u/sgt-cuddlez

Hey everyone :)

I started somatic experiencing in April this year from a severely compromised baseline. I was recovering from an unknown virus, a big event and some vaccine load before I started.

I did 3 sessions over 4 weeks, with each session resulting in big releases. Felt freezing cold. A lot of tremoring and emotional release.

After that I paused sessions for 5 weeks. I felt like I was somewhat better regulated, but my capacity was barely improved. Unable to work at all, I could barely exercise, just going for 1-2 short walks per day. Every day has been incredibly difficult dealing with fatigue and the associated fear, anxiety etc that comes along with reduced function over a long period of time.

I then did another session, this was two weeks ago. Prior to the session I could finally work once per week and then after it I had to take almost another two weeks off.

I’m kinda back to being able to work once a week, able to pay for basics but my mortgage is now overdue and I’ll have to get support from family to survive this period and keep my house 😬

Can anyone corroborate that SE can cause this much fatigue on a compromised, sensitive system? Basically 4 sessions over almost 12 weeks now. The timeline is complicated because I was also dealing with post viral fatigue (almost 4 months ago now), vaccines + large external event (3 months ago). But I’m trying to find some hope that if I keep SE paused my baseline should recover. Otherwise I’m not sure what else is continuing to cause this.

I’m booked to see a fatigue specialist in September. Otherwise I’ve just been doing gentle craniosacral therapy, eating healthy, taking my supplements and resting while trying to survive on minimal work.

Thanks!

Edit; I should say I have spoken to my therapist somewhat briefly about this and she has affirmed that it can be very energy intensive and I should listen to my body. But I’m still confused about whether this is normal or if at this intensity it’s likely not totally related to the SE

Hey everyone :)

So almost ten years ago I met a girl at a party and it felt like love at first sight. I sensed this profound connection, we kissed but I couldn’t pursue it because I was in a complicated and messy relationship. That relationship finally ended at the start of this year, really complex and took way too long to end.

Last year I started healing my nervous system and right at the beginning of the healing journey, when I was sick in bed for weeks unable to sleep or do much of anything, I had a profound experience about this girl. I felt a profound need to reach out and tell her how I felt about her. It was weird, intuited she wasn’t single and wouldn’t be available, but it felt like it was the right time to tell her and the window would only be open for a brief period. Like a few days. But it felt right on a… cosmic scale kinda, like an opening in time and space that didn’t have a clear meaning, like I said she wasn’t available, but it was important I tell her then regardless.

I’ve since read this is called a ‘Kairos’. Meaning window of time when conditions are perfect for decisive action. It felt like correct time in a deep and profound way to me.

Anyway I reached out and she reciprocated the feeling and said she was happy with someone. But even after that, for like two days, I had access and could communicate with what I can only describe as the spirit of her. Not her. Like the spirit above her? Like this green ethereal being. And it said if I ended my relationship the spirit would be able to move towards me. It took me another 8 months to finally become strong enough to leave.

But now like… I can’t communicate with that being at all, I haven’t been able to since the window closed. And I can’t intuit anything about whether I’ll get another chance with her. She just feels far away. She’s with someone else now, and that’s okay, I guess I’m just struggling because of how profound that experience was vs the lack of anything in its aftermath a year later.

Are there ways I can connect to that spirit again? How can I find more answers about this, if there are any to be had? Every week or two since I find I’m struggling thinking about this and hoping I’ll get another shot with what felt like a true love!

If there’s a better place to post this please let me know! I really wasn’t sure haha, I just feel like I need some guidance here and not sure where to turn❤️

Hey!! I just wanted to see if anyone else who couldn’t play video games were eventually able to again.

When I play basically any game, even very low intensity, my breathing gets shallow, I get tightness in my chest, shoulder blades, all throughout my neck and head. I start to experience intense brain fog and disconnection from my body. It’s incredibly physically uncomfortable. Super overstimulating, much more so than almost anything else.

Sucks because I love video games, and it would be one of the things I’d be using to get through these long days of early recovery. Has anyone else experienced this and then gone on to be able to tolerate gaming again?

This shit is crazy. Honestly I've been in a flatline for like 85 days+ and have not been experiencing the positive benefits of retention. But a girl came into my life and that opened the flood gates to being aroused for the first time in months. But the crazy thing I noticed is that, even though my libido is back, I have zero urge to masturbate. Like I feel like I don't even remember how to do it. I was also thinking about all the fetishes I was fixated on, my whole life up until a few months ago, and suddenly they don't really do anything for me? I'm like lol nah, whatever, I'd rather just be with a girl and see what happens. Can't believe it's like this, was really impossible to imagine just a few months ago.

Hey :) chronic dorsal vagal freeze here. I changed my lifestyle completely last year and stopped engaging with lots of behaviours that dysregulated me and although I was initially exhausted, I rebuilt to being able to work, socialise, exercise etc in March.

