Compartmentalizing is a physiological behavior of a person in response to harm caused by frustrating conditions derived from the surrounding external environment. This is a subconscious sudden act of the mind and body to prevent oneself from excessive mental and physical stress and arrogating discomfort due to a person’s contradicting action against beliefs, perspectives and values. Environmental stress plays a big part in triggering such action of defense.
What is Compartmentalizing
Compartmentalizing is a manner of investing vast effort to resolve interpersonal and personal emotional problem. This is a manner of subconscious suppression of sentiment and thoughts which upsets you to completely defend the engagement of one in certain behaviors. The negative side about compartmentalizing is that if ever a person had difficulties to separate conflicting cognitions, it may initiate emotional and mental complications.
One radical example of this: people who are suffering from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder or OCD and are under emotional compartmentalization. People who acquire this disorder continuously washes their hands for a dozen times in the bathroom sink for a short matter of time will never get the bathroom cleaned up , and the person will hardly notice the dirtiness of the bathroom. This kind of situation might be out of sense to an observer.
Characteristics of Compartmentalizing
However, the compartmentalizing person who does the routine goes after the logic matter in the situation. The significant sense for the person who suffers from OCD regarding his or her behavior is the desire to leave the bathroom thoroughly clean. Excluding the thought of OCD sufferers, even you and the people surrounding you are persistently carrying out compartmentalizing. It is a good practice in some ways.
The attempt of separating work stream from home life is the best way to prevent a disturbing impact of your work in the home. Separate your responsibility independently on both aspects. If you are emotionally damaged from home, do not carry that hurt during working hours because it will naturally affect your performance.
Separation of doings also pertains to exhibiting specific works one at a time. One way to do this is by avoiding multi-tasking. Exercising tasks in similar compartment will decrease the productivity of work no matter how you throw yourself into doing it. Listening to what a friend says during conversation without interruption will be very productive and will eventually lead to a deeper intimacy between friendships.
Do not over do compartmentalization. Instead, measure the limit of separating aspects from one another. There are people around you who want to know about your daily life. If a friend or family asks you about your day, do not hesitate to share your thoughts and happenings in your life. Do not be afraid of opening up topics that is out of the range of a specific aspect. For instance, tell your parents or siblings that you are doing well in your job. This behavior will not ruin your process of compartmentalizing, but rather, it is a way of balancing and monitoring the awareness of separating cognitions and affairs in life.