- Ops & Other Opinions
- Posts
- How Compartmentalizing Broke My Brain (and How Coherence Put It Back Together)
How Compartmentalizing Broke My Brain (and How Coherence Put It Back Together)
The evolution of how I work—and what it taught me about building sustainable systems
Mary Alice Duff
November 10, 2025
Table of Contents
Hey reader,
Over the weekend, a friend approached me with an interesting business proposition. My immediate reaction? Throw up walls, start shouting about boundaries, and bemoan the perils of working with friends. But then I paused—and reflected (and reflected some more)—and realized just how much my approach to work and life has changed over the past fifteen years... and probably never more so than in the last twelve months.
That conversation became the spark for today’s essay, which is really about learning to trust myself again—to trust my instincts, my energy, and my own internal compass.
Here’s hoping it gives you a little inspiration (or at least permission) to do the same.
Onward,
Mary Alice
How Compartmentalizing Broke My Brain (and How Coherence Put It Back Together)
I used to mistake compartmentalizing for setting healthy boundaries. And to be fair, boundaries are vital. But what I was doing wasn’t that. I wasn’t protecting my time; I was protecting my sanity. The truth is, I was doing work I no longer loved, and I was mentally checked out long before I was ready to admit it.
When I was Chief of Staff for a $10 million social service organization in Philadelphia, my job was enormous—six direct reports, two thousand clients, and programs that spanned housing, workforce development, and elder care. The work mattered deeply, but it was also relentless. Our clients were people in crisis: families navigating homelessness, older adults in unsafe housing, young people failed by the education system. I had a background in social work, so intellectually, I was prepared for the challenge. Emotionally, I was unraveling.
There’s a phenomenon in social work called vicarious trauma—the emotional residue that builds up when you’re exposed to other people’s pain day after day. You’re not the one living the trauma, but the stories still take root in you. Over time, they create a kind of emotional erosion: helplessness, guilt, shame, self-doubt. To cope, I built neat, tidy boxes in my brain. One for the client stories I couldn’t shake. Another for the political tightrope of managing a board whose values didn’t align with mine—people who genuinely believed poverty was a budgeting problem, not the result of intertwined systems working exactly as intended to keep poor folks poor. And one last box for the quiet realization that I didn’t want to climb the nonprofit ladder anymore. The CEO title everyone assumed was next for me felt less like a dream and more like a trap.
At work, I held it together—capable, composed, relentlessly professional. At home, I tried to be present with my husband and young child. On weekends, I’d decompress, and by Sunday night, I was already dreading the morning to come. Compartmentalizing was how I survived. I called it “work-life balance.” But balance implies two things being equal, and there was nothing equal about the way I was living or working.