I recently suggested to a person learning TRE for the first time who was feeling very overwhelmed that they use a watch to time themselves for short periods of 2/3 minutes as they learnt so they could really feel in charge plus keeping oriented to the present while they got to know the tremoring – the last thing to do is push or tremor too much when there is already lots of overwhelm in the organism. In this case it is really important to build up the amount of time you tremor – learning to really feel comfortable with new sensations, trust your body and also really learn for yourself from your own interoceptive process when to stop or regulate in some other way
e.g.like orienting to the room or taking a breath, or placing a hand on the body and so on.
I was very happy when this person recently got in touch to let me know how well that process of using the timer was working and how it made them feel safe in their practice .
You can include a sense of time as an option in different ways for instance I used to time myself by music or t.v shows so if I got a little dissociated there was an external anchor.