Becoming Too Good At Compartmentalization

One of the strangest things about surviving something traumatic is that eventually people start complimenting you for it.

They tell you how strong you are.

How resilient you are.

How impressive it is that you keep going.

How well you’ve handled everything.

You hear their praise for your supposed “strength” and you smile politely knowing that they just….Don’t. Get. It.

What they rarely understand is that survival and wellness are not the same thing. Not even close.

For years now, I have become exceptionally good at compartmentalization.

At first, it seemed was necessary.

When I was being harassed while working at my former employer, FedEx, I compartmentalized.

When management ignored it, I compartmentalized.

When management retaliated against me, I compartmentalized.

When management led a smear campaign against me, I compartmentalized.

When management threatened me, I compartmentalized.

When HR dismissed it all, I compartmentalized.

When HR told me to keep my mouth shut, I compartmentalized.

When promotions were denied, the harassment and the retaliation escalated, my career plans collapsed, I found myself unemployed, the legal battle began, the anxiety attacks started, the debts increased….

When people in my life did not fully understand what I have been going through…some even mounting pressure themselves…

When I try to move on and yet upward movement continues to be impossible….

When the uncertainty consumes every waking thought….

I COMPARTMENTALIZED.

Now I cannot get through a day without it.

Because what else am I supposed to do?

The rent still had to be paid.

The job applications still had to be submitted.

The court filings still had to be written in addition to teaching myself employment law to handle my own case against a global corporation by myself.

Life continued demanding things from me regardless of how badly I was hurting.

So I learned to place my emotions into little boxes.

I became very good at it. Too good at it.

People speak about compartmentalization as though it is some kind of superpower. In the short term, it can be. It allows you to function while your world is collapsing. Allows you to smile at people while your heart is breaking, to go to your new job you have no connection to try to do the bare minimum to get through the day all while carrying grief so heavy you can barely stand, and fighting the panic.

Compartmentalization equals survival.

The problem is that eventually survival becomes your default setting, after a while you stop compartmentalizing specific events.

You’re compartmentalizing yourself. You just don’t realize it. You slip from compartmentalizing this and that, here and there, to doing it at all times.

I become the artificial version of me that interacts with people, says the things they want to hear masking to pretend I believe in the Social Contract. Masking to seem happy. Masking to seem the opposite of numb from prolonged grief.

And of course version of me that handles my legal case.

There is no version of me that discusses the future. Not out loud at least. My future seems so out of reach and uncertain.

The version of me that carries the grief, the anger, the resentment, the depression, the anxiety, the disappointment.

The version of me that remembers who I used to be and hates her pure little view of the world that got squashed by the bad people.

Each version sealed away from the others, operating independently, trying to keep me functional.

Eventually I realized I wasn’t simply hiding my pain from other people anymore.

I was hiding it from myself.

Sounds impossible until you experience it.

You become so accustomed to putting things away that you stop noticing how much of your life is stored behind locked doors. Until people are talking and you just go blank in the middle of a conversation trying to override your real thoughts and feelings, the ones you know you cannot say out loud, and you struggle to utter only the words people want to hear because the real you is going to be too much to spill out at them.

No, the real you now has to stay hidden back, placed in its box, you have to function above it. Despite the weight in puts on your soul.

People ask how you’re doing.

And of course you automatically say “good.”

Someone shares good news with you.

You smile and say congratulations. You mean it…at least partly.

But the emotional reaction feels muted somehow.

Like there is a cement wall between you and the experience.

Something terrible happens.

And all of it feels strangely distant.

You are present, but not fully.

Existing. Not living.

One of the hardest realizations I’ve had is that compartmentalization eventually begins affecting more than just your pain.

It affects your joy too.

Your trust, hope, excitement, and optimism.

The same walls that keep the grief contained also keep other things out.

After enough years, you begin noticing how difficult it is to feel fully connected to anything.

People. Dreams. Goals. The future. Yourself.

What makes this especially cruel is that the very thing people praise you for may actually be hurting you.

They see resilience. Not the numbness.

They see strength. Not the exhaustion.

They see someone who keeps moving forward. Not the shell of yourself that interacts with the world through a murk of detachment.

I remember what it was like before….

Every interaction required analysis.

Trust became impossible.

Disappointment became expected.

Before I learned to split myself into pieces just to function.

I miss that person.

The person who believed effort and goodness would be rewarded.

The person who believed institutions would help when people asked for help.

The person who believed that fairness and communication mattered.

The person who didn’t spend every day carrying invisible weights.

I wish I could say the old me is just simply waiting to feel safe enough to come back….

…But, no that’s not it. The old me is dead. All the grief is in her grave now.