Poll Is Your Thinking Compartmentalized?

[TLight]

I can relate to getting to know someone and then not seeing them for a week and then feeling like my walls are up again and I don't really know them. I relate that to emotional detachment.
Heck, I feel that way when my BF comes home from work. Almost like I have to get to know him all over again............I think its because I'm used to people being extremely unpredictable.........so I do a 'start over' every time.

Trust issues.........
As far as experiences being compartmentalized.........I can relate to some of what's being talked about.........my brain hurts anytime I get near to anything that may be 'something.' Perhaps it's in a separate box...........accessing things is difficult for me........following a conversation is really difficult for me.

I don't know...........being on the inside looking out, most of the time I'm just trying to cope with all this.

I think writing down where I want to go in therapy sessions is a really helpful idea.

 

[liv now]

Hi. I have this problem too. for me it is a safety mechanism and a way of having some control. I would have the same problem in therapy. Also I started to write down the topic or experience so even if i had no memory of it next session my therapist could remind me. but then what would happen is that I would not be able to read or take in the words on the paper. Once I started to feel safe it wasn't quite as extreme.

 

[Gunchief]

I have had friends and family come up to me and tell me I compartmentalize. I was taught to do this a long time ago. It helps me handle multiple things and put away those that I find unimportant. BUT I am finding that some of the things labelled important in my little brain are some of the ones I need to delete.
Dave

 

[Yvonne River]

I have very much the same type of experience as Dylan and Lisa, and some other posters here – specifically, I would call it compartmentalization of memory. I’ve noticed it for years now – e.g, feeling dissociated from different periods of my life, not identifying myself with memories from other periods, even though I remember well certain memories and know that it was me. My lack of identification with other parts of my life is so strong that I sometimes say it’s as if I have “past lives.” This leads me to seem very scatter-brained. e.g., I will forget an interaction that I’ve just had with someone a day or two earlier, if I encounter the same person now, in a different context (e.g., If I saw a person socially and then see them at work.) It’s embarrassing at times and I thought it was odd, but never thought much about it until the other day.

My roommate was planning to go for a few days to a foreign country where I had lived for 15 yrs, several yrs ago. She asked me for tips, and I was only mildly surprised when I couldn't recall anything in particular. Over a few days, I started recalling isolated memories of my time there. Then, one afternoon, I started recalling many memories and feelings from when I lived there. I was able to write a good note to her suggesting different things she could do there, how to behave in this foreign country, etc. So, in the end, I had been able to recover much of my memory of my many years spent living there.

However, after writing this note for my roommate, when I went to go back to my regular life in the present, I was amazed to realize that I couldn’t remember very mundane details about my current life, e.g., what I’ve been working on at work, I couldn’t even remember what the initials by which I frequently refer to my company were!, couldn’t recall what my social plans were for the evening, and then, the most shocking, disturbing realization… I realized that I really wasn’t sure what YEAR it was – was it 2012? Or 2011? I *really* didn’t have a clue, even when I tried to recall in context. I had no context in which I could make a good guess! It's as if I had shut the door on my current memories when I was able to access the memories of my "past life" abroad.

This strange quasi-amnesia didn’t last long, maybe a good ½ hour, but I found it alarming and very disturbing. I’m not sure when or how, but I somehow re-integrated into my current life that same day. This drastic incident is what has compelled me to look this up on the internet, and I’m glad to find you two. I may have some symptoms of PTSD after a difficult childhood with an extremely unpredictable (and unpleasant) parent. (Btw, I don’t know whether this is pertinent, but I’m very intelligent – in the 99.9th %ile.) I’m wondering whether either of you have found out anything else about this compartmentalization, and whether you have found good coping tactics. All the best, in any case.

 

[Abstract]

I have to go and 'open the box' and sometimes I can't even find the box.

Dylan,

Thanks for posting this. You have described it better than I have been able to so far. I think of it as metal doors and shutters. They vary according to the content and situation. Sometimes I have no real access to what is in there but it is almost as if there is a label so I cognitively know what it contains but nothing more.

I have not read the replies yet and shall come back.

 

[Yvonne River]

Just found this in Google books (but can't post the link): Dissociation in Children and Adolescents: A Developmental Approach by Frank W. Putnam. See about Compartmentalization from page 71, particularly, PTSD and Dissociation at p.74.

 

[who am i kim]

Compartmentalization for me is like I have many boxes in my head, some I can access, some I cannot. I think some are just buried waiting for one day to appear again.

I mothered my children, but cannot access that person or her memories. I truly believe that someone else other than who I am at present looked after them. I have no memories of their childhoods. It can get to me when people ask about what did you do when such and such experienced this. I cannot give them answer.

I do get flashbacks every now and then of old memories, just a part, which astonishes me, as I also cannot recall the majority of my past either. I can't recall my own wedding etc. I can show you pictures but there is no real memory associated with it. I have accepted now that this is a part of me now. Maybe one day I might get back these memories. But I am okay with it now.:)

 

[Changing4Best]

I answered NO, but I had a question about what you really meant, so I had to look up compartmentalized in good old Websters.

I do have one thing that relates to your own first reply though. I often have to ask folks where I know them from, in order to place them in my memory. I also forget names, though not often a face. Anyway, if they can tell me where I know them from, then I can usually place them and remember them and what goes with them in terms of our previous conversations, etc. I'm not sure if this is what you mean by this question, but if it is, then my answer should have been YES.

 

[Janes]

Yeah, I have little file folders-if I'm trying to access info., I actually visualize a rolodex of folders I'...

Wow! I thought I was the only one with a visual rolodex. That's exactly how I explain it to my husband. He finds it interesting, yet amusing. If he asks me to recall something (a name, place, event) I literally go into visual search mode of my rolodex. He thought it was part of my Autism, and I thought that's how everyone recovered memories. Until I realized I get looked at funny often if I mention it. I do see everything in pictures and am very black or white in my thinking (literal to a fault). My own mother uses me when she's trying to recall things in the past. The downside, I will obsessivly shut everything else down until I can find the file I'm looking for. Sometimes for days, then I'll blurt out the answer. I get looked at funny sometimes, but my family has learned over the years that if I don't have the answer at the moment, wait for a blurt. Even when I'm told not to worry about it, I can't get it out of my head until I see it and say it.

 

[EveHarrington]

My LIFE is compartmentalized! Lol.