Nervous System Regulation
Ignoring News is Not Ignorance
Just because I ignore the news doesn’t mean I’m ignorant.
I don’t spend much time on social media unless I’m posting, wishing someone happy birthday or catching up on friends. I haven’t had a television since 1990 when the Gulf War upset me so much I called in sick for a week. This doesn’t mean I’m clueless. It means I have a sense of ease and control.
I can’t think of anything worse than listening to someone spout bad news at me with no way to respond.
I get tons of emails about recent incursions against potentially pregnant bodies, Supreme Court decisions that affect trans kids, the potential for US war with Iran, the Big Ugly Bill in the Senate, the failure of Albany to vote on plastics, mass forced starvation in Gaza and violence in the West Bank, the mayoral race including the Landers arrest, plus news about Autism, Climate and more.
I love email.
I don’t have to open them until I’m ready. When I read the news in an email, it’s asking me to write to and/or call my reps, work phone banks and/or sign up to canvas, and I can choose to do that or not. For me, it’s easier to be able to act than to listen to random reportage when I’m vulnerable in the morning or about to sleep at night. Feeling helpless is too dysregulating.
Helpless is what I felt from trauma.
While I have done a lot of healing, to start to believe in the danger of my own environment is to put myself back into fight/flight. So I choose acceptance — yes the world is hard right now — and action — there are things I can do about it. Not ruminating on “what if…”
IFS is the opposite of therapy.
It happens internally and allows each of us to access and reconnect to our own internal wisdom, what we had to disconnect from due to trauma.
“What wires together fires together”
Donald O. Hebb came up with this bit of neuroscience meaning when we turn on the news and get a shock, even when the news isn’t that bad, we’ll get that shock. We habituate ourselves through repetition. If we create a habit of anxiety, the more anxious we feel, the more anxious we’re going to feel. Unless we take control of the wires and create change.
Nervous System Regulation is a skill.
If we get into grooves of fight/flight, and we can’t find ways to down-regulate back to calm, we get sick, flare or burn out. We can exhaust ourselves or end up in a spiral to overwhelm. Toggling between panic and passing out, using caffeine and/or sugar to jumpstart ourselves and push until we crash is not helpful.
I have to maintain a lived sense of safety
in my body to maintain my health and my ability to help others. I do this by listening. Literally pausing several times a day to check in with myself. Like this: how are you? Do you need to stretch? Take a walk? Pet the dog? Eat? Hydrate? Meditate? Massage your ears? Journal?
I used to think I’d have to make big changes to heal,
but it was the tiniest things that helped the most. So while the world may seem to be falling apart, direct your life. If you want some support around this, reach out.
WAYS TO BUILD SUBTEXT
Observe place or situation through each characters’ lens. This allows you to show subtext through personal viewpoints. How are your observers biased? What inspires them? What brings them down? What upsets them?
Extend the world beyond the stage. Let characters enter from a real moment/place and exit to a real place/person/thing with real purpose. Where are they coming from and where are they going? What would make meaning?
There is always something happening on the surface and something happening underneath even in the silences. Audiences know this intuitively. We expect it and look for it.
A silence when nothing can be spoken speaks loudly. Show your characters trying and failing to speak and we get that something is being unsaid.
Pacing helps with this as when one character says “I love you” expecting a reciprocal statement, and instead there is a pause or some stumbling.
Parataxis is a rhetorical device where there is a lack of connectors. No ifs, ands or buts! Paratactic sentences, clauses, and phrases are useful in explaining a sequence of thoughts that evoke emotion as these clauses seem to happen all at once. Parataxis can show trauma or overwhelming emotion like love as a character using this device will leap from one subject to another, or remember a story out of sequence, as if nothing connects to anything else. It’s a kind of disconnect in language that is helpful for audiences/readers to understand subtext about an experience, idea, thought, setting, or emotion.
Body language that works against speech can be useful to convey subtext. When someone says, you're all I think about, but they aren't making eye contact, or they're deep into their phone...
Any disconnect between what we see and what we hear (smell, taste, touch and feel) can help to alert us to subtext. It might look like fun, but Carla has a stomachache.
Do you have a character with a particular obsession for something? How does that manifest? Sometimes finding the way a grown character functions in a childish way can help show subtext, that there's something more going on.
Charles Baxter says that "any story may draw its power from unthinkable thoughts." Can you let a character try to push them out of their head while planting them subtextually in your reader/audience?
The lady doth protest too much! Or Brutus was an honorable man. Repeating a lie makes us wonder if it’s true. Insisting on something. Doubling down.
How much energy does it take not to think about something? Could that cause some interesting behavior or passion in a character?
