“Just keep yourself really busy,” is the advice given to us sometimes when we’re going through something painful. We use distraction as a way to keep ourselves from thinking about the thing that’s causing us pain or sadness. This distraction is a way of helping us to put the things in our lives into little compartments, and shut the lid on some of them, even if just temporarily, so that we don’t have to deal with them. You may call this “compartmentalization,” but in the mental health world it also is what it looks like when you “dissociate” from something.

Dissociation is really just “separating” something into parts, and pushing some of the parts away while you may hold on to others; you’re keeping those parts away from each other, though, and often away from yourself and your own thoughts. When someone goes through something really difficult, or which is a trauma, the brain, focused on survival, will often do this separation and compartmentalization on its own, dissociating the painful thing and allowing only the positive things, or the more easily managed things. An extreme version of this is a mental health disorder called Dissociative Identity Disorder, or you may have heard it called “multiple personality disorder.” What happens is that your brain isn’t able to process what’s happening because it’s too painful or too traumatic, and it creates another sort of identity who is able to handle it better. A shy, withdrawn, or fearful type of person may develop a strong, assertive and protective identity to take over when the need arises.

If you’ve ever experienced something traumatic or really painful and difficult to process, you may have found yourself automatically trying not to think about that thing, and instead trying to replace those thoughts with something easier. When people look for the silver lining, often this is a way of trying to manage something that otherwise would be very difficult to take. Dissociating allows us to carry on, and to function in life, without the painful thing debilitating us.

There are some people who are highly skilled at compartmentalizing, and can go through all sorts of things, and experience a wide variety of life challenges, putting each thing into its own little box, shutting the lid, and pretending it isn’t there. What happens, when you don’t actually process trauma or face challenges head-on, is that those boxes build up, and the pressure inside them builds up, and at some point the boxes are going to explode, with all those painful things showing themselves and forcing you to face them.

If you’ve experienced trauma or are going through a particularly rough challenge in life, talking to a counselor can help you to process the experience, and will also help your brain process the pain or trauma so that you don’t have to compartmentalize. Instead, you can integrate this experience into all your other life experiences, processed and managed, and not where it will keep you from functioning the way you should.

If you’ve ever had a relationship with someone who just refuses to talk about difficult things and, instead, chooses to just ignore them and hope they go away, that person was compartmentalizing. To some people it seems like a solution to a problem – just don’t think about that very difficult thing, shove it to the side where I can’t see it, and try to move on. But that thing wasn’t handled, the brain didn’t get to process it, and so it’s going to just sit there underneath the surface, lid rattling, waiting for the most inopportune moment to jump out and show itself. This may be someone losing their temper “out of the blue,” for no apparent reason, or breaking down crying at something (unrelated and) trivial or picking a fight about something completely different. The things we try to push into boxes will find their way out, because they need to be managed.

I’ll say this over and over, but.. call a counselor. Use telehealth and make that call on your phone or computer, right from your house. Make an appointment to go to a counselor’s office where you can sit in the office with them and talk. Whatever works best for you is what you should do – as long as you talk to a counselor in some format. Process trauma, talk through difficult experiences, and help your brain manage what you’re experiencing. Keep those boxes for memories you want to save, rather than pain that you need to get rid of.