Hi, my name is Stephanie, and today I want to talk to you
about autism and compartmentalization.
I was honestly quite surprised to see a lack of articles
or anything really mentioning autism and compartmentalizing.
So I figured, let's just start the conversation here.
Now, while I was searching on this topic, it was made clear
that serious or maybe major compartmentalizing
can be a sign of trauma as a coping mechanism.
And this can also get into the conversation
of how many autistic people are those who have experienced
trauma and traumatization and how that could be an overlap.
However, for today's conversation, we're going to separate that out
and just talk about, in general, autism and compartmentalization
outside of the concept of trauma and that response.
Now, to be fair, psychology doesn't necessarily support
the concept that compartmentalizing equals trauma, necessarily.
In my research, I did find a few articles that were talking about things
like parents who would compartmentalize their roles,
such as the role of spouse versus parents and how they could kind of keep issues
in their relationship with their spouse from affecting
their relationship with their child because of their compartmentalization.
There's also something about compartmentalizing,
or at least like delayed expression of emotion or something
that is seen more positively in men and more negatively in women.
Thought that was interesting, but not necessarily 100% relevant.
So compartmentalizing in some degree is something
that everyone does to some extent, for whatever reason.
Some also mentioned compartmentalization as a way to avoid cognitive dissonance.
So maybe the way you act around your employees isn't the same
you're going to act around your friends or you how you treat your family.
This can also extend to beliefs and other things to avoid maybe conflicts.
People will put them into different compartments.
Now, I do feel that autistic people tend to compartmentalize
more than typically developed people, and this seems to be a sentiment
that many autistic people would agree with.
My problem is I'm not finding reputable
research sources that are necessarily specifically saying this.
So we kind of have to just talk about it in this method.
Now, I personally experience compartmentalization as different worlds.
It's always how I've explained it, if that makes sense.
So I have different worlds that I engage in at different times.
And the reason I call them worlds is because it's like it literally becomes
my entire world.
It's not just like, Oh, we do this thing here, and then we do this thing here.
It's everything I focus and think about
becomes about that concept, if that makes sense.
So that's why I call it that.
So I have a world for this YouTube channel and videos
and social media and stuff like that related to this channel.
I have a world for my school stuff
which sometimes can be broken down into classes, but I wouldn't necessarily
say they're completely different worlds because I can focus on more than one
concept, like classes and like homework,
and they all kind of fall in there together.
So not really like a total difference there.
My relationship with my husband is its own world.
My house upkeep is its own world.
So these things are all different in my head.
So when people or things in different worlds
cross over it, it's really, really weird
and kind of confusing and sometimes even upsetting.
And apparently, I'm not the only one who feels this way.
I found a forum post by one autistic person
who says the following: Since I was a kid, I've ordered my social universe
by neatly compartmentalizing people, according to their context in my life.
I have a family box, a partner
box and various friend boxes, depending on how and when we met.
Never the tween shall meet in my head, and when I can help it, in real life.
This tendency has only grown stronger in adulthood and has been easy
to facilitate for the fact that I live several hundred miles away from my family
and my friends and often partners are scattered all over the world.
If ever the people from one box have a reason to meet those from another,
I simply freak out.
It's like an out-of-body experience.
I lose my sense of place and identity.
I don't understand my role in the gathering and internal
(sometimes external) chaos ensues for me.
As much as I suspect most everyone in my life
would get along well, just the idea of mixing
my various loved ones makes my head want to explode.
I always end up acting like an idiot somehow.
Of course, the conversation in the forum continues.
One commenter suggests that it's likely that this is pretty normal for most people
in kind of general, maybe segmenting people mentally,
but that it's exacerbated in autistic people, and I would definitely agree
with that sentiment.
So why?
Why would this be exacerbated and autistic people?
Why does it seem like a trait that we recognize as part of autism?
Let me show you something that I ran across in my search
where a businessman who has an autistic son,
he doesn't say that he himself is autistic,
share that information if he is or isn't, I don't know, talks about how to deal
with difficult things and being a business entrepreneur.
In so doing, he talks about how to compartmentalize.
