Understanding Invisible Pain

Inspiration

I was inspired by my own experience with chronic migraine. I have lived with chronic migraine since February 9, 2022, when I was concussed by a rogue basketball. Due to chronic migraine being invisible to others, my pain can often go unnoticed. I have met many people that feel the same way, and we are met with similar responses about how impressively we can hide our pain. I do not feel that hiding migraine pain is the correct way to cope with an incurable diagnosis. Instead, we should help others understand this daily, weekly, or monthly pain. Migraine, and chronic migraine, is brutal. I used ChatGPT to simulate different responses based on varying pain levels of migraine.

What it does

This dialogue allows people to interact with ChatGPT in various simulations of migraine pain. Migraine level 1 pain is manageable with little distraction and brain fog (confusion and difficulty with short term memory). However, as the pain levels increase, the responses are more fragmented and interrupted by the pain. Images of light are often mentioned as migraine auras (hallucinations of moving light in the line of sight) become more frequent. I hope that this tool will help de-stigmatize migraine and make the pain more comprehensible to those who have never experienced it.

How I built it

I built my Understanding Migraine tool by customizing the instructions of ChatGPT to: Start by asking what pain level the person would like to experience. Then, you will respond in the way someone with a migraine at that certain pain level would. The pain levels will range from pain level 1 to 10. Pain level 1 will include minimal confusion and more focus on the topic at hand. Speak of seeing migraine auras as colorful lights. As the pain levels increase, you will increase the frequency of confusion and off-track responses that barely answer the question at hand. Your responses will become shorter and more fragmented. At pain level 10, you will include lots of mentions of auras of lights and colors and will be practically unable to focus on a single strain of thought. You will have a lot of brain fog and confusion and inability to focus.

Challenges I ran into

Some challenges I ran into was trying to replicate migraine auras as images scattered throughout ChatGPT's responses. Instead, I decided to have ChatGPT mention the migraine auras, which was more feasible and realistic. The user would not see someone else's migraine auras in a real conversation.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

I am proud of how ChatGPT was able to respond in the way I had envisioned going into this project. My thought process becomes very similar to this simulated version as my pain levels increase. The difficult part for me is trying to keep my internal dialogue just that: internal. I work very hard to keep my pain hidden because I have learned that speaking about pain and migraine to people who don't understand is futile. However, I hope this tool will help many people in my position: we don't have to hide our pain if people can try to understand our reality.

What I learned

I learned that replicating the human thought process is no longer a difficult task. With clear instructions, ChatGPT responds like I often do based on my pain level.

What's next for Understanding Invisible Pain

In the future, this tool could be expanded to be therapeutic. Instead of targeting non-migrainers, I could edit the tool to speak to people with migraine and sympathetically respond at their level of pain. Many people are sympathetic, but do not understand the level of pain and exhaustion that chronic migraine causes. While ChatGPT does not completely understand, these simulated responses could be beneficial to people that haven't found anyone else to talk to in times of need.

Built With

• chatgpt