Alexandra Niel uses the TV show Severance to explain why divorcing people try to split themselves between work and home life. She calls this trauma response exhausting and offers a better way: bringing your whole self to both places instead of compartmentalizing the pain.
Divorce doesn't come with an off switch, right? You can't silence your heartache at 9 AM and then turn it back on at 5 PM. Hello, heroines, welcome back for another 3-minute reframe. Today I thought I would talk about— I don't know if you've ever seen Severance, right? Where they go to work and they like kind of switch off their personal life during the work hours and then they turn it back on in their off hours and not even recognizing that they work with each other during the day. And we might be tempted to do that after a divorce or an uncoupling. I know I did. I went so full into work because being at work and dedicating myself to work meant that I didn't have to think about what was going on and the emotions that I was feeling. But at the end of the day, that doesn't serve us. What happens in your personal life ripples into your professional life and vice versa, right? They're intertwined because you are you, you are the person, you are the common denominator. So trying to keep those two things separate doesn't work in the long term. And the stress that shows up as you're going through your divorce is going to show up sometimes also at work. So learning to manage that stress is hugely important. The other thing that is important is that, that desire to want pull yourself apart is actually a trauma response. It's about trying to protect yourself, but it does two things. First of all, it stops you from healing at a good pace so that you can get to the other side of this more quickly, and it's exhausting. When you're trying to keep up those two different personas, it takes a toll. It is not easy. And the other thing that's happening is that need and that desire to compartmentalize is definitely when we're operating from that masculine energy. It's all about boxing it up, throw some tape around it so that we can keep moving forward. Whereas the feminine energy within us is all about integration. Give it an opportunity to feel the emotions so that we feel more whole and we see a better path moving forward. So being able to work with those two energies and dancing together, because there does need to be a little bit of compartmentalization at work, you can't just break down all the time at work. What I want to offer to you is instead of saying, how do I keep these parts of me separate, Ask instead, "How can I bring my whole self forward, both at home and at work, in a way that feels supportive and constructive?"
