Part 2: Why We Compartmentalize and How to Integrate

Welcome back!

In Part 1, we dove into the deeply personal topic of compartmentalization versus integration, using my life experiences as a backdrop. I took you through the early days of uninhibited curiosity and the innocent compartmentalizing of my different interests and “selves” to my big realization of how powerful it can be to integrate the different parts of ourselves.

Putting different aspects of my life and identity into separate buckets, including ignoring some completely, provided a sense of safety and order while limiting my potential.

Ultimately, it was my defense mechanism. I didn’t want to experience the pain of rejection, disagreement, or conflict if anything were to come together. Keeping them separate just felt easier. But why do we do it?

In this post, we’ll explore possible answers to that question related to our identity. To be clear, there is certainly a time and place for “compartmentalization” with different activities within our lives such making sure we have enough time to dedicate to being a dad or having healthy boundaries with things like our work.

Very rarely are things completely black or white. There’s a beautiful gradient or spectrum. The magic is finding the right place on that spectrum for what you’re trying to achieve. In my case, showing up as my full self across all aspects of my life feels right. It may not for you and that’s ok.

As you read, consider how the different parts of you could show up in different circumstances without completely ignoring or hiding others.

What exactly is compartmentalization?

In psychological terms, it refers to the mental process of separating the different parts of our lives, and in this case, our identity, into distinct boxes to prevent crossover or connection between them.

Compartmentalization is like having different folders in your email: one for work, one for personal stuff, and maybe another for hobbies. You sort things into these categories to manage them separately, preventing a cluttered inbox—or, in this case, a cluttered mind or to avoid potentially painful experiences.

On the positive side, it enables us to continue functioning daily without the stress or pain of taking the time to process and integrate immediately.

It helps you focus on work tasks during office hours and then switch off to enjoy personal time without the stress of work bleeding into your relaxation (although this technically is more related to boundary setting).

It's a useful mental tool, but just like in email, you don't want too many folders for too long. You might lose track of important things, like that part of you that loves adventure, or worse, the stress of an intense event might build and lead to a crisis.

Not consciously integrating has prevented me from fully bringing my authentic self to all the amazing things I do.

Why do we compartmentalize?

Compartmentalization is an important coping mechanism to help us temporarily manage stress and reconcile any conflicting beliefs, values, or identities we might struggle with.

It’s like an internal survival kit that allows us to focus on just one part of our life without becoming overwhelmed. If you’ve ever had moments of stress where you feel like you’re trying to “fix” all the things at once, you know why this can be useful.

From a neuroscience perspective, splitting our consciousness into categories involves separating the neural networks that process and store all of our diverse experiences.

That feeling of cognitive dissonance—the discomfort of holding two contradictory thoughts or behaviors—is alleviated when we can file those contradictions into tidy mental boxes. This allows our brain to function without constant internal conflict or paradox.

Compartmentalization is related but different from setting healthy boundaries. Setting boundaries is the process of establishing limits that protect your well-being by managing your interactions with others. Boundaries are about recognizing and communicating your needs, limits, and preferences clearly. This skill helps you maintain mental and emotional health, ensuring mutually respectful and supportive relationships.

For example, you might set a boundary by declining to discuss work-related matters at home to ensure personal time remains restful. Someone may set boundaries around their emotional availability, making it clear when they are not in a position to offer support to others.

Now back to compartmentalization.

The double-edged sword of compartmentalization of our identity

In some cases, it can genuinely be helpful to compartmentalize. For example, it can provide a way to cope with intense external pressures or stress temporarily. It's like the mental equivalent of organizing your extremely cluttered home so you can live more comfortably within it. Having the ability to shut out the noise temporarily can be invaluable.

However, relying too heavily on it as a long-term strategy can become psychologically harmful. Mental health challenges like anxiety and depression have been linked to chronically over-compartmentalizing our lives.

So, if compartmentalization is a common coping mechanism that can help us function in the short term but inevitably limits us the more we overuse it, how can we integrate to find harmony and bring the richer, fuller extent of ourselves forward?

A path to integration

The first step is identifying which parts of our identity have become too compartmentalized, separate, or neglected.

One way is to do a personal inventory. Here are some questions you might consider:

• Which areas or identities in your life tend to stay completely siloed from the others?

• What parts of you don’t feel fully expressed, and in which scenarios?

• What part(s) of you feel neglected or like they need to be free?

Next, give yourself some space to explore what might happen if you knock down those walls and intentionally give your disconnected areas a little more space and attention.

Look for the common values, themes, and threads that weave through all of your different roles and interests. Find ways to incorporate pieces of your work self into your family life, or how a personal passion could productively inform your career while setting appropriate boundaries.

Try picking one area first to give it a try. Let it be your own personal experiment.

Ultimately, the reason we even have this capacity to change and bring our fragmented selves back together lies in the neuroplasticity of our brains. Neuroplasticity makes reprograming our old mental models and limiting thought patterns possible.

By developing new integrated habits and reshaping how certain memories and experiences are neurologically consolidated, we can code a new integrated operating system for our consciousness.

When to work with a professional

If any of this reflection causes a strong reaction, overwhelms you, or becomes painful…

Pause…and know it’s ok, it happens, and you are not alone. There are parts of all of us and deep experiences that need extra care and attention.

For this work, I highly recommend working with a counselor, therapist, or other mental health professional. Working with therapists and coaches changed my life and put me on a new trajectory. I could not have “self-coached” my way through much of the processing and integration work.

The right professional can provide invaluable guidance and support as you navigate this integration journey. An outside perspective helped reveal blindspots I had developed that were holding me back.

Final thoughts

As we close out Part 2, I invite you to take some quiet reflection time with a few more exploratory questions:

• Which parts of your life do you keep most isolated and compartmentalized right now?

• How might those pieces complement, enrich, or add newfound dimension to the other areas if you allowed them to start intermingling more?

As a simple exercise, make a quick list of what comes to mind when you think of your different “selves”. Maybe there’s a vulnerable self, a creative self, a self that loves to cook, a dad, and another that’s a full-time CFO.

Then, imagine what it could look and feel like if you started bringing them together more intentionally. For example, I started getting curious about the intersection of AI and mental health or storytelling and depression in men. Both of these excited me about new possibilities for bringing them together, offering new perspectives and fuller self-expression.

The journey towards better self-integration is never complete - it's an ongoing practice of embrace and synthesis. But by bringing our whole, multifaceted selves forward, we don't just unlock our potential…

We contribute something bigger to our wider communities and the collective human potential. Our diverse experiences are the bricks, and our shared humanity is the mortar that can bind them into something greater.

Love you.