Listen to this post as a podcast here: https://solidarityapothecary.org/the-frontline-herbalism-podcast/71-healing-from-incarceration/

Healing from incarceration could easily be an article about healing from trauma in general. Incarceration is ultimately traumatic. However, I do feel there are some nuances that make incarceration, imprisonment, and captivity differently traumatising in a way that demands their own responses. The compounding nature of trauma in prison coupled with its normalisation and invisibilisation in society compared to other forms of trauma make it challenging to recognise and recover from.

Likewise, it’s not like life can not always become easier for people once they are ‘free’ due to the structural oppression that exists. This piece attempts to dive into the complexity of healing from incarceration. It’s written for people being released from prison, whether that was yesterday or two decades ago. In the words of a former IRA prisoner:

“You can never really leave prison, because prison never really leaves you.”

The trauma of incarceration: what makes prison so traumatic?

Fear and threat to life

Prison is a state of prolonged, repeated trauma with an inability to escape. Incarceration is an overwhelming experience that can significantly change people – socially, emotionally and physiologically. While all prisons are different, it is extremely common to experience an ongoing threat to life – to fear for our safety. Examples include frequent violence from officers ‘bending people up’, prisoners attacking each other, threats of sexual violence and so on. People surrounding us may be frequently self-harming or trying to take their own lives. We may experience these things ourselves, or we may be witnessing them regularly. Either way, it will compound a feeling that we are deeply unsafe. 

Powerlessness 

Prison is designed to create a dynamic of overwhelming powerlessness. People are commonly forced to violate their own moral principles. There is a surrendering to the violence against us and others which can rupture what it means to be human. For example, I have quite a strong anarchist identity; even at school I would always stand up to bullies, anti-authoritarianism came naturally to me. But in prison, you commonly have to ‘stand still’ and witness people being bent up and dragged to segregation by groups of officers. You know if you interfere, that you will be subject to the same treatment (or worse), you know that trying to get involved feels somehow ‘pointless’ because you are powerless to stop the violence you are seeing. This created a rupture in me, in my identity. It generated many feelings of shame, which through support after prison I could transform into self compassion for both the freeze response of the body experiencing trauma, and also how overriding this powerlessness can be. 

Lack of control 

People in prison have an unrelenting lack of control over their lives. From the smallest thing – like accessing more toilet paper – to when they will access parole, nearly every decision is controlled by others. Lack of control and consistent uncertainty create havoc for the bodymindsoul. This is worsened for people serving indeterminate sentences (those without a fixed release date), such as the IPP sentence which greatly affected my best friend Taylor and contributed to his suicide. His original tariff was four years and he served a massive thirteen years, the constant uncertainty of when he would be released drove him to absolute despair. 

Hypervigilance and immobilisation 

Prison forces people to live in a state of hyperarousal and hypervigilance for sometimes years on end. The fight or flight energy of the nervous system can be released in brief moments of relief (exercise, fighting etc), but in general, this surge of mobilisation has nowhere to go. This is especially true when people are physically immobilised in a cell. I believe it’s this massive mix of acute and chronic sympathetic nervous system activation coupled with immobility (being locked in a 2 x 3m cell for sometimes 23 hours a day) that makes incarceration so traumatic for the body. 

Coercive control 

Prison is coercive control. Prison officers gain control and power by eroding a person’s autonomy and self-esteem through acts of intimidation, threats, and humiliation. We associate coercive control as a dynamic in interpersonal violence such as an abusive husband, but these patterns repeat systemically in prison. Legally, coercive control is defined as: “a pattern of behaviour which seeks to undermine a person’s self-esteem or sense of self, and restrict or remove their liberty or freedom. It describes a variety of controlling acts including manipulation, intimidation, sexual coercion, gaslighting (a form of psychological abuse in which a victim is manipulated into doubting their own memory and sanity).”(1). 

