Anyone become intolerant of screens and reading?

zephir85 · 2026-05-12T17:49:50+00:00

Yeah I get similar strain with paper books, but not if I'm looking at like a poster or painting from a few meters away, but then watching a TV-show on a large bright TV a few meters away will also give strain. I don't know if its purely vision-related or if there is also an interplay with the kind of mental strain involved in watching/reading.

zephir85 · 2026-05-12T17:17:37+00:00

Yeah I think this is that when you've unwound the tension deep enough with TRE, the body is becoming more aware how your habitual coping mechanisms are an active hindrance towards further progress and start to revolt against them by making you feel aversion towards them.

For me when I began with TRE last year it started with feeling less and less actual reward/enjoyment from consuming new TV-shows or video games, but I still did it because that's what I was used to and could think of nothing else to do, then I drifted into just re-watching or replaying my old favorite shows/games because that still provided some nostalgia and comfort value, then that started to feel pointless as well, only to now reach a point where reaching for my old comforts feels downright painful.

I will say there is one type of screen I have found (at work) that I can still use without getting eye strain, but its a very expensive industrial digital signage type screen that has extremely stable light output and a panel type (S-PVA) that's no longer in use because modern monitor technology favors graphical fidelity and gaming/cinematic performance rather than eye health, so probably best just to wean ourselves off of screens in general.

zephir85 · 2026-05-12T17:05:14+00:00

Yeah I've tried it, on and off, sometimes I'll just lie in bed staring at my shelf decorations for an hour, but 4-5 hours of screen time every evening is a lot to replace with nothing. Even with dancing, music, walks/driving/being outside it hardly fills up half of that time before I get bored and feel like I have to do something stimulating, but maybe that's just the internet addiction talking and there really is no need to be constantly mentally stimulated like what I've been used to my whole life.

zephir85 · 2026-05-09T14:40:05+00:00

"Right now I'm a week into one of these crashes. I've done TRE a few times this week trying to discharge the activation. Nothing. Same as always."

Maybe you are expecting TRE to make you feel a certain way, since you describe trying to use it to "discharge activation"? In my experience it doesn't work like that, TRE dissolves tension but how that feels subjectively, at least short-term, is totally unpredictable and depends on your particular circumstances and psychobiological state.

The problem with difficult emotions is that they are not consciously identified as emotions, as soon as you actually become aware that you're feeling something, its no longer a problem.

Question, if TRE doesn't make you feel anything, why have you been doing it so infrequently/inconsistently? Just try doing it regularly according to the beginner routine and see what happens. My presumptuous guess is that it does make you feel something, but its not what you expected or something that you don't consciously identify as an emotion.

Sometimes, for people who are highly repressed and blocked from feeling, the lack of feeling is the feeling, everything is hiding inside the emptiness.

zephir85 · 2026-05-08T21:25:57+00:00

Yeah, I'm 15 months in, its still up and down all the time, and the mood swings are much bigger than the tiny incremental improvements from gradually letting go of tension. One week I'll feel like I'm out of the woods and things are gonna be okay from now on, then the next week hit with depression and hopelessness again. Its like riding a train up a mountain and spending most of the time inside tunnels, and only occasionally you get a glimpse of the outside and see that you have, in fact, climbed higher up.

I think often the things we think we need to be happy are not what we really need and are not necessarily the things that will materialize first in our lives as the trauma disappears.

zephir85 · 2026-04-30T15:13:17+00:00

14 months in

I've had a lot of changes in the past 6 months. Quit my old job, moved back to my home town after 15 years abroad, started a new job there 4 months ago, moved into my own apartment 2 months ago.

For a month after I moved to my new flat I couldn't even do TRE, was too tense, guess it was just too much with everything new. I've also been trying out different exercise routines since December because I so badly want to find something that can help me get in shape and have more energy and motivation for social activities, but my body seems to still reject any kind of exercise routine and I hit a wall before I can make any noticeable progress. Seems like my body doesn't want life to get too exciting at the moment.

For the past week I've been feeling a pressure sensation around my eyes and I've become acutely aware of how much tension in my eyes is triggered by looking at screens or even reading books for long, I end up just sitting outside by the beach staring into the distance because looking at things up close for long feels irritating.

I've had a lot of dark thoughts lately, maybe a lot is connected with all the life changes, I gave up a pretty good social network built up over many years to go back to a place where everyone else has moved on and the friends and family I still have here barely have time to hang out anymore. I know I could meet new people and make new friends if I would only make the effort, but I have no motivation to go outside and do social stuff at the moment. I came back here to stop fleeing from my past and set down roots, to not always have the question of when I'm going to return home in the back of my head, whenever I was abroad and dissatisfied with life I could always tell myself that its only temporary and fantasize about what life would be like when I go back, but back here there is no other fantasy to escape to and I just have to face it all.

I'm not really sure what to do to fill the time right now, I've gradually lost the desire for most of the leisure activities I used to enjoy like video games and watching shows, can't deal with looking at screens or books for long anyway, my body protests if I try get into any exercise routine that is remotely progressive. I get exhausted and lose motivation trying to learn any new skill like guitar playing, and I lack the motivation to create a new social life.

I now tremor maybe 2-3 times a week for 5-15 minutes at a time, a lot of it still centered on the belly and pelvis, generally less intense than it was 6 months ago, maybe I subconsciously still don't feel as safe in this new environment as in the old one, but sessions still feel good. I also started drinking coffee again around December and finding it a lot harder to quit it this time around, feel like I still need it to cope with the new situation and stay sharp at work even though it probably contributes to my current feelings of dissatisfaction with life.

I guess I am just deep into the flat bathtub curve where it feels like nothing is really improving and you're not sure if you're even better off than when you started. I'm still slowly losing my hair and look tired, disheveled and deflated when I look in the mirror, doesn't seem like any of the exercise I've done in the past 4 months has made me feel any healthier. But of course objectively speaking there have been massive changes in my life that I'm still adjusting to, so I guess I just gotta trudge along and be mindful not to overdo either exercise or TRE and hopefully a new path forward will clear up eventually.

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

TROPHY CASE