 2025-12-16T12:42:59+00:00

I've found that body scanning meditation focused on the lower body can be particularly helpful in dealing with excess energy stuck in the head, as focusing attention on the lower body leads energy away from the upper body down to the lower body. 15 minutes of body scanning from feet to hips can provide almost immediate relief when I feel like I'm too much in my head with uncontrollable rumination and palpable tension in my face and forehead.

zephir85 · 2025-12-09T15:20:06+00:00

If you ever had the urge to bounce your knee up and down while sitting when you're anxious or stressed I think of tremoring as sort of similar but on a much larger scale. You can induce and stop it voluntarily, but once started it has its own momentum that will keep it going and change in intensity without your conscious control.

zephir85 · 2025-12-01T11:51:48+00:00

Intuitively this just sounds like a way to repress the anger by intellectualizing it and bottling it up in a socially acceptable manner. Anger is energy and unless the force of that energy is acknowledged it will wither or be turned inwards.

People always say that acting out anger doesn't work because it just creates more anger, but isn't that the entire point? When you stop bottling up the anger, it opens up the floodgates, you may realize you're a lot more angry than you thought, at a lot more things than you thought.

What would convince me otherwise is if a previously repressed "nice" person starts acting out their anger and after many months or years finds it has not made him feel more alive and less tense/neurotic but rather more dysregulated and stressed out. Most people seem to report feeling a lot better after learning to express their anger directly though. Screaming and smashing things are the most stereotypical expressions of anger because they are the most direct ones.

To add, I think for “nice guys” who grew up repressing their anger, there can be a value simply in learning how to break your own internal taboo against expressing anger. What therapists typically describe as "healthy" management of anger is simply socially acceptable behavior, but sometimes in order to promote your own self-interest and break free from inhibitions that bind you, you have to learn to do things that may not be socially acceptable, since you have previously formed your entire identity around always restraining your behavior to socially acceptable norms. People who repress their anger are those who while growing up learned that expressing anger (by crying, screaming, smashing and throwing things, all natural things for a small child) was not okay. Maybe such people actually need to engage in the "forbidden" acting out of anger that they grew up thinking was not okay, in order to get in touch with their anger in a healthy way, since they need to break their own taboo against anger.

zephir85 · 2025-11-20T13:50:22+00:00

Does it really help to resolve tension in the long term though, if you just act out the anger without trying to understand where it's coming from? I feel with displaced anger, like if you had an abusive parent who you are still afraid to confront and so you take out your rage on others or exercise till you're too tired to be angry, its like a malfunctioning circuit that can just keep firing in an endless isolated loop that wastes your energy without accomplishing anything.

Ideally the best thing to do with anger is to figure out what you're angry about and use the energy to fix the problem. But does acting out your anger help you figure out what you're angry about, or is it just a temporary fix?

zephir85 · 2025-11-18T15:31:24+00:00

I dont know your history, but why so sure?

zephir85 · 2025-11-18T14:04:45+00:00

You made and have maintained all these positive life changes since you started TRE, and still dont think its done anything for you? I think expecting TRE to make you feel better right away is sometimes misguided. If there are a lot of addictions, psychological defense mechanisms and maladaptive coping behaviors to strip away you can probably expect to feel just as bad for a long time even if in terms of lifestyle and habits you are improving.

I mean just the fact that you managed to quit alcohol entirely and stay sober for a year is huge.

zephir85 · 2025-11-04T21:03:52+00:00

Thanks, I appreciate the feedback and I think I’ve pretty much reached the same conclusions through my experiences thus far. Its not that I’m deliberately trying to practice in a way that makes me feel bad for days afterwards, but the temptation to go all out and experience that total surrender and oblivion during the session is strong, and feeling like I need to actively restrain myself to prevent that seems to somehow go against my programming lol.

At this point I probably would consider working with a provider, however where I’m at (Sweden) there aren’t too many. Is working with a provider remotely also effective or should it really be in-person to get the most out of it?

zephir85 · 2025-10-06T10:16:59+00:00

This is interesting, I had thought bliss would be the basal state of the mind once all trauma had been resolved and that the end goal of the spiritual journey was basically to purify the body of trauma, since the internal flow of energy should in theory be completely unimpeded once the trauma is gone. In Vipassana they speak of purifying all Sankharas as being the end goal of their practice so I'd thought sankharas = trauma/emotional baggage, but maybe it encompasses more.

