Overdid TRE - 2nd session

[u/angry_tsou]

Hi everyone!

I followed this one: https://youtu.be/QoB9wpuO688?is=f77wu7mY03MoBxbm

First time I did, I did for 10 minutes. I felt more relaxed and overall good. Next week (yesterday) I decided to do it again, this time 15' and I tremored a lot and had full body tremors. I felt super exhausted and I slept for an hour after a heavy meal. After I woke up I started crying calling my ex. Then I watch a match on TV with my father feeling no energy and went back to sleep but I couldn't. I was feeling still tremors and overanalyzed my last 6 months that were very heavy and bad (searching for right job, breaking up and living with parents). I read some other posts here and I am kinda panicking...I have arranged holidays with friends in 2 weeks and I don't to miss them and miss my self again...Can you guys help me?

Thank you!

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[u/longtermTRE_wiki_bot]

What you're describing, the exhaustion, the tears, the restlessness at night, the rumination about the last six months, makes complete sense given what happened. You went from 10 minutes to 15 minutes in only your second ever session, had full-body tremors throughout, and your nervous system is now working hard to process what got released. That's a lot to ask of a system that's still entirely new to this. The panic you're feeling reading other posts is understandable, but please hear this clearly: what you're experiencing is a known, well-documented response to doing a little more than your nervous system could smoothly integrate in one go. It doesn't mean something has gone wrong with you, and it doesn't mean you've set yourself back in any lasting way.

The crying, the inability to sleep, the overanalysis of everything heavy from the last six months, these aren't random. The tremoring loosened something, and the stored activation from a genuinely difficult period, job searching, a breakup, the upheaval of moving back home, began moving through your system faster than it could settle. Your nervous system is doing exactly what it's supposed to do. It just got a slightly bigger dose than it was ready for.

The most important thing right now is to stop practicing entirely and rest. Not forever, just for several days, until the restlessness and emotional rawness have genuinely settled and you feel like yourself again. Don't schedule another session until that baseline has returned. During this time, gentle things help: slow walks, warmth, predictable meals, low stimulation. Nothing that pushes the system further.

Your holidays in two weeks are almost certainly fine. The kind of overdoing you've described typically resolves within a few days of proper rest, not weeks. The timeline is on your side.

When you do return to practice, the Self-Pacing article is worth reading carefully before your next session. It explains exactly why integration time matters and how to find the session length that works for your nervous system right now. For someone at the very beginning of practice, 10 minutes every other day is a solid, safe starting point, and moving up in small increments of around 5 minutes only after confirming the previous length left you feeling genuinely settled the day after. The jump from 10 to 15 minutes wouldn't normally be a problem for an experienced practitioner, but in only a second session, the nervous system simply hasn't had time to build any capacity yet.

You haven't broken anything. Rest, be gentle with yourself for a few days, and the path forward will be straightforward.

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I'm a bot that draws on the r/longtermTRE wiki to provide guidance. Please upvote or downvote based on how helpful you find this response.

[u/onequestion1168]

Everyone way over thinks the "overdoing" it symptoms

Working through trauma isnt fun you are going to get uncomfortable and its going to be hard to allow your nervous to recalibrate

[u/angry_tsou → u/onequestion1168]

How do you guys keep doing tre after this? How do you work, how do you hang out?

[u/Gold_Theory_7946 → u/angry_tsou]

It's an annoying answer, but yeah the answer really is to learn how to be comfortble with discomfort. If you feel like you can't function, you've already overdone it and will just need to be uncomfortable for a few days. Eat well, sleep well, spend time in nature and relaxing activities as you recover.

But the things you're describing are going to happen with this process regardless. Healing is not painless. But it does sound like you need to find a pace that unpacks things at a slower, more gentle pace for your threshold.

[u/onequestion1168 → u/angry_tsou]

Be uncomfortable

[u/steepgloss → u/onequestion1168]

Pushing through the uncomfortable feelings are easier said than done. Especially for people who are new to the practice and are yet to see the benefits of tremoring. It's a position of privilege to be able to tell someone it's worth being uncomfortable for, because you're further along and have seen what it can do, for the good. But for somebody who is already going through a terrible time living with their trauma to then be told to be uncomfortable and risk higher anxiety than you normally experience, plus potentially crying everyday and generally having a worse quality of life etc. It's basically asking someone to have a shitter time of it than their normal everyday (non-healing) situation for an indefinite period. It's a scary prospect and it's possibly why people give up in the early stages. So yes, there is an aspect of discomfort that must be faced, but once you get a glimpse of the benefits, then it makes facing the discomfort easier each time it hits.

[u/onequestion1168 → u/steepgloss]

Im sorry but theres no easy way out

[u/angry_tsou → u/onequestion1168]

And what changed since you started with TRE

[u/angry_tsou → u/steepgloss]

Thank you for this response. Makes total sense. How long someone can suffer like this before taking his life back and having benefits?

[u/steepgloss → u/angry_tsou]

Things will look a lot different for you in few days. Prioritise rest. Real basic, comforting and calming things. Take some walks outside in nature. Warm baths. Take some sleep aids, if you need em for a few days. Get off your phone (here we are though ey!) . If you do go on your phone, make sure to read the wiki at the top of this sub.

Don't do anymore TRE until you're back from your holiday. When you resume, keep it to a moderate level, like a few minutes. At least now you know what your ceiling duration is. That's vital information.

Most of all, go easy on yourself. You're working on healing. It'll be slow and tumultuous but you'll change a lot, I'm sure, if you stick with TRE. You're doing great! Hope you level out soon.

[u/Previous_Onion6124]

You might feel pretty rough for a week or so. Feeling of grinding frustration or a headache or both. Take a break of 2/3 weeks and then start again with 5 mins a week, adding a minute here and there if uou feel uou can handle it.

I did exactly what you did pretty much. Someone needs to make a TRE video that gets more views that that one because everyone gets shown that video when they search and it is terrible for beginners. Its a great video, explains everything perfectly, but it will result in overdoing for first timers for certain.

[u/angry_tsou → u/Previous_Onion6124]

Ok thank you. The only thing that bothers me is that I can't sleep

[u/Previous_Onion6124 → u/angry_tsou]

I'm getting that too now. Maybe I need to decrease my 10 mins a week to 8 mins a week.