You seem to be describing the Roman Catholic idea of hell in contrast against the Orthodox idea of hell.
Let me see if I - not even a catachumen - can describe it, and if I am erroneous, please correct me someone LEST I teach it incorrectly.
In Orthodoxy, there is a distinction that exists which isn't there in Roman Catholicism between "the realm of the dead" / "hades" and "hell."
Hell according to Orthodoxy is not actually the deprivation of God, but it is actually the experience of God which, due to the soul's hatred and disdain towards God on earth, experiences the greatest amount of pain. It isn't like a location, but rather a state of existence of experiencing God's glory in a painful manner.
In fact, Heaven and Hell both have the same source of God - Heaven is the same experience of Hell, but it is how the soul perceives God's glory.
Saint Paul describes it in 1 Corinthians 3:12-15
"Now if any man build upon this foundation, gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble: Every man's work shall be manifest; for the day of the Lord shall declare it, because it shall be revealed in fire; and the fire shall try every man's work, of what sort it is. If any man's work abide, which he hath built thereupon, he shall receive a reward. If any man's work burn, he shall suffer loss; but he himself shall be saved, yet so as by fire."
In fact, actual "hell" will not really be experienced until after the Great Judgment, where both body and soul experience the Glory of God in a much greater extent.
"Hades" is the state of existence of the state of death, which people before Christ's death and after Christ's death have experienced - however, the souls will receive a particular taste of the glory or the eternal punishment to come, kind of like a precursor to Hell or Heaven.
This is called "Particular Judgment," which occurs before the Great Judgment. The Virgin Mary is the only exception of experiencing Heaven in its fullness due to her sinlessness, which is why her Dormition is so significant.
I believe that the "Harrowing of Hell" represents Christ spreading the Good News to the souls of the dead, rather than physically moving them from one location to another.
The Roman Catholic Church - while describing hell, heaven, and purgatory as states of being, tend to view them with a greater identity of physical or metaphysical locations, with different levels of each. The "realm of the dead" traditionally has been described as Limbo, which was viewed as a sort of level of hell - the highest level of hell (in terms of the least amount of pain) in which people were taken out and brought to heaven. In fact, purgatory according to Aquinas I believe was viewed as just a "cleaning room" in hell. There is no distinction between such locations and ideas before and after the Great Judgment, other than the souls return to their prior location with their bodies and souls together.
Hell, from a Roman perspective, is seen as the deprivation of God - the cause of all good things - which causes eternal and infinite suffering, as there is no good thing in hell.
The Orthodox Church counters this by pointing to Psalm 139.
This is how I understood it.