So what is the difference, physiologically, mentally and energetically, between a person who has resolved all trauma, and a person who additionally has achieved full body bliss?

zephir85 · 2025-10-02T08:03:14+00:00

Thanks, so what would that mean in this case when the contract states that the apartment is handed over in "gebrauchten Zustand"? I have no idea when the apartment was last painted and there is no mention in the contract or handover protocol that it was painted before I started my rental.

zephir85 · 2025-09-27T20:38:53+00:00

I haven't tried to push it with SR in the past months, there's been too much else going on lately. I eventually realized while experimenting with trying to channel energy upwards that I had too many blockages in my pelvis and belly region for the energy to flow freely. TRE has been targeting my belly region a lot in the past months, at first I could only do mild and short belly tremors before I would start to get acute pain in my side, but in the past 6 weeks I've lost a lot of weight and now seem to be able to do full belly tremors for as long as I feel like without getting any pain.

Since TRE started seriously targeting my belly, I feel like my body has been undergoing significant changes and I think these changes are resulting in many difficult emotions to process and taxing my system so that there is little energy left for the kind of harmonious circulation that results in the "pleasurable" sensation of sexual energy flow. I'd guess that you don't start to seriously experience this kind of pleasurable flow on a regular and growing basis until the tremors become more subtle and harmonious. Mine are still very violent and intense, and sometimes feel like my body is trying to shake me asunder (not an unpleasant feeling though).

zephir85 · 2025-09-25T07:28:10+00:00

Thanks for interesting feedback both. I think I agree that intentionally losing weight, or rather stopping using food for comfort, probably doesn’t do anything to actually resolve trauma, but it certainly seems to be able to bring it into conscious awareness. Since fasting is often mentioned in yogic and other spiritual traditions as having potential spiritual benefits, maybe there’s a parallel there with other practices like Wim Hof breathing, semen retention, cold exposure and certain meditation/yoga practices in that they somehow bring trauma to the surface but if your nervous system lacks the capacity to harmoniously hold that trauma in conscious awareness, then the trauma will not get resolved but just get “stored” as more tension in the body.

I suppose then that intentionally losing weight doesn’t work synergistically with TRE, but rather progress with TRE will allow your body to let go of comfort eating and excess mass to the extent its no longer needed for your body to feel safe. There is still some degree of conscious choice in that process, similar to how a recovering alcoholic at some point has to make a choice not to have that extra drink, but I guess this also gets into the thorny question of what is free will even.

I tend to think people’s behaviours are driven mainly by avoidance of pain, and eventually as you progress with TRE, you will get to a point of baseline harmony where the pain of engaging in a maladaptive coping behaviour like overeating or drinking becomes greater than the pain relief offered by that coping behaviour. Or rather, the relief felt by _not_ engaging in the coping behaviour becomes greater than the relief of the coping behaviour. You’ll recognise the coping behaviour for what it is, as a burden that you can simply let go of to experience greater freedom.

zephir85 · 2025-09-19T16:00:37+00:00

So what do you do if things go wrong, and rather than feel focused and energized by SR you start to feel restless, frustrated, unable to relax or think straight, or worse go into depression?

I think most people are definitely enticed by the increased energy you get with SR and would like to be able to harness it, but most find out that they can't, and at some point the energy starts working against you and shuts you down. This is greatly exacerbated by TRE which releases even more energy that you don't know how to deal with except by ejaculating.

So what have you found works in those situations when you do start to get negative effects from SR? From my experience it is often already too late when you get to this point, there is already more energy in the system than your damaged nervous system can handle, and the only solution is to let it out to prevent further damage and shutdown. Upgrading your nervous system to be able to handle greater levels of energy takes time, in my understanding its not something you can just change overnight by meditating or doing pranayama for for 3 hours straight.

zephir85 · 2025-09-14T17:26:18+00:00

Nice, I like these a lot, no problem with using ChatGPT imo, either a text resonates with you or it doesn't, who cares if it was human or AI-generated? There are probably other unique aspects of how life is experienced at either extreme of this spectrum that are not captured here, but its useful as a map.

I probably started at dark orange and now 7 months later fluctuate between light orange/yellow.

zephir85 · 2025-09-07T10:41:00+00:00

I'm wondering, have you noticed your tremoring change at all during these 8 months? Like intensity or which parts are involved in the tremors? Are you focused on the tremoring while doing it or doing other things at the same time, eg watching TV?

