Someone puts a hand on your shoulder and asks why you are so tense. Your jaw aches by evening. You notice your hands are clenched while you are reading. You lower your shoulders on purpose, and five minutes later they are back up. It all sits in my neck and my back. I've been told I'm stiff as a board.
This page cannot tell you why your body is tense, and it does not try.
Physical tension that lasts belongs with a doctor, and that comes before anything here. If it comes with something heavier, licensed mental-health care is the right door.If tonight is an emergency, call or text 988 (US). This library is not that door.
01
What you do through the day
Set the body aside for a moment and look at the day.
You may spend much of it on guard. In one version, you are watching the people around you: the tone of a message, the look on a face, whether anyone is put out.
In another, you are holding yourself steady so that nothing shows: calm in the meeting, calm at home, fine when asked.
Either way, you may not notice it until someone points it out.
People tell you to relax, or to get a massage.
Whatever the tension itself is, being on guard has its own cost. It can leave little attention for anything else.
02
What you may be on guard for
These are descriptions of what a person does, not explanations of what a body does.
"If everyone is okay, then I'm okay."
You may be watching the room. Scanning the room is one of the things that tends to go with this rule.
Read about Peace →"Strong is the only version of me they know."
You may be holding your composure. Under Strong, composure can be automatic, engaging before you have decided anything. I hold a lot of stuff in.
Read about Strong →Other rules involve being on guard as well, and it may be none of them.
03
What is under the rule
Under Peace, the fear may be that someone's disappointment means you did something wrong. What would answer it is being able to disappoint someone and still be alright.
Under Strong, the fear may be that if they see you struggle, you lose the only standing you have. What would answer it is being seen at less than full capacity and still being held.
04
One question that separates them
Protecting them, or protecting yourself?
If it is so that nobody around you is upset, that is the Peace answer. If it is for your own sake, that leaves Strong or Burden, and a different question separates those two: if someone helped you and literally nobody would ever know, would you accept? Yes is the Strong answer. Still no is the Burden answer.
If neither question reaches it, there is not enough to tell, and that is a result.
Being on guard is sometimes accurate. For Peace, where an environment really is unsafe, watching it is a correct reading, and the check is whether you do it where there is no threat. If the place you are on guard in is not safe, none of this page applies.The National Domestic Violence Hotline is 1-800-799-7233. If tonight is an emergency, call or text 988 (US). This library is not that door.
Subtraction stays on the side of behavior. It does not claim to know what your shoulders are doing.
05
One thing to try this week
Three times a day, when you notice you are on guard, stop for a moment.
Write one line: where you are, who is there, and what you were watching for or holding in.
Read a week of lines together.
What tends to go with the first of these rules is described on What the Peace Rule Feels Like in the Body.