It can feel counterintuitive that healing may temporarily increase fatigue in DID. Several factors can contribute:
- Increased internal awareness of thoughts, emotions, and needs within the system can require additional attention and coordination.
- Processing traumatic memories often involves managing the intense emotions that accompany them.
- As dissociative barriers change or decrease, the way the brain organizes information may shift. This reorganization can temporarily increase mental workload.
- Using new coping strategies requires deliberate effort until they have been practiced enough to become more automatic.
As a result, periods of increased fatigue can be a normal part of the healing process.
This page is part of the Why Is DID So Exhausting? section of the CommuniDID site, which explains the hidden cognitive and emotional effort involved in dissociation, including internal coordination, memory management, and vigilance.
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