u/Excellent_Celery_993

I’m not sure if this is messed up or not. It’s not a particularly traumatic memory, it’s more that I was thinking that it is kind of weird. When I was a younger child, my mother would organise 1-2 weeks multi day hikes (because that was her hobby) and would do them with my dad and older siblings every holiday. I was too young to go so would be left to stay with a family friend. There were never holidays organised especially for what the kids liked, it was just all about what mum wanted. That always seemed normal to me but now I’m wondering if it maybe wasn‘t. Maybe healthy families don’t leave their 5 year old for two weeks to stay with a family friend.

did anyone else’s narcissistic parents do this?

I actually always enjoyed staying with the family friends, and never ever was homesick, even as a tiny child. When they got back, my mum would always say “Were you sad? Were you homesick?” And I would reply “No, I was fine” and she would say “Oh, you don’t have to pretend, I know you missed us so much.” That used to drive me crazy!

Obviously everyone has different experiences of TRE practice but lately I keep having this thought that it incorporates elements of so many different modalities, at least in what it’s had me doing after about four months of regular practice. Things I have noticed:

• self massage (I’m often finding myself massaging different parts of my body during practice)
• EFT (often I start tapping my temples or other parts of the body)
• even physiotherapy stretches! (it has had me doing stretches very similar to ones a physio once gave me)
• somatic experiencing/vocal toning (I don’t know much about this but I know Peter Levine has a “vooo” exercise where you vocalise on the sound “vooo”. Lately I have been doing that too!)
• yoga (some of the long stretches I find myself holding are very similar to yoga stretches I have done)
• voice movement therapy (This is a huge one for me - as an ex professional opera singer, I am healing from trauma in the opera world and for the last maybe two months of TRE, constant spontaneous vocalisations have been a huge part of my TRE practice.)
• I’m sure there are many other therapies and practices that it naturally incorporates. Anyone got any other ideas/experiences?

I am constantly grateful for the way TRE just lets my body release what it wants in the way it wants. I think it’s all there. It’s a constant adventure!