Every aspect is present in prison, often from multiple people (including several officers and sometimes other prisoners). There is no escape. I just want to name that many people entering prison will have come from an environment of coercive control (for example, an abusive childhood or a violent relationship) therefore, prison can be even more triggering and compounding of someone’s trauma. 

Severing from support 

Prison disconnects and severs people from the support they need. Calls and visits are a lifeline, but many people are deprived of these due to economic and other circumstances. There are exceptions but many people feel abandoned and cast alone, increasing the traumatisation of imprisonment. There is so much research that support mitigates trauma, for example, a person having someone soothe them by the roadside after a car accident while waiting for an ambulance reduces the likelihood of developing PTSD(2). I believe this is why prisoner solidarity is so important too. Prison is especially traumatic because we are lonely, isolated and separated from many sources of support. While most people develop some kind of support system inside through friendships, it can not be taken for granted that this is the same for everyone. There are many barriers to building relationships and finding affinity with people especially for people trapped in solitary confinement who have no options for socialising or seeking support from people around them.

Dissociation 

In order to endure imprisonment, dissociation is absolutely necessary. Dissociation is when we feel separated from our bodies. For some, this can be through substances (in prison or after). Prison severs a person’s relationship to their body and in order to survive, they have to disconnect. This has long-term effects, even after prison, in a person’s ability to live fully. 

Shame 

Prisons are considered natural, normal and necessary in society. The experiences of the prisoner are normalised and justified in the phrase, “do the crime, do the time”. Jokes about ‘dropping the soap’ and prison rape are common. The trauma of the person in prison becomes invisibilised, unnamed, and unrecognised. 

People may look at issues that led to prison but fail to identify the traumatisation of imprisonment itself. People may identify active addiction or childhood abuse, for example, as risk factors of what has traumatised someone, but they fail to see that prison itself is traumatising. Whatever people go through, popular culture believes you deserved it. Shame is a common trauma dynamic and is built-in to the prison system – society hates you and you loathe yourself. 

Multiple Layers of Trauma and Oppression 

As I shared in the introduction to this prisons section of the book, author Karlene Faith writes that “Prison is the place where all injustices converge.” In addition to all the common trauma dynamics in the points above, prison will also magnify and enable all other forms of oppression. Prisoners are targeted with racial violence andtransphobia through attacks and sexual violence. People  experience ableism, and all other forms of oppression. 

These are just a handful of points about what makes prison so traumatic. The next section briefly explores some of the health impacts of incarceration before we ask the important question: how the hell do we heal from incarceration? 

Health Impacts of Incarceration

Over many years I have witnessed the mental and physical health of my friends who I’m supporting inside decline. The brutality of the prison system takes its toll. Two friends died in the hands of the state.  

Prisoners experience intense medical neglect. My best friend Sam missed nine operations for her cancer due to cancellations by the private prison she was in. Each time the NHS assembled an entire theatre team only to find Sam was a no-show. Because of security reasons, prisons don’t tell you when you are due to go out for health appointments. She knew she was not getting the treatment she needed and we took political and legal action to pressure the prison, but we had no idea the extent of the failings of the prison. The surgeon told me that she was three milimetres away from death by the time they finally operated. The prison also failed to communicate test results and neglected necessary post-surgery aftercare where she contracted infection after infection.

I write about medical neglect in prison at the beginning of The Prisoner’s Herbal:

“For people reading this in prison, you will not be surprised. you will have witnessed, and most likely, experienced medical neglect yourself. You will have been in pain and been unable to access painkillers, or seen people begging for medical attention completely ignored by prison officers. When I was in prison, a girl even miscarried and was left alone to bleed out in her cell before being unlocked the next day.” 