Got struck with what felt like a fairly mild virus, went back to work too early and since then I’ve been dealing with 10 weeks of post viral fatigue. Exacerbated by a wedding I had to go to and recently getting COVID and flu shots (afraid of getting another virus).

At the same time I learnt about somatic work and realised I needed to be engaging with it to thaw the freeze. I started seeing a somatic experiencing practitioner, doing TRE and seeing a craniosacral therapist. Actually the CST is the only thing I do that improves my energy for sure.

The freeze is definitely thawing… like I’m becoming more regulated, digestion and libido starting to improve, getting swings into sympathetic regulation that is messing with my sleep atm. So things are improving but energy is still IN THE BIN. Like I can manage a morning walk that’s it kinda. Tried to work last week and one shift set me back a fair way.

I’m at the point where the cost of thawing the nervous system is costing too much from an energy perspective to be sustainable. I know the energy gains will come later, but I need a baseline level of functional energy now to survive. I’m only doing TRE weekly, 1x3-5 minute session and only when my body craves and asks for it. I’m seeing my SE therapist once every 2 weeks currently and trying to modulate that too so it’s not too demanding.

I’m wondering if I should just drop TRE and SE completely for now until my energy improves to a tolerable baseline, or should I keep doing it as my body craves it and my regulation is improving? This feels quite complex and I don’t know how to manage it. Where I’m at is considering dropping TRE entirely and moving SE to every 3 weeks until my baseline energy improves, but unsure if I need to drop it completely?

Hey :) chronic dorsal vagal freeze here. I changed my lifestyle completely last year and stopped engaging with lots of behaviours that dysregulated me and although I was initially exhausted, I rebuilt to being able to work, socialise, exercise etc in March.

Got struck with what felt like a fairly mild virus, went back to work too early and since then I’ve been dealing with 10 weeks of post viral fatigue. Exacerbated by a wedding I had to go to and recently getting COVID and flu shots (afraid of getting another virus).

At the same time I learnt about somatic work and realised I needed to be engaging with it to thaw the freeze. I started seeing a somatic experiencing practitioner, doing TRE and seeing a craniosacral therapist. Actually the CST is the only thing I do that improves my energy for sure.

The freeze is definitely thawing… like I’m becoming more regulated, digestion and libido starting to improve, getting swings into sympathetic regulation that is messing with my sleep atm. So things are improving but energy is still IN THE BIN. Like I can manage a morning walk that’s it kinda. Tried to work last week and one shift set me back a fair way.

I’m at the point where the cost of thawing the nervous system is costing too much from an energy perspective to be sustainable. I know the energy gains will come later, but I need a baseline level of functional energy now to survive. I’m only doing TRE weekly, 1x3-5 minute session and only when my body craves and asks for it. The session itself never feels like too much. Like it feels good, relaxing, I initiate tremors without doing any of the exercises before hand. Occasionally I feel mildly foggy afterwards but it resolves quite quickly. I’m seeing me SE therapist once every 2-3 weeks currently and trying to modulate that too so it’s not too demanding. I’m wondering if I should just drop TRE completely for now until my energy improves to a tolerable baseline, or should I keep doing it as my body craves it?

So I’ve been patiently clocking days up to date 77 with my frozen nervous system, just waiting for things to start working. No perceivable benefits to this point, zero daytime erections, but I’m chill, I know my nervous system is cooked and it just needs time.

I see this girl I sensed a vibe with ages back as a follow suggestion and I hit her up. Literally the SECOND she follows me back I get a huge surge of sexual energy. Keep in mind I’ve been so fatigued lately I haven’t been able to work, just doing light walks. I go for a walk to try to let it permeate my body without releasing it and not kidding this hard on lasts for 15 minutes and the walk is a lot easier than they have been.

It seems like underneath my body actually has all the energy in the world. That was revealed in somatic experiencing where randomly my legs start doing full like involuntary high kicks at the ceiling, when I’m on my back on a table, that lasts for like 10-15 minutes. It’s like there’s all this charge underneath that I’m actively suppressing and the fatigue is caused by the amount of work it takes to suppress that energy.

Any tips for coaxing that energy out and getting the body used to it and allowing it? I figured I can keep messaging this girl sporadically and try to kinda absorb the charge that gets generated. But dunno, thought it was interesting, wondered if people had thoughts

I started watching it but got kinda turned off because I’m not super into thrillers or shows centred around military/political drama. Only watched half an ep.

With this in mind, should I persevere with it?

Hello :) I’ve been meditating inconsistently for 10 years, finally got my shit together enough to put together 300 days in a row. It’s great to have a consistent practice, but it’s not yet helping with my primary issue. Mainly insight meditation using TMI.

Last year I finally dropped all my coping mechanisms (recreational drugs, alcohol, nicotine, caffeine, porn, binge watching tv, video games, social media). It was a lot of changes but it revealed that underneath I’ve been using them to dissociate and get through life with a nervous system stuck in freeze from childhood trauma.