And this is what he says: Compartmentalize it, isolate
the issue from all the other challenges you are dealing with.
Apply extreme focus on each compartment, but only for a short period of time.
Move forward in incremental steps.
And once you see progress, close the compartment and open the next one.
Say no to things that don't deserve a compartment.
Now, while I wouldn't say that autistic people are great at limiting
how long they spend in one of their compartments, boxes, world,
whatever you want to call them, this does sound like it's
compatible with how autistic people are because we perseverate.
That is, we get stuck in one place
on one line of thought, maybe sometimes even on the same words.
And it's something we can't seem to kind of get rid of.
We are known for being able to focus extremely well, and extremely
long or go on deep dives and really delve into information.
That's just part of how our brains work.
We have connections that last longer than typical people.
Now, it's not that we're incapable of working out of one box or compartment
or whatever at the same time, it's that I think it really needs to be temporary.
So it's a skill that we are not great at exercising.
It's something we might not have a lot of stamina in, I guess.
So, for a while, we might be able to do what people call multitasking
and handle things from different worlds for a short period of time and do it well.
The problem is, this is not really normal for us at all, and at one point
or another, we are going to revert back to how we usually are.
Now, hopefully, if we know
kind of our signs for burnout and other stuff,
we can start to draw back before it becomes messy and ends up
being autistic burnout or all the worlds and compartments and boxes
or whatever else falls to the ground and everything gets screwed up.
And all the people depending on us
suddenly hate our guts because nothing is getting done.
And it's all left messy because we can't touch any of it
because it all is intermingled and it's not supposed to be intermingled.
And I cannot focus on all the 50 different things from different places, and so
and so wants my attention.
But I have this thing at work and these things do not mix.
I do not know what you want from me.
If you didn't notice, sometimes I experience this.
So while we are capable of doing these things, it is not really,
honestly, it's probably not healthy for us to try to keep it up
for a long period of time.
It's just not really our specialty or how we work.
And this does have a lot to do with cognitive flexibility, something
that, again, autistic people are known to have issues with.
Now here's another thing that might also be playing into,
especially our desire in the social aspect, to compartmentalize.
Autism is characterized by issues with social situations,
our interactions with people, social stuff isn't our thing, right?
Now, we've talked before on here about social scripts, and it's much easier
to adhere to our script if everyone stays in the place that they need to.
Our script is based on that world.
Does that make sense?
So we pick up our script for our work world or whatever
else, our family, and that's how we proceed.
But what are we supposed to do if those two worlds start colliding?
We can try to grab both scripts, but trying to change things on the fly
and somehow pull from one script and then the other
is not something that we're good at.
So then you're going to start to see our deficits
appear again, where we don't know where we stand in this conversation.
We don't know where we stand with you.
We don't know what to do with ourselves,
even down to where we're standing or how we're standing.
You and whatever else are not supposed to be mixed together
in the social situation, and you have completely ruined
any type of script I have because while I have references from different ones,
you've mixed them together and it makes it a completely new social situation
where the rules from the other ones do not apply.
Or do they?
I don't know!
Now, non-autistic people are much better at this.
Yeah, it's going to be awkward for them too, but they are capable
of editing their social script on the fly.
They adapt naturally and intuitively to the situation and kind of figure it out.
It might be a little awkward because maybe someone's not
normally interacting with another person and maybe the dynamic ends up
kind of weird.
But it's very different from the kind of panic
that an autistic person is, is experiencing and maybe how we might
start acting maybe more autistic.
Or you might see our deficits more in those situations because we
don't know what's going on and this is not OK.
Things we had control over and things we had down in our system
are no longer doing what they're supposed to be doing.
Now, compartmentalization can give us a great ability to focus
and get those things done and innovate in certain areas.
And like the one business guy was saying, it could help us be great
entrepreneurs or other aspects of life, it could really help.
If tempered to a manageable degree where you can actually start to
maybe learn how long you're taking in a particular world or box or compartment
and move on to a different one, I think it'd be pretty powerful.
And in some cases, this might be really positive with social things because
maybe you're not taking out your drama with so-and-so on another person
who's in a different compartment because they have nothing to do with each other,
so why would you?
