How to leave work at work
Part 2 of 2 — Understanding the Context
Dear Reader, in Part 1 we explored the process of emotional containment through the State, Meaning and Intention matrices.
We looked at how my husband-turned-guinea pig appears to move from a work state into a home state, how he gives emotional containment the meaning of compartmentalisation, and how that pattern serves a deeper intention: to be fully present in each area of his life.
In this second part, we will look at the wider context. The process matrices help us understand how emotional containment happens internally. The context matrices help us understand where that ability lives in a person’s life: in their sense of self, their relationships with others, their beliefs about power, their experience of time and their sense of contribution to the world.
Self Matrix
When I quizzed my husband on his sense of self in relation to emotional containment, his first word was “lucky”. He feels lucky that he naturally does something that other people struggle with. This also reveals something important: he does not really know how he does it. He just does it.
This lack of awareness suggests that emotional containment may operate as a driver meta-program for him. In ordinary language, this means it is not something he consciously thinks about. It runs in the background. It is so embedded in his way of operating that it has become part of who he is.
He does, however, agree that this ability is very useful to him. Since he can see its usefulness, and since he experiences its benefits daily, his mind has every reason to keep reinforcing it.
This is one reason modelling someone else’s strength can be difficult. The person may not know how they do it. The very skill we are trying to understand may be so natural to them that they do not experience it as a skill at all.
Reflection: How do you relate emotional containment to your sense of self? Do you see yourself as someone who can manage emotions, or as someone who is taken over by them?
Others Matrix
In the Others Matrix, we look at the relationship between the person and the people in their social circle.
In general, my husband is a caring person who enjoys caring for his friends and family. He deeply wants to care for his family. He also wants to care for his colleagues, in a professional capacity.
Because he is able to emotionally contain, his negative emotions tend to stay in their context in time and space. When he is with the people he cares about, he can turn his mind fully towards them in that moment.
There is, however, an interesting side effect. When interacting with colleagues during work hours, he keeps a social boundary, not sharing any personal life news or details with his colleagues when there is work to discuss. This typically changes to some form of socializing during the communal lunch hour, but outside of that, he does not go to any degree beyond a polite “Hi, how are you?”.
Another consequence is that he finds it very difficult to work with family. His mother has often requested that he comes and work with her in her company. The one time he tried, over a period of six months, he was miserable, associating every misstep at work with fundamentally disappointing his parents and ruining their legacy.
Now that he understands emotional containment, one possible explanation is that he was surrounded by the same people at work and in his personal life. His mind could not clearly differentiate between the work context and the personal-life context. He was unable to disengage from his work stressors because the same people existed in both worlds.
This is an important nuance. Emotional containment can be a strength, but the way it works may depend heavily on boundaries. If the boundaries blur, the system that normally supports containment may begin to fail.
Reflection: How does your ability to emotionally contain affect your relationships? Do your emotions stay connected to the person and context they belong to, or do they travel into other relationships?
Power Matrix
Dear Reader, let us now look at my husband’s Power Matrix: his beliefs about his ability to emotionally contain and how those beliefs relate to his ability to act effectively in life.
When I profiled his Power Matrix, I found a very strong belief that emotions are to be controlled. He even went so far as to say that uncontrolled emotions are animalistic and should therefore be controlled.
There may be an element of British culture and natural uptightness about emotions at play here. But with such a belief, my husband strongly rejects the idea that a person should simply be subject to their emotions.
This belief appears to be one of the governing frames that defines who he is. My husband can say “I am someone who believes in controlling emotions”.
He does it because he strongly believes it is part of who he is and who he wants to be. If he struggles to do it, both his conscious and unconscious mind will likely put effort into controlling his emotions, because this is one of the duties he places upon himself.
Now, Dear Reader, you may have noticed that we have moved from emotional containment to controlling emotions. You may be asking whether I am using those terms interchangeably.
Well, no.
Controlling emotions means keeping an emotion in check and not acting it out. For instance, it may mean not breaking a glass when feeling angry.
Emotional containment, as we have seen, is the ability to keep an emotion within its proper context and not let it spill into another part of life.
But to be able to do the latter, it may help to believe that emotions can be managed. If I believe I have no power over my emotions, I am far less likely to contain them. If I believe I can manage them, then emotional containment becomes possible.
My husband seems to have both the ability and the supporting belief system. He not only controls the expression of negative emotions; he also seems able to keep them within the context where they belong. As he does so, he is able to serve his highest intention: to enjoy each moment with his family and to be effective at work.
Reflection: How is your Power Matrix in the context of emotional containment? Are emotions something you believe you can manage, or are they something you experience as being in charge of you?
Time Matrix
My first question about my husband’s Time Matrix was how his sense of time related to emotional containment. His initial answer was that there was no relationship at all.
But fear not, Dear Reader. I kept probing and found an interesting frame.
What emerged was that my husband does not think very much about the passage of time. He is, for the most part, in the present. If prompted, or if he deems it necessary, his mind can go to the past to revisit something, or to the future to plan. But his default mode is the present.
