There’s a kindergarten song that comes to my mind every time I’m bothered by pain in one of my joints. “The foot bone’s connected to the leg bone, the leg bone’s connected to the knee bone, the knee bone’s connected to the thigh bone…” You get the picture (you can get a visualisation of the “Skeleton Dance” at https://youtu.be/e54m6XOpRgU). When it comes to our physical selves, we are able to see the connections between the different parts and understand how an exertion or pressure in one part can affect the functioning of the rest. We also instinctively make adjustments to avoid putting further stress on that part so that it can heal quickly or at least not get any worse. So when my right ankle gives me trouble, I shift my weight to the left, and if my shoulder hurts I make sure I don’t sling my heavy bag over it.
But when it comes to the different parts of our non-physical self — the emotional, the intellectual, the psychological, and all the unnamed sections of our psyche — we tend to be not as careful. We know that all these aspects are interrelated, and no matter how much we talk about compartmentalisation, there is a leakiness between how we feel, how we think and how we relate to the world. We make heroes of people who seem to be doing it all and achieving great results across the board. To be fair, some of us do a very good job of making it seem like we are all together, that a disturbance in one aspect has no bearing on another — for instance, if we are going through a tough personal situation, we can still throw ourselves into work and achieve great results, while also managing that thorny problem. So, physically, we nurture damaged parts and soothe them into recovery, while mentally (or emotionally), we throw ourselves energetically into other things and shut out the problem area.
Of course, handling our minds and hearts is not quite the same as managing our bones and muscles and other sundry parts of our bodies. Exercise, diet, and, when needed, physiotherapy, go a long way in keeping the body balanced and in good working condition. But most of us get little training in keeping the disparate parts of our emotional/intellectual/psychological self in optimum working condition.
Compartmentalise
We do know that anxiety can affect our ability to study or solve intellectual problems, and that unhappiness can turn us into poor communicators. Typically, emotional problems seep into other areas of our lives and affect our performance. Instead of using our intellectual and psychological resources to help relieve the emotional stress (like shifting our weight from an injured foot to the healthy one), we do the reverse — we let the other resources also get drained.
One extreme way of coping with this is to compartmentalise — for instance, to pack away emotional problems when intellectual resources are demanded — and this can work to an extent. It can keep you from wallowing in a problem. But too much compartmentalisation can lead to us simply pushing the problem out of sight or ignoring it completely. Instead, perhaps we can reprioritise in a way that we give sufficient attention to each of these aspects when needed, and also see how it is affecting other areas of our mental functioning. So, when you are going through a tough emotional situation, it may be best not to take on too much of an intellectual load — or at least, scale down your expectations from that aspect of your life. Give the emotional situation the time and energy it requires, rather than simply pushing it away and escaping into other activities.
The first step, though, is to recognise the interconnections, and to acknowledge that stress does have a way of affecting activities and aspects of the self that we think are distinct from the source — just as a small twist in the ankle can result in an ache felt all the way in the spine.
The author teaches at the University of Hyderabad and edits Teacher Plus. usha.bpgll@gmail.com
