Living w/Chronic Pain Alarms

How I Turned the Volume Down

A lot of people are in a lot of pain right now. Doctors know more about chronic pain than they ever did while I was suffering from it. I had to seek alternative care, but I was able to reduce my chronic pain which now has a name: Central Sensitization.

Being in chronic pain changes our brains. After 3-6 months of chronic pain, especially from autoimmune issues that doctors are typically slow to identify, we can (I did) develop Central Sensitization. This means I experienced a great deal of actual pain on an ongoing basis that wasn’t due to my actual diagnoses (baffling doctors).

My Central Sensitization (a kind of disruption in how my nervous system signaled my brain) created suffering that caused nervous dysregulation based on my history of pain. Basically I had a broken pain alarm.

When this happens, we don’t want to disable the alarm. Pain is useful in alerting us to problems, sometimes urgent problems. But I had to learn to differentiate between nociceptive pain (actual pain) and suffering: my brain’s amplification of pain that rose due to anxiety, what ifs, fight/flight activation, fear, judgment, criticism and anger. This amplification often resulted in panic, and because panic is exhausting, then overwhelm.

Central Sensitization leads to Autonomic Dysregulation. The antidote is to teach the limbic brain (the part of the brain full of emotions and memories) how to stop reacting to non-threatening sensations. But we can’t just sit down and talk to our limbic brain. We need to show it via experience.

How did I do that? [Disclaimer: I’m not a doctor. I’m not telling you to ignore your pain.]

If you have an actual diagnosis, and you know what’s going on with your body, and you know what the specific, actual danger signs are that tell you to seek care, then learning to sit with the other kinds of pain can help. How to tell the difference is the key. Sit without trying to change, control, brace against or fix it. That’s what helped me.

This “sitting with my pain” by actually paying attention to it, noticing its shape, color, temperature, etc. allowed my limbic brain to know that it could let go of the bracing and the fear and turn down my alarm.

I started with 5 seconds of attention. I let that grow into a minute and then two minutes. With practice, my pain alarm went off less often. I was able to shift away from Central Sensitization and regulate my nervous system with much more ease.

If you are struggling with the additional distress of living right now, how to turn off the news cycle without feeling like you’ve abandoned the world, and how to stay regulated in the face of constant alarms, I’ve written about strategies for this here. And as a personal trauma-informed coach, I am available for consultations.

The Prompt:

This week’s craft prompt is from a series I’ve been doing in Brave Space based on Aristotle’s Poetics. He chose 6 elements he considered to be important for great drama. If you write other things, please feel free to adapt this to your own purposes.

Aristotle was not a playwright, but he had a lot to say about playwriting. Among all the elements he identified as important (plot, character, thought, diction, melody) he put SPECTACLE last. Everything we see on stage is referred to as spectacle.

As sight is our "primary" sense, the one we rely on the most, in most cases - seeing is believing - how you use spectacle, what the audience sees, is a choice to seriously consider.

You might also want to consider what you don’t want to see onstage. Theatre offers us the choice to keep so much offstage, and this is one reason I prefer it to film. The word obscene is from the Greek for offstage and refers to such acts as the murder of Agamemnon in the bathtub with Cassandra. Theatre also offers us the chance to picture these offstage moments via messenger speeches that may or may not get into the gory details depending on your personal aesthetics. Theatre, in many ways, is an art that occurs in the minds of the members of the audience. Theatre as a word comes from theatron which means “the seeing place.” But that seeing may be happening in our hearts.

Considering this, what would you like to see on stage? LIST moments, images, actions, wildness, hilarity, shocking and outrageous feats and failures. Let yourself list uncensored. Later you can decide what is actually seen, and what will only be revealed through language, or only intimated.

What does it mean to provide a feast for the eyes? What sights do we stop at and gasp? What thrills or chills us? What does your character see that changes them? What is a sight for sore eyes? What could we see that hurts us or heals us? What could we see that fills us with love or hate, or changes how we feel about someone? What does a character see that they should not have seen? How does that change things? Some characters see beyond the surface - how do you use that (any of all that) onstage? Lush, spare, stark - what does the world look like? How is it evoked? What is at the heart of the spectacle you are making? Does it have symbolic or metaphorical resonance?

Upcoming Classes via Zoom:

Good News! The Dramatists Guild Institute is teaming up with PlayPenn to offer a roster of Spring Classes with Roland Tec, Pandora Scooter, James Anthony Tyler and me! I’ll be teaching Structure is Not a Dirty Word starting Tuesdays, April 1st through June 3rd, 6pm - 9pm ET via Zoom.