Chronic illnesses in prison are commonly left untreated and people have next to no options for self-care. They are dependent on prison officers for the most basic of needs, such as accessing pain relief. Accessing medication can be a massive challenge. There are large numbers of people with disabilities in prison, and prison itself is a disabling environment. Infectious diseases occur at much higher rates. One study from the so-called United States showed that individuals living in ‘correctional facilities’ are approximately three times more likely to have HIV or AIDS and are more likely to have hepatitis C and tuberculosis (3). Nothing illuminates the disparities of healthcare in prison than the Covid-19 pandemic. The death rate of people in prison dying from Covid-19 was three times the rate of people on the outside (4). One of the saddest statistics I ever read was that the average age of death for people in prison in the UK is just 56 years old (when the national average life expectancy is roughly 80 years) (5).

What is less researched is the long-term effects of incarceration on people’s health. I believe, however, we can draw on studies of how trauma and chronic stress affect health long-term. This is something I dive more deeply into in my Herbalism, PTSD and Traumatic Stress Course where we explore the connections between trauma, chronic illness, and inflammation. 

Authors Rupa Marya and Raj Patel, write in the highly recommended book Inflamed: Deep Medicine and the Anatomy of Injustice about the connections between chronic stress and inflammation: 

“Stress is the main mechanism that the body has to mobilize resources to address a perturbation in homeostasis. When something has been damaged or is under threat of being damaged, the stress response activates the nervous, endocrine, and immune systems, mobilizing pro-inflammatory cytokines and hormones to allow us to adapt in the short term. When those systems are chronically activated, the body experiences increasing wear and tear. Chronic stress’s cumulative toll is called allostatic load, and the biological expression is chronic inflammation.”

There are multiple drivers of chronic stress and disease or ‘dis-ease’. Our bodies are complex and everyone has a different ‘fault line’ for how stress manifests in their body. Long term studies have shown that people who experience ‘adverse childhood experiences’ e.g. the majority of people in prison, have increased chances of developing different diseases (6). Parental forces (how we’ve been treated by our primary parents) are important, but they are not the only people or systems that influence us. There are many forces that shape our bodies in childhood and adulthood from nutrition to oppression, including state violence. 

Trauma may mean that we have ‘sympathetic dominance’ e.g. the fight or flight response is commonly activated and often our dominant state (where we are in this state more than others). When this state is dominant, we may have altered brain activity, increased stress hormone activity, altered metabolism, increased inflammation and oxidative stress, disordered immunity and increased rates of biological ageing. This is the tip of the iceberg in terms of mechanisms in the body that contribute to chronic illness due to trauma. 

There are a million and one expressions of illness that may manifest, in different patterns in each individual. Studies have shown trauma’s connection to everything from musculoskeletal pain, fatigue and fibromyalgia, to arthritis, high blood pressure, coronary heart disease, inflammatory bowel disease, diabetes, allergies and autoimmune diseases and many many more iterations of chronic illness (7). The nature of prison and its unrelenting chronic stress is no doubt having an intimate effect on people’s bodies. 

The reason I share about the health effects of incarceration is because it’s not just mental or emotional consequences, many people leaving prison will also need to ‘heal from incarceration’ in terms of their bodies and physical health. This is what brought me to study herbalism at a clinical level – because the chronic stress I had endured generated an extremely challenging ‘chronic illness hole’ that I struggled to get out of without support. Ultimately it was plant medicines that supported me to heal my tissues, get inflammation under control and teach my nervous system different ways of being i.e to learn how to be in parasympathetic much more, enable rest and recovery of my tissues.  

Healing from incarceration: the stages 

I just want to emphasise before I dive into these stages that I’m not a therapist! These reflections come from my own journey of healing from incarceration and accompanying many other friends and comrades to recover from periods of imprisonment. There is no one-size-fits-all solution, no magic bullet. Trauma recovery is messy and incomplete and an ongoing journey. I’ve attempted to integrate these twists and turn them into a framework that can potentially offer more structure and support to others.  

Getting out of prison is something that all prisoners dream of and fantasise about for however long their sentence is. We put so much pressure on ourselves and we imagine that everything is going to be amazing when we’re out of prison. Unfortunately, we can experience a kind of shock from the change between reality and our expectations.

