Bodies are bureaucracies. TPS reports all the way down.
Conversation
“Hold it together” is a bodycracy internal memo
1
1
4
Cf
Quote Tweet
When you use the phrase "keep it together" for yourself or another person, what sort of unmanaged emotional regulation breakdown are you generally anticipating and trying to head off? (as in... giving in to fear, loss of composure, choking towards the end of a competition etc)
1
1
“Don’t give in to _____” is a bodycracy command time work overtime.
Quote Tweet
Replying to @vgr
Don't give in to...
"fill-in-the-blank" bait
...next time.
1
1
1
Add it to various other constructed selves:
Aspirational self: what you hope to be
Presentation self: the one you perform on Facebook
Bureaucratic self: the one easily embodied on autopilot under normal conditions but takes high effort to hold together under stress
2
7
You could measure your stress level by how aware you are of your bureaucratic self. It’s a vector:
Magnitude: how hard it is to hold it together
Direction: what you’re not giving in to
Replying to
Whenever I go for a physical, the doctor asks something like “How are you stress levels?”
Never know how to answer. Feel like saying, “Of course. Life is stress. Who knows what level but I’m handling it.”
1
1
7
You can measure cholesterol, cortisol. sleep quality etc but not “stress” per se. That’s in a nightly TPS report submitted by your amygdala to prefrontal cortex and promptly forgotten.
4
15

