Your Body Is a Traumatized Workaholic: A Field Guide to Firing Your Inner Toxic Boss

(Or: When Your Shoulders Have Been Running an Unauthorized Productivity Cult Since 1987)

Some bodies are basically traumatized workaholics who have zero clue how to relax without a guilt complex. Every time rest appears on the horizon, the nervous system starts sending urgent memos like “BUT WHAT ABOUT PRODUCTIVITY?” and “HAVE YOU CONSIDERED THAT LYING DOWN IS BASICALLY QUITTING AT LIFE?” Meanwhile, trapezius muscles everywhere are holding emergency board meetings about whether relaxation constitutes corporate treason.

Your fascia has been taking minutes at these meetings for decades. Every tension pattern is a policy decision made without your conscious consent. Your muscles remember every time rest was punished and effort was praised. Your tissue holds the organizational chart of a corporation you never agreed to run.

Plot twist: that legendary “discipline” was merely chronic stress cosplaying as virtue this entire time. That thing called “work ethic”? Hypervigilance in a blazer. That thing called “dedication”? The nervous system’s inability to downregulate dressed up as …