This killed my energy and I’ve been struggling to do basic things ever since. I slowly regained some capacity over like 9 months before getting a virus and now I’m back to extremely minimal function (morning walk, seeing family once or twice a week, unable to exercise or tolerate working/socialising).

I have started somatic work and I’ve just started with a somatic experiencing practitioner and doing TRE and breath-work for downregulation. I would be doing yoga also if I had the energy for it. I’m doing all the recommended things with diet, supplements etc.

My question is whether anyone has any relevant experience here I can apply to meditation. Whether specific techniques are more relevant than others here. Whether higher doses will start to have more of an impact on my nervous system. I’ve been managing 15-45 minutes a day over the last year, depending on how bad fatigue is, broken into 1-2 sessions a day. But honestly even with a year of consistent practice I really don’t notice any benefits or perceive it to be helping get me out of this freeze and into my body. Meditation never feels dissociative to me… like I do usually feel more grounded afterwards, I often feel warm and tingly like there’s some parasympathetic activation during the meditation. But it’s just like, yeah, I don’t know. I’m just wondering if there’s more juice I can squeeze out of the practice in some way right now to help me regain my health.

Thank you

I’m hoping these might be helpful for people with similar circumstances. I realised last year that my (33 years old) nervous system is stuck in a functional freeze pattern, which I properly unmasked after dropping all my coping mechanisms (drugs, nicotine, caffeine, video games, processed food, media etc etc and more recently PMO).

The experience with SR has been super low key. My cravings for PMO have dropped significantly as the days have gone on and I did have my first nocturnal release in many years, which I take to be a positive sign that my system is starting to come online.

But even across so many days I’ve had very few experiences of strong libido, my energy is still almost the worst it’s ever been, there is really no observable impact that the practice is having on my experience. It’s like my sexual function is just ‘offline’, even more than it was before practicing SR honestly. But I’m calmly just putting in the days, doing the work and waiting to see what happens.

I have started somatic work in the last month. I’m seeing a somatic experiencing practitioner now every 1-2 weeks and I’m having big emotional releases and ‘unthawing’ experiences each time I go. This in addition to craniosacral therapy (trippy as fuck, honestly life changing) and some TRE are forming the base of my somatic work in addition to my regular meditation.

Hopefully others with dysregulated nervous systems doing the practice will stumble on these. I’m sure eventually I’ll turn the corner and that’ll be a nice journey to track. Just gonna take some time, bleh.

Peace x

Link to my last progress report:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Semenretention/s/4FWsJc6KkL

Went into a session today with no expectations. My nervous system is in a freeze state and I’ve been working with a somatic experiencing practitioner who recommended I see this therapist.

Got on the table immediately things feel weird. Very hard to articulate but my whole body is vibrating, my senses are more defined and the vibrations are very intense. Tension in my heart increases until my whole body goes cold and starts shaking and releasing.

Eventually I become grounded again and he starts another round. But this time it’s like I’m able to interact with the sensation and it becomes a two-way process. I really don’t have the language or terminology here, but it feels like energy work? Like I’m tuning my body to the right frequency for it to interact positively with what’s being received by the therapy and that allows it to stay at a level that’s therapeutic and not too intense. Although it’s still difficult and not pleasant. But it’s almost like I’m coordinating it as much as he is?

Immediately it reminded me of experiences I’ve had on psychedelics. It was a psychedelic experience, it was really bizarre. And took a long time to ground and feel normal again afterwards. But left feeling much happier, more alive and with a profound sense that something important had happened. He said to let it settle and come back in a few weeks?

My mind is kinda blown. Is that typical for a craniosacral therapy session? Where can I go to read more about these kinda experiences and the practice itself? Felt shamanic as much as Western.

Went into a session today with no expectations. My nervous system is in a freeze state and I’ve been working with a somatic experiencing practitioner who recommended I see this therapist.

Got on the table immediately things feel weird. Very hard to articulate but my whole body is vibrating, my senses are more defined and the vibrations are very intense. Tension in my heart increases until my whole body goes cold and starts shaking and releasing.

Eventually I become grounded again and he starts another round. But this time it’s like I’m able to interact with the sensation and it becomes a two-way process. I really don’t have the language or terminology here, but it feels like energy work? Like I’m tuning my body to the right frequency for it to interact positively with what’s being received by the therapy and that allows it to stay at a level that’s therapeutic and not too intense. Although it’s still difficult and not pleasant. But it’s almost like I’m coordinating it as much as he is?

Immediately it reminded me of experiences I’ve had on psychedelics. It was a psychedelic experience, it was really bizarre. And took a long time to ground and feel normal again afterwards. But left feeling much happier, more alive and with a profound sense that something important had happened. He said to let it settle and come back in a few weeks?

My mind is kinda blown. Is that typical for a craniosacral therapy session? Where can I go to read more about these kinda experiences and the practice itself? Felt shamanic as much as Western.