Compartmentalization and Denial

A friend and I were talking earlier about the dangers of compartmentalization. While the ability to compartmentalize can be useful, such as performing at work while temporarily shelving an upsetting event from your home life, it can be detrimental when the compartments are rigidly maintained for long.

It can be tempting to kick the “cans” down the road and avoid the work of reconciling and integrating oneself, but the repercussions of that choice are often more unpleasant and extreme than just getting to it. Procrastinating on our growth and life lessons tends to make them come back at us even harder and louder. Not pleasant, generally. And the “soul” work of being in integrity and sorting out our values and beliefs when in conflict is the sort of growth and life lessons that lead to peace and fulfillment. So, worth it.

Unfortunately, too often I’ve seen clients who have postponed this work and compartmentalized and fractured themselves to the point of anxiety, panic, depression, addictions and breakdowns. We consult to get down to root causes. Parts therapy, timeline therapy and NLP are useful tools for working on integration, as is EFT. Journaling can be a quick and accessible way to further explore dissonance as well, writing from opposing perspectives. Mind mapping is another useful tool which can be used to reveal specific triggers and what the contents of the compartments are.

In short, beware of being in denial of the integrated wholeness that you are, as denial is eventually broken through, typically with a lot of pain and suffering. Rather, weave together all the elements in your unique tapestry. Re-framing and using the right tools makes integration less formidable and leads more quickly to the breakthrough (without the taxing breakdown).