A lot of people get out of prison and actually realise it’s super difficult to cope, partly because of what they’ve just been through and how alienating and challenging and traumatic that was, but also because capitalism is difficult. All of the challenges that someone likely had before they went in will still exist, whether that’s how to find work, pay the bills or how to not feel lonely. These challenges are likely to be bigger now because of everything someone has just been through. Ex-prisoners will also commonly face prejudice and discrimination in society and may have a lack of access to resources.

I’m fully aware that some of the things I write will feel impossible to you if you’ve just got out of prison.
 I also think this section might speak to people who, for example, have been out a long time and are surprised by how they’re still consistently affected by their experiences. Wherever you are on your post-prison journey, I hope there are some ideas and information here that can help you feel more joy, embodiedness, and safety in your life. 


Release and survival

The first stage of getting out of prison is what I think of as a ‘release and survival’ stage. It’s definitely not the time when you’re likely to be investing loads of energy in ‘healing’. You’re really going to be thinking ‘how do I get through each day?’ And basically your nervous system is still going to be vastly activated.

Every country has different systems of incarceration. In the UK when you get out, you generally have half of your sentence left on the outside, which is called your licence period, and literally, the smallest slip up – like being late to a probation appointment – can mean that you’re recalled back to prison.
 In some ways, you’re not in prison, but in other ways, you are still very imprisoned by these conditions, and your nervous system is going to be constantly vigilant and stressed about not returning to prison. The effects of this period, the toll of hypervigilance and chronic stress, are quite psychologically underestimated.

Probably the best way to be kind to yourself right now is to manage your expectations. It’s important to understand that you’re still under enormous pressure and all these amazing fantasies you have about getting out might not be possible for you right now because you’re still in acute survival mode. You’re trying to save yourself from going back to prison. I think the priority for anyone in this stage is really about keeping yourself out, keeping yourself safe.

I don’t mean this in the sense that I want everyone to comply with all these oppressive conditions. 
I mean that we need you on the outside. It can be hard to find reasons to stay out, to stay motivated, especially if you’re lonely or isolated, but I do think being out of prison is important for everyone. You matter, your body matters, your health matters, and so staying out also matters. 


Part of the challenge is that when we get out of prison, our nervous systems are so overwhelmed that it can be very easy to become hyper-activated, become very distressed, even explosive. I’ve lost count of the amount of people I’ve supported who’ve got out and within a day have had a fight with someone in their bail hostel, or gotten really drunk, and got recalled to prison.

Know your nervous system

It’s important to have an awareness of your nervous system. Know that you are likely to be distressed, you’re likely to be prone to hyperarousal, activation, getting angry, feeling irritability, rage, all of these things. It’s completely understandable given that you’ve been held in a cage. Those explosive triggers threaten you, but how on earth do you regulate enough to avoid them? Unfortunately, probation, all these different social worker types, are going to be constantly pressing on your buttons, constantly pushing up against our triggers.

Trying to keep your shit together can be really difficult and that’s why I think it is important to invest in a bit of understanding about your nervous system so that you can try to “self-regulate” as much as possible. Learn to calm yourself and stay in control and find ways to not respond to these strategies by probation that are really setting you up to fail. I know in my Herbalism, PTSD and Traumatic Stress course I critique the focus on ‘self regulation’ a lot (because the world can be inherently dysregulating) but I think you do need to cling to any strategy at all that will help you.

For me, I would listen to music. I would have an iPod and would listen to music on my way to probation. I would listen to really ridiculous, heavy, vegan, straight-edge, hardcore music and that would make me feel like, “No, I’m not going back to prison. I’m strong.” When I went into that room, I was actually in a much better place because that music makes me feel stronger and calmer. 
I’m sure other people listening to it will have a headache and freak out, but for me, it makes me feel safe and in control. Connected to a bigger movement. That was important for me.

For you, it might be listening to classical music on the way to your appointments. Or meditating. 
I’ve never been a skilled meