Life can be challenging and often we do not get a break, but need to keep moving. During the day or week, we are confronted with so many difficult decisions and the million things we want to get accomplished. All of this was just personal things that do not matter too many people. Besides what we are going through our own experiences, we still see so much tragedy when we view the news.

 

If I were to ask you what compartmentalize meant, what would you say? There is a lot to be said regarding the answer to this question. If you are anything like me, it wasn’t until I spent hours upon hours researching this topic because all I want to provide you with it the best and most clear information I possibly can. Compartmentalize is an internal process of putting feelings towards someone or an experience you had away from your immediate thoughts. This is also a way to lighten the emotional baggage we carry with us everyday. Chances are we have many things going on in our life that need to be compartmentalized to keep them from overlapping other things in our life. Utilizing compartmentalization can be a way of doing something that under normal circumstances, you would never think to do. Of course, there are both healthy and unhealthy ways this can be implemented.

Compartmentalization can be used as a healthy way to handle and even manage emotional situations. Healthy compartmentalization is a tactic we can use in our daily lives; to reduce the weight of existence, protect at least some of our personal peace and to chase our happiness.

Compartmentalization can be used as a defense mechanism and to gain the endurance we need for any situation we may encounter or it can show how our minds deal with conflicting internal standpoints simultaneously.

Compartmentalization can be unhealthy if we only try to continuously ignore our emotions because we will never be able to ignore them indefinitely. Memories, good or bad, tend to have a way of revealing themselves anytime without warning. There isn’t a way to keep bad emotions hidden for long, which is why we should tackle our problems when we are emotionally ready to.

I am going to share two different healthy techniques to compartmentalize our emotions. The great thing is, this places us in better control of how we address serious issues in their own time and place.

1. Try extreme focus-

It is normal and common when placed in a stressful situation to act based on instincts and the desire to compartmentalize the stress by pushing the stress to the side. It can be helpful to push everything, accept for our stressor to the side and put your focus on what is causing the stress. An entrepreneur, Ryan Blair, calls this technique extreme focus and suggests setting things aside for a brief and distinct period for us to jump into one specific problem. It is important to know when that time is up, close that compartment, and move on with our day.

2. Create healthy boundaries-

There are times in our life there are people that provoke painful memories or topics every time we get together with the person. Sometimes it might be best to gently reject the invitation. No one can expect to compartmentalize healthy if we are feeling pressured by the environment we are in because this will only lead to a sea of negative emotions. Once we are feeling secure with the issues at hand, we can readdress future invitations.

3. Don’t make false connections-

If we intend to live a well-balanced and positive life, we will not be able to have a compartment for every emotion we have. There will be some smaller problems that we can choose to simply let go of, disconnect them from the more urgent issues, and move on.

The goal behind compartmentalizing emotions and life is not to allow any unnecessary or extreme attention to situations that don’t warrant for. We can designate specific things and then put them away in a box. We only will open a box when we are steadily searching for direction, knowledge, solutions, or you are dealing with a similar situation. We are teaching our brains to not dwell needlessly. Below is another way to utilize compartmentalization.

1. Identify the situations and circumstances that need to be compartmentalized

It is important to visualize we have various boxes in our minds. Each of these boxes can accommodate our thoughts for any given situations that need to be compartmentalized.

2. Determine what thoughts, emotions, and worries that need to go in each box

Write down any thoughts or worries that are associated with any specific thing. It could make how we understand our views of emotions and thoughts easier.

3. Determine appropriate times to address the contents in our boxes

Our lives can’t fit easily and methodically in a box, so we will typically open one box at a time and handle something we see. For the most part, we will handle certain issues as they arise.

Intrusions are not always avoidable, which means we need to find ways to carry on. Being predictable is very helpful. This also means we don’t open any of our boxes until it is necessary.

4. Take time to open boxes and process the contents within

Problems compartmentalizing can create are avoidance and procrastinating. It is crucial to not forget one thing and then avoid another because if we continue doing this the contents within our boxes will overflow and it will make going through the boxes more complicated. We should only open a box when the time is right.

5. Work on keeping this in their respective boxes, until we decide to deal with them again

This is the hardest part. This might be a new habit and the form of mindfulness will also be new. It does take time and practice, but in time we will have many benefits for our physical and mental health.

I hope this information was beneficial for you! I did share two different healthy ways to compartmentalize, so you can decide which one works better for you. Maybe neither of them work for you, which is perfectly fine because there are a few other ways that might be better suited for you.

I really appreciate you taking the time to visit my site today. I am looking forward to reading any comments you may have about these techniques, but no pressure to leave a comment. I hope your weekend has started of great and you are able to relax and recharge. Please never forget that I am always sending y’all LOTS of love , comfort, and many positive vibes!

Always, Alyssa