The World We Tell Ourselves

In our bodies & in our imaginations we must stand up!

May 08, 2025

As storytellers and artists we make meaning. When my body is startled and shocked, I must respond. If I don’t, my nervous system moves into shut down mode. I lose energy, time, and resources. So when I’m startled, I ground my body and make a plan. I send my nervous system the message that I’m still safe and on the job. I build myself a way forward.

As a survivor who suffered for years with cPTSD, I was constantly startled. So I learned what to do when startled, so I didn’t move into fight/flight. It’s easy to get into a cycle of high tension leading to exhaustion and shut down. Many people live this cycle daily. Once I was able to ground from my startle, I stopped moving into fight/flight, expending that energy and exhausting myself.

Ways forward for me have been and still are paying deep attention to my nervous system. I do this through what I call a compassion practice that takes seconds and is now almost automatic. I notice the startle response in my body. Or I notice that I am suffering in some way. It doesn’t have to be big. Small suffering counts as suffering. I put my hand on my heart. I literally get in touch with myself. I used to have to do this fifty times a day because when I was sick, it felt as if I was living without skin. I might even say to myself, I’m here. Or, this is suffering. I offer myself self-compassion, as if the windows of my heart have shutters I can open to let the birds out.

Sometimes a startle means I need to stand up and embody Wonder Woman. I might need to spread my arms out and make some space for myself. I might need to make a plan for whatever startled me. The key here is that I am in motion or embodied and taking action. I am using agency which sends a message to the body that there’s no need for fight/flight because I’m in charge.

I’ve written more about why we all need self-compassion and nervous system regulation here. If you don’t feel as if you’re in charge, and you’d like to work with me as a coach, I am taking new clients. I have affordable rates and a sliding scale, and I offer a free initial consultation.

PROMPT:

One way to stand up to this moment is to get creative. One approachable way to begin is with the past because we all have one. The poet Robert Pinsky said, "You use the past. You do not worship it—you consult it…you are obliged not just to keep it alive, but to change it and contribute to it and adapt it and keep it alive by making it new."

Whether you are writing plays, stories or screenplays, character-based work (so popular in the U.S.) provides a past for each character, each voice, each point of view. That past can be a way to begin and a way to ground your character’s wants and needs in their own failures and their own goals.

If you have a scene to write in the present, what happens if you consult with your protagonist first in a free write that begins with their past. Let them describe a moment you remember well from your own past. Let them share that moment with you as if it’s their history. A failure is usually particularly helpful for me, but maybe that’s just because I want to find ways to redo my past. Of course we can’t actually change the past, but we can change how the past resonates emotionally in our body-minds.

I’m not saying change how the past happened. Let them remember the past. Let them describe the past moment using all the senses. Let them discover their want from that remembered actual experience (adjusted to be theirs, adjusted to protect your comfort revealing it). Let them then move into the scene you’re creating with that history, that lived experience, and the sensory and emotional dimensionality of that memory.

Let them act in ways you would not act. Let them respond to current triggers from their wants and needs based on that past. See if they surprise you or do things you don’t expect.

How can you strengthen their antagonist to press them toward a moment of high tension that might cause them to transform? One way to do this is to do the same exercise with a different moment in the past for the antagonist.

Then when you’ve got each character anchored in the present trying to get what they want and need, and they are also affected by or alive to the pasts you’ve build in, so that they behave in new or unexpected ways, find out what does your protagonist need to recognize before they can change?

Neuro-Affirming Parts Work Group!

Since we presented our approach to neuro-affirming parts work at a recent conference, there was so much interest that my colleague Jess Pearce and I (both Audhd) are putting together a Neuro-Affirming (NAF) Parts Work Group. We’ll start Saturday May 10th at 12pm ET (time zone converter link) and continue monthly every Second Saturday. Sign up here!

We're offering a 90 minute session where we'll check in, offer an experiential exercise, discussion and support through a neurodivergent lens. Drop-ins encouraged.

NAF Parts Work will be pay-what-you-can (suggested $5 - 25/session) but we will not turn people away if they are unable to pay.

If you are neurodivergent or neurodivergent-curious and want support working with your parts, let me know, and I will add you to the group for updates and links.

If you want to be listed here, please let me know what you’re up to and include your links!

For example, Shoshanna Gleich is the Cat in the Hat in SEUSSICAL at Art/NY 5/8-18 Tickets Here!

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

Take a Poetry Workshop with Only Poems.

Playwrights! If you’re not already subscribed to Mark Ravenhill’s free newsletter for his 101 exercises for playwrights, you might want to click here to do that. If you’ve missed them, reach out and I’ll send you a pdf of the 1st 53, and a pdf of 54 - now. So you won’t have to search through the endless Twitter-verse for random entries.

Opportunities:

Kelly Grace Thomas is offering a free poetry workshop Thursday May 15th 7pm ET.

Skeleton Rep is offering a residency for uptown NYC playwrights and other folks interested in playwriting! Apply by May 16th!

Go to Umbria this summer with LaMama and Dael Orlandersmith!

THE APPLICATION WINDOW FOR LOCAL LAB 15 IS NOW OPEN. If you are a resident of a western state (Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming) you can apply here through June 1st.

Centre Theatre New Play Festival wants new plays! Submit by June 30th!

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+) Works submitted must be unpublished, unproduced, and available for production. Only one submission is allowed per playwright.Submissions are now open for ten-minute plays, full-length plays, and full-length musicals. Four (4) ten-minute plays, two (2) full-length plays, and one (1) full-length musical will be selected for staged reading. The musical and one full-length play will be selected for workshopping. 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.

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.

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. 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 looking for UK opps, Angela T. Carr’s Wordbox has monthly opps & more!

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 this Sunday May 11th!!!) Email or reply below for a link!

Brave Space is on hiatus Monday May 12th and then Friday May 16th - Sunday May 18th while I attend my son’s college graduation. No Brave Space Memorial Day. No Brave Space Friday June 6th.