We can get a lot done and reach results that most people aren't able to.
However, compartmentalization can get pretty messy sometimes,
especially because we have a tendency to spend too much time
once we're in a specific one.
How can we tend to the other worlds or compartments or boxes
when they don't cross?
They're not in that world?
So why would I be attending to it?
I'm attending to this world, and for that reason, we might unknowingly
make our loved ones feel like, well,
we don't care about them or our house becomes very messy.
We might not get work done in the various areas
we either have obligation to or have interest in.
Again, this is definitely pulling off of personal experience.
And the thing is, I don't know the answer for this.
Sure, it'd be great
if we could temper these things naturally, but that's not really how it works.
And I think part of compartmentalizing for us is to create a structure
that makes sense that we can navigate and we can handle.
And so trying to take that system away,
I don't think would be really helpful either.
And a lot of times it's all I can do
to put all my focus into one of these areas at a time.
If I try to stretch myself across them, it's just really ugly, doesn't go well.
I don't know what to do about it.
I don't know how to make it better
or if this is just a thing we have to accept happens and to try to be
considerate of the fact that when we spend too much time in one world,
there are other people, other
things in the other worlds or boxes, compartments,
whatever you want to call them, that might feel neglected.
For me, with some people, I, it's hard for me
to realize that it's been literally years since I've talked to them.
I put them over there because we stopped talking for a little bit,
for whatever reason.
Maybe they aren't
in my immediate vicinity, so I don't see them all the time or something.
And I get focused on a different world.
And it's been like three years.
And I think we're exactly the same as friends and some people are fine with that
and we pick up just fine.
And other people told me things like I forgot you existed, and I was like,
Well, you know, to be fair,
when I'm in my own worlds, I don't really think about it.
But I always knew
you were there in a different world and knew you existed somewhere
and they'll be like, You know, we're not really friends anymore, Stephanie.
And that's really weird to me because in
each world, time stops till I touch it, if that makes sense.
But the problem is, that's not reality.
The world keeps moving,
unfortunately, while we're busy trying to tend to everything,
and it's confusing and frustrating sometimes.
And the thing is, when I'm in these worlds, like
with YouTube or whatever, I can see all these connections and . . .
I can envision all these possibilities and things we can do
and how we can get there and what would be a way to improve this and that.
And I can make really big projects for myself.
But the problem is, I can't actually do that because I can't
actually devote my entire life to tending
to all of those things
because I do have to attend to the other worlds.
So when I'm in those worlds, it really is like, I'm in the world.
I, I forget about other obligations, and I think I can do things that I really
don't have the time or capacity to do, because that's all I can see at the time.
And on a final side note, I think this might help explain a little bit about
why we feel the need to label things,
if that makes sense,
or like put things in their boxes or put things where they belong,
because things that exist outside of compartments, worlds or boxes,
whatever else, they just kind of like lurk in the murky things of maybe things
we don't know how to deal with because we don't know what they are.
So for me, I like understanding what it what it's called
when I do a certain thing, what it's called, when I do echolalia.
What is it called when I experience this?
What is it called?
And so like, there's a definition to it
and it's structured, and now I can deal with it.
And that's really with a lot of people, right?
Part of the, what is,
there's a saying that something like part of the first part of the battle
or whatever is just being able to know what it is or name it and know what you're
fighting against or know what you're dealing with or whatever it is.
But I noticed really with autistic people, a lot of times we want to be like,
you know, is that the autism or is that this or is that this.
Because we like to be able to understand things through their
relative, like, compartments and where they belong and things
to be structured and organized in a way that makes sense to us.
And I think that makes sense.
When things have their places, their explanations and everything is working
the way they should, the noise kind of reduces, if that makes sense.
So, do you ever experience compartmentalization to that level, to
more than maybe what I experience or what these people who I mentioned experience?
Do you think that there's a remedy to this level
of compartmentalizing that seems just really natural to do?
Or is it just kind of like keep trying and we'll somehow make it through together?
I don't know.
Is it just a fact of life as an autistic person?
What do you think?
Let me know in the comments below.
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