YES, there are still 2 spots left in the Artistic Statement Seminar this Saturday March 1st from 2-5pm ET via Zoom, more info here. Testimonials here.

AND Sunday, March 9th, 2-5pm ET for playwrights and screenwriters interested in EVENTS & REVERSALS: making things happen! No saggy second acts!

artwork by Scott Sherman at ScottShermanStudio on instagram

Brave Space Schedule:

2/27 Thursday 7pm ET Brave Group Coaching
2/28 Friday 12pm ET Brave Space
         Friday 3pm ET Brave Sharing Salon

3/1   Saturday 2pm ET Artistic Statement Seminar
3/2   Sunday 6pm ET All Human Brave Space
3/3  Monday 12pm ET Brave Space
3/4  Tuesday 12pm ET Brave Space w/workshop
3/5  Wednesday 12pm ET Brave Space
3/6 Thursday 7pm ET Brave Group Coaching
3/7 Friday 12pm ET Brave Space

3/9    Sunday 2pm ET Events & Reversals Workshop
         Sunday 6pm ET All Human Brave Space
         Sunday 730pm ET Brave Sharing Salon
3/10  Monday 12pm ET Brave Space
3/12  Wednesday 12pm ET Brave Space
3/13  Thursday 7pm ET Brave Group Coaching
3/14  Friday 12pm ET Brave Space

Each week Fridays include fast feedback for up to 1 page (@300 words) of writing or to discuss a craft issue/get help on your project. 

Each month there is a Sharing Salon: Second Sundays (730pm ET) for sharing up to 10 minutes of work (up to 1500 words).

Opportunities:

Breath of Fire is offering free evenings online to write your play with the amazing Diana Burbano on Wednesdays 630 - 830pm PST. Diana is the Artistic Literary Leader of Breath of Fire, an award-winning playwright, Equity Actor and Teaching Artist for South Coast Rep. From 2/26 - 10/22/25.

Play the game of Telephone for all kinds of writers and artists, a global community of responses. (I’m loving it!)

Women in the Arts & Media have a list of opps you can sign up to get monthly.

For poets, sign up for Angela T. Carr’s Wordbox with monthly opps & much more!

Ghost City Press publishes 10 pages of poetry in micro-chapbooks, submit by February 28th. (No Sim Subs)

February 28: *NEW* Columbia Center for Science and Society Environmental Humanities Grants Applications

Clubbed Thumb's New Play Commission due March 20th!

Due April 1st, T. Schreiber Studios wants short plays on the theme “It Happened to Me.” There is a $5 submission fee, but if selected, they pay a small stipend ($100) and your work is produced in NYC in June. (I did this a few years ago with them, and they produced the plays at Theatre Row. This year I think its at ART.)

Pittsburgh New Works seeks one-act plays for their 2025 season of world premieres. 15 to 20 plays will be selected as full productions or readings. Read their guidelines (they have changed somewhat) and if your play qualifies, submit it no later than Sunday, April 6!

For 10-30 min plays for The ReOrient Festival (about the Middle East Or by Middle Eastern writers) til April 30th more info / submit

April 1: *NEW* The Democracy Cycle 2025 Open Call

Amazing People Doing Amazing Things:

If you’re in NYC and looking for the best self-defense class, PREPARE changed my life! I highly recommend them. If you ask, for groups/schools, they might travel.

SUR: The Trojan Women Project Sat. 3/29 to 4/6 in New York @ LA MAMA'S ELLEN STEWART THEATRE. https://www.lamama.org/sur/ or more info here

JOIN 100 Days of Creative Resistance! free email of encouragement, opposition, and commiseration — a reminder of why we write and create — from 100 iconoclastic contemporary voices on each of the first 100 days of the 47th president’s regime.

Audrey Cephaly has written a great Substack on How to Write the 10 Minute Play - I highly recommend her Substack every day, but especially this one.

Jennifer Kircher Carr has written An Ode to Melodrama for all kinds of writers. I think it’s worth a read if you want to move your readers/audience.

TOUCH a new play by Lori Goodman directed by Janice L. Goldberg will run at The Tank, 2/20 - 3/16. With the inimitable Carole Foreman in the lead role! Sit w/me 3/8

Take a Poetry Workshop with Only Poems.

Beautiful essay on grief and writing by Raven Leilani

Liking this post & sharing it (or re-stacking) helps me reach more readers. While I’m committed to publishing for everyone, I appreciate financial support of my work! Thank you for reading, liking, sharing, subscribing & commenting! See you soon in Brave Space! <3