Don’t Put Yourself in a Box

I worked hard to compartmentalize my work life and my home life. I worked in a high stress environment. We are not talking about the stress of not meeting a deadline or the stress of not attaching the cover sheet to TPS reports. I’m talking about the stress of suffering great bodily injury every shift. I worked in a prison.

It did not work out the way I wanted it to. When I had problems at work, I didn’t talk about them, I thought I was protecting my wife from the ugliness of my job. As the years went on, I built a wall and a backlog of untouchable subjects. I would have had to tear down a wall and tell so much back story that reaching out would have made it difficult to tell enough of the story. I wanted to protect her, but I was hurting her, and myself, by keeping it inside.

You don’t have to work in a prison to face stress. Whatever your source of stress, you need a way to relieve it, because it doesn’t just go away.

Do not compartmentalize. If you have been, break down those barriers. It doesn’t have to be anything big. Start small. At the end of each day, tell your significant other, or whoever you are protecting, one thing about what happened that day. Even if it is insignificant. It starts the process.