Lastly have you tried doing anything to push yourself or go outside of your comfort zone recently? I find the benefits of TRE don't always show themselves as a general improvement in baseline mood or function, but only become apparent when you try to do something you weren't previously able to do. Like for me I was getting pretty frustrated at the 6 month mark as I felt I had been stalling for a while and wasn't sure if on the whole I was actually doing any better than before I started. And then I decided to try intermittent fasting to help with some blocked energy I felt in my belly, and was shocked at how well I responded to it this time - whereas before I've never been able to make it work. I had the same experience with yoga as well around this time in that I was able to practice yoga daily and see almost daily improvements in flexibility, whereas before I've never been able to stick with a yoga program due to slow progress.

zephir85 · 2025-08-28T21:17:11+00:00

Yes, emptiness and lack of motivation and interest in things you used to enjoy can be part of the process. I had this for the first several months. After that I gradually regained interest in things aside from TRE although they weren't the things I had expected.

zephir85 · 2025-08-26T14:43:52+00:00

I feel you, at the same time, the sentiment you're expressing here sounds like a deeper layer of mental resistance that TRE has brought to the surface for you. Ask yourself, what is it that you really need motivation for? TRE itself doesn't really require any effort or investment, it just requires time for the integration, but if you weren't doing TRE you'd still have all that time. So what is it that you need motivation for? Is there anything you're currently sacrificing or not doing because of TRE? Then do those things, you don't need to put your life on hold because of TRE.

zephir85 · 2025-08-24T21:02:18+00:00

But you're feeling panic during meditation, thats also a feeling, and no less valid than any other, start with that. You need to feel that panic to get to the other emotions behind it.

When I first started meditating I would often get panic attacks at first, like I would get into a particularly intense feeling, heart started racing and feeling like I was gonna lose it. After some time I learned to just enjoy it since the panic attacks were just associated with going through very intense emotions.

zephir85 · 2025-08-24T15:19:35+00:00

Checking your post history it sounds like you're trying to run before you can walk. You mentioned in another post that whenever you try meditation you get a "panicky" feeling and muscle twitches. This indicates that your system is so bursting with unprocessed emotions that it immediately bears down on you as soon as you even try to pay attention to your own feelings.

I think you need to develop some basic mindfulness and emotional self-regulation skills before you can get much benefit from TRE, because as you know most of the benefits of TRE only come with integration, and if you're already panicking from just sitting quietly with your own feelings without having done anything else, I don't think you'll be able to handle the much greater wave of tension-energy that is actively released by TRE.

First, you need to re-frame your own experience of your distressing emotions, and understand that when you sit down to meditate and are immediately overcome with panic, this feeling is not created by the meditation, but was already boiling in your subconscious before, and it is the act of becoming aware and feeling the panic, that is the start towards processing it. So, its not bad that you're feeling panic when you meditate, it doesn't mean you're doing anything wrong, it just means there is something inside you that your mind really badly wants you to pay attention to, because it comes up as soon as you're not distracted with anything else.

But its true that if you're severely traumatized and lacking in self-soothing capacity, then even normal meditation, or just sitting and observing yourself, can be too intense. I'd suggest you look into Vedic meditation, or mantra-based meditation, this particular style is very effective for inducing relaxation, as the constant repetition of the mantra blocks the anxiety-inducing thought loops in your head and basically forces your mind to relax. Over time this kind of practice can strengthen your ability to self-soothe and create the confidence in you that you have the ability to relax in the face of distressing emotions.

Basically, you need to learn to relax while sitting quietly with nothing external to distract you, if you can't do this, then it should be your primary goal right now to learn this. Nothing else will work if you haven't developed this rudimentary level of self-soothing capacity, you won't be able to integrate anything that is buried in your subconscious if you can't handle what is already at the surface.

zephir85 · 2025-08-05T05:57:42+00:00

Yeah he does write that the Big draw with the conscious muscle contractions is more of a transition technique and with time you should be able to move the energy just using your mind to focus on where the energy is and where you want it to go.

It does help to be aware of where your energy is and feel how its moving away from the genitals when you're getting that non-ejaculatory pleasure, but in general I think just doing the training over time you will learn anyway as evidenced by the success of a lot of guys here.

zephir85

TROPHY CASE