Compartmentalisation | Stress Reducing Tips | @caroline-cavanagh | The Anxiety Alchemist

26 Mar 2026 · 2 min

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2:26

In this short monologue, Caroline Cavanagh introduces the therapeutic technique of compartmentalisation for managing stress. She begins with a vivid fair‑ground coin‑spinner metaphor to illustrate how negative thoughts can accelerate and become uncontrollable. She then shifts to a Victorian‑style train analogy, describing life as a series of separate carriages. The core instruction is to keep stress confined to the “carriage” where it originated—e.g., leaving work‑related stress in the work carriage—so it does not spill into other areas of life. By physically and mentally stepping out of the stressed compartment, one can rejuvenate, regain calm, and return to the stressful situation with more energy and a reduced emotional charge. The tip emphasizes intentional separation, brief disengagement, and the benefit of returning to the stress source with a clearer, calmer mindset.

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Have you ever seen one of those games often found at fairgrounds where you put a coin in the top and it goes round and round and round, getting increasingly smaller circles until it's spinning out of control and then falls into the bottom? It's very similar to how negative thoughts can then lead to stress. A thought circles around, but then it gets faster and faster until ultimately, It is out of control. And the way that we tend to deal with this therapeutically is a really fantastic technique called compartmentalization, which is a word I often struggle with, so bear with me. Think about your life being a lot like a train, but an old-fashioned Victorian train where there's carriages and there's buffers and there's gaps in between. And the way to use this compartmentalization technique is if something goes wrong in one carriage, to leave it in the carriage and not then transfer it into another carriage. So if, for example, you have a really bad, stressful day at work, leave that stress in the work carriage so that when you jump into the home carriage, It's safe in there and it gives yourself a break from those thoughts, those feelings, that stress. And then quite often when you go back into the work carriage, because you haven't been poking that stress, it's actually died down. But even if it is still a fire that's raging, you have more energy to then put that fire out. So, the tip for today is to think about stress being a lot like being on a train, but rather than it being an Intercity 125 where a fire at one end can spread through the whole train very, very quickly, compartmentalize it. Keep the stress in the place that it lives, and then when you leave that place, leave the stress behind, go into a place where there is greater calm. Rejuvenate. Realign yourself, get back in control, and then when you go back into that old compartment, you'll be able to deal with the stress better. Have fun with this one.