Now, Dear Reader, what better way to enjoy life than to be in the present, solving only the problems that are actually in front of you? Not yesterday’s problems. Not tomorrow’s imagined problems. The present ones.
His mind appears to be attuned to what is in front of him. Because he does not seem to drift unintentionally across his timeline, he is able to serve his highest intention: to enjoy the present moment with his friends and family.
This may be one reason work stress does not follow him home. Once he is home, his mind is not constantly travelling back to the broken data model, the frustrated manager or the unhappy stakeholders. He is here. And because he is here, home becomes available to him.
Reflection: Where does your mind naturally drift towards: the past, the present or the future? Does that help or hinder your emotional containment?
Power-Time Matrix Interaction
There is also an important interaction between Power and Time Matrices.
A strong frame my husband appears to hold is this: when he is enjoying time with his family, spending that time thinking about his work will not actually reduce his workload, and similarly the reverse, where thinking of his family during work hours will not be of any benefit.
This frame allows him to stay in the present. His mind sees clearly the futility of trying to work while playing with his son, and the futility of trying to play with his son while mentally working.
Many of us know, intellectually, that worrying about work at home rarely improves work. Yet our minds still try to solve work problems while we are eating dinner, talking to our partner or playing with our children. His Power-Time frame seems to be different. If nothing can be done about work in that moment, his mind stops treating work as relevant. That frees him to be where he is.
Reflection: When you are away from work, do you still believe there is something you should be doing about work? If so, does that belief keep your work emotions alive?
World Matrix
Dear Reader, when I asked my husband how emotional containment impacted his vision of the world, he replied that emotional containment had no impact on world wars.
As usual, I did not admit defeat.
What I found is that he does have an intention to contribute to a better society. Through emotional containment, he can care for his family, be effective at work and be a decent member of society. For instance, when he emotionally contains, he does not vent his frustration on an innocent passer-by. He does not displace his work stress onto the people around him. Instead, he becomes a more emotionally regulated and well-adjusted member of society.
This allows him to be a stable rock for people around him. That is his contribution to society at large.
This may seem small, but it is not. A society is not only shaped by large political events or world wars. It is also shaped by what happens in kitchens, cars, offices, bedrooms and living rooms. It is shaped by whether we pass our distress down the line, or whether we hold it, understand it and respond with care.
Reflection: How does your emotional containment affect the world around you, even in small ways? What do others receive from you when your emotions are contained rather than displaced?
Conclusion
Dear Reader, across these two articles we have looked at my husband’s emotional containment ability through the Matrix Model.
In Part 1, we explored the process: State, Meaning and Intention. In Part 2, we explored the context: Self, Others, Power, Time and World.
Through these eight matrices, we can see the frames that allow my husband-turned-guinea-pig-turned-Batman to leave work at work.
In his State Matrix, he has developed the ability to shift states.
In his Meaning Matrix, he sees emotional containment as an ability.
In his Intention Matrix, emotional containment is about protecting what matters — being fully present with his family and effective at work.
In his Self Matrix, he sees the ability to emotionally contain as an integral part of who he is, and he also views it as a useful ability.
In his Others Matrix, he maintains clear boundaries between different relationships and contexts, allowing him to give each relationship the attention it deserves.
In his Power Matrix, he believes he has influence over his emotional responses. Because he views emotions as manageable, he acts from that belief.
In his Time Matrix, he stays connected to the present moment.
In his World Matrix, emotional containment becomes part of his contribution to a better society.
There is also another important piece of the puzzle: anchoring.
Many of us already have anchors, even if we do not realise it. A very common one is in the movie Lion when the protagonist tastes jalebi as a young adult and transported back to childhood memories that he had forgotten. The taste of jalebi acts as an anchor: a simple sensory experience connected to a much larger internal world.
Over time, my husband appears to have created a strong association between a simple action — closing his work laptop — and a shift in his internal experience. For my husband, it does not simply mean “work is finished.” It signals something deeper:
Work has ended.
I am free from my work responsibilities.
My priorities have shifted to my loved ones.
My attention now belongs to them.
Through repetition, this action has become an anchor: a trigger that helps his mind and body access a different state, different meanings and different intentions driving him.
Reflection: What frames and anchors are currently shaping your emotional containment? Are they helping you give your emotions their rightful place and time, or are they keeping unhelpful patterns alive?
Dear Reader, if you are still with me, it means a lot. To me, it means you have been willing to explore not only my husband’s patterns, but perhaps some of your own.
If this has brought something into awareness that you would like to explore further, please reach out via the Contact form and we can continue the conversation.
References
Hall, M.L., (2003). The Matrix Model. NSP: Neuro-Semantic Publications. https://www.neurosemantics.com/products/the-matrix-model/
Hall, M.L. and Bodenhamer B.G., (2021). Figuring Out People. Neuro-Semantic Publications. https://www.neurosemantics.com/products/figuring-out-people/