Chosen activities show subtext. What are the characters doing? We get subtext when we see that Brendan is packing Mom’s things quickly, talking fast about efficiency while Jaclyn is pausing to reminisce over each item, trying to get Brendan to remember.
Neuro-Affirming (NAF) Parts Work Group:
Meets Second Saturdays of each month (this Saturday, June 14th) to offer community, parts work experience and support for anyone neurodivergent (inclusive of many different ways to be neurodivergent including Autism, ADHD, Audhd, OCD, cPTSD, traumatic brain injuries, and more). You do not need an actual diagnosis to participate. Run by Emma and Jess (Level II), both of us Audhd, we are creating Parts Work content for healing and ease in neurodivergent systems. Sign up for our link here. Our next meeting is 12pm ET (time zone converter here) Saturday, June 14th. Sliding scale from $5-25/session.
Opportunities:
Centre Theatre New Play Festival wants new plays! Submit by June 30th!
Enter the YALE Drama Series Competition deadline 8/15/25
Moxie Theatre seeks new plays Submit by June 30th! All plays must be written by women+ playwrights. For musicals, at least two thirds of the writing team must identify as women+ (in a team of two people, both must identify as women+) Submissions are now open for ten-minute plays, full-length plays, and full-length musicals. They recommend 6 or fewer characters.
Ixion is seeking up to 8 scripts where DEFIANCE figures prominently to be considered for further development, including staged readings and possibly full production in June of 2026. No more than 4 actors. Simple setting. No more than 12 pages. Include only first initial and last name of author. Put script name and your last name in header or footer. Multiple subs allowed. No bios. Send to ixionensemble@gmail.com by 5 p.m. 9/30/25. Defiance can be in any form or any situation to explore relationships, dynamics and moments where opposition comes into play, could take on the relationship between a parent and child, and individual versus a collective or even a people versus an entity.
Telephone seeks all kinds of creative folks from everywhere in the world to respond to other artists/poets/dancers/etc to create a global community of responses. It is a massively brilliant project (I contributed to), and they want all kinds of creatives involved especially outside the US and especially filmmakers and musicians. Check out what they are doing and reach out!
Women in the Arts & Media have a list of opps you can sign up to get monthly.
For poets, Two Sylvias Weekly Muse is a great community with classes and more! They are offering an Online Poetry Retreat this summer and early fall.
Go on a virtual Women’s Writing Retreat with the International Women’s Writing Guild this August 11th - August 15th!
Brave Space
With prompts, grounding practices, & discussions, Brave Space invites playwrights, poets, painters, potters, novelists, memoirists, musicians & artists working in any medium to make meaning in a safe community. Begin and/or bring your projects to completion. Or use Brave Space as a body-doubling space to get other things done in community. $5-25 suggested per session. 4+x/week! On or off camera. No commitment, drop-ins welcome. Try it!
Brave Space Schedule:
Mondays & Wednesdays at 12pm ET; Fridays at 12pm ET w/fast feedback; and Sundays at 6pm ET with Sharing Second Sundays at 730pm ET (that means July 13!!!) Email or reply for a link!
ACTUAL SCHEDULE: This week there is Brave Space tomorrow, Friday, June 20th, Sunday June 22nd, Monday June 23rd (skipping Wednesday - I have a training session) and yes, Brave Space happens Friday June 27th and Sunday June 29th! The week after that we’ll have Monday and Wednesday and then it’s The Fourth of July on Friday, and I will not be holding Brave Space on that day. Then back to our regular schedule!
artwork by Scott Sherman at ScottShermanStudio on Instagram
POLITICAL ACTION:
I suggest, instead of feeling helpless in the face of the news, ignore corporate media and get up-to-date on issues that are important to you. Seek out Substacks or youtube providers or other newsletters and news outlets beyond the corporate hegemony. Here are a few examples and other ways to focus on issues that may be of interest to you.
READ and SUBSCRIBE:
ABORTION EVERY DAY by Jessica Valenti - support real research about what’s really happening. MEN, this is scary shit, and your support is needed and appreciated!
THE CRUCIAL YEARS by Bill McKibben - climate change and ways to understand it and to actually do stuff about it.
The Intercept - independent news.
Third Act - a community of older Americans coming together for political action.
What you need to know about ICE.
Give to the Middle Eastern Children’s Alliance
Give to Doctors Without Borders
6 Ways to Support Palestine
Donate for Civilians in Palestine
Fight for the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA).
Perfect timing (as usual). Thank you, Emma for making us feel seen. Even though away on travel, I kept up with the horrors our country is steeped in (such as the many events and violences of Mid June). I felt such a mix of complex feelings that swung mostly between: I should be there protesting and feeling a wired/tired stimulation. I've temporarily stepped away from social media - which helps. It is a constant managing, and proactive mindset, of putting my nervous system first.