Help Needed - Advanced Stage TRE Dissociation
Today exactly marks my 1 year of doing TRE. I've made so much progress in this year, for which some background is needed to understand my dissociation issue that I am deeply struggling with. I will try to keep it concise, while also giving some background on my experience of this journey, because I hope it might be helpful to others.
I have experienced three distinct stages in my journey so far, and I am now in the third and what I believe to be the final phase. I will call them the Tremoring phase, the Anxiety phase, and the Dissociation phase. To skip the background story and get to the real issue, go straight to The Dissociation phase.
The Tremoring phase was just that. I am extremely fortunate to have had this entire year free and financially stable to work full-time on my TRE journey, and I spent the first 5 months tremoring away most of the trauma stored in my body. The tremors happened in the following order: psoas, pelvic floor muscles (including anal sphincter), diaphragm, chest, throat, and finally facial muscles, with the less important trauma stores of glutes, quads, core, and feet interspersed in between. 5 months is extremely quick given the timespan usually given in this subreddit, but I had so many days without anything else to do other than TRE. I used to tremor for hours every day, eat, lie on the couch, do emotional integration, and go for walks/exercise, and that allowed me to quickly release and process large amounts of trauma in a very short amount of time without getting overwhelmed. (Note, I was only able to tremor for hours a day in my psoas, as it has very deep trauma stores with relatively light emotional charge. During the peak weeks of my psoas work, I was doing at least 6 hours a day of intense psoas release, with one day even hitting 11 hours. The other muscles, especially the pelvic floor and diaphragm, I was only able to tremor 15-30 minutes at a time, as their trauma stores are much more intense and concentrated.)
The Anxiety phase is where I had to deeply rewire the threat detection habits of my nervous system. After these five months of progressively emptying my body of the main trauma stores, the tremors became much softer, sparser, and without any emotional or traumatic charge. But still, when I was out in public, or even at home, I was in a constant state of freeze and tension. This tension was encoded into my nervous system, and with most of the trauma stores in my body gone, I was able to efficiently rewire. The first month of this phase, I had to rewrite chronic muscle tension that my nervous system was actively and needlessly maintaining. Then, I suddenly experienced more relaxation when I was out in public (I had always had absolutely crippling social anxiety up to this point in my life). I realized that I was no longer freezing just being around people. There were several layers of this, and I had to do specific exercises like just randomly standing still in the city center around people, to teach my nervous system that being visible is not threatening, or go to a café, and just sit and do nothing and be open and approachable, to learn that there is nothing threatening about that either. Through this kind of exposure, I was able to learn in a matter of days that social situations were not threatening. In the final part of this phase, coping structures themselves started to be dismantled. For example, I had to learn to let go of desperately wanting to control my future from the present, or that my dreams for my future were not safe, or that nothing was guaranteed in life. These were mental coping structures that I was holding onto, and they died during waves of panic as my body desperately tried to cling onto them, but eventually learned that the panic was not necessary and there was no real threat. This was by far the most excruciatingly painful phase of my entire TRE journey, but it fundamentally changed how I feel internally. No longer frozen, no longer chronically stressed, no longer living in a world full of threats.
The Dissociation phase. That did not mean that everything was fine, however. After the Anxiety phase, when there were no more threats my nervous system had to dismantle, I was left with an extremely intense state of dissociation. It took me even a month to recognize this. I spent two weeks being chronically overstimulated, overwhelmed, and distraught just from existing. Trauma leaves you unable to deal with the stimulus of the world, and closes you off from experience. For me, with most trauma tremored away and anxiety dealt with, I was unable to deal even with existence, so that I had to drown myself in my phone and distraction. I have improved in this, and for about 2.5 weeks now I am able to survive without actively dissociating myself from the world with my phone. But I am still deeply struggling. Most of the progress I have made so far is in understanding the problem itself, so let me try to explain it.
There are two states of existing in the world, dissociated and present. When you’re present, the world has many different dimensions. My room is the best example that I have experienced this. My dissociated view of my room is a vague 2 dimensional picture of colors, and my eyesight is really not sharp at all. But I know that much more can be seen. Because my room is a mess, so many random items lying around everywhere because I needed to drop them somewhere and in the past I was too dissociated to think of a proper place for them. There is dust on many surfaces because I have been too dissociated to see it. There are many stacks of shoeboxes from a project that is very meaningful to me, but I had to abandon it for a while and it is mostly forgotten right now. There are clothes lying on the floor because I drop them there instead of throwing them in the laundry basket. All these things have a reason for being there, things have history, meaning, soul, depth. To see all those characteristics of an item, or a place, or a person, that is to truly be present and to true see something. But for the most part, I just see colors and shapes, and I am unable to interact with any of the deeper meanings and implications of these items, unless I am really forced to (do laundry only when I really have no more clean clothes, otherwise the pile of laundry is invisible).
The same with people. They are alive, they have feelings and emotions and facial expressions, they have a way of dressing, and body language, and presenting themselves, that can all be deeply felt and seen. If another person is attractive, they can carry a deep layer of magic and beauty and warmth and joy. A person has so many dimensions that can be seen and experienced all simultaneously. But all I can really experience is a caricature, a body that moves and eyes that are looking somewhere. I have beaten my social anxiety, and I can have a basic functional conversation with a person, but without being able to experience another person, I am utterly unable to socialize and connect with other people in any meaningful sense of the word.
This is improving for me, very, very slowly. Recently, on sparse occasion, I have been able to glimpse a small sliver of the state and meaning of my room. I have been able to look at things, or hear things, or feel things (feelings are mostly flat and non-existent for me though), and sense the meanings behind it just a tiny little bit. But it’s hardly anything, and spiritually, I feel deeply sick, lonely, wounded, and humiliated.
The past two weeks, I have taken two psychedelic mushroom trips (psilocybin, I live in the Netherlands here so I have easy legal access). On those occasions, I was able to experience the world more deeply, and these experiences have given me some insights into what kind of experience and presence is possible. And, even during those trips, I was still mostly dissociated and I think that in a healthy, present state, it is possible to experience so much more than I did during those trips. Additionally, in the aftermath of these trips, I have grown slightly but noticeably in terms of presence. For example, after the first trip, I noticed that while I’d quit dissociating with my phone, I was still dissociating with my thoughts. If you have ever tried meditation, you will be familiar with how your mind will lose interest in your object of meditative focus and run off in all kinds of wild directions of thought. This is also dissociation, as your mind uses your thoughts against you.
I do not know what role, place, or purpose psychedelics should play in my fight against my dissociation. I have learned about presence and dissociation from the experience, and I have experienced decent enough growth in the aftermath of using it, but I am very uncertain whether the growth is definitive and lasting, or whether it is just an aftereffect that will dissipate as the afterglow dissipates.
I am deeply, humbly asking for guidance and help from those who have when through this process before and have arrived at this state of undissociated presence through their TRE journey. I am very aware that everybody’s journey is different, that others may have experienced this process of de-dissociation and acquiring presence very differently, and that for this reason advice and guidance is so hard to give and follow. This has also been the reason why I have explained my journey and problem so far with this much detail, and I hope that we can find some common ground in our experiences.
So, please, if you have finished TRE or are further along, let me know whether there is anything that I can do to help this process other than the hard, painful passage of time spent trying to meditate and be present. I know that perhaps, eventually, I will get there, but right now I am too lost and confused not to reach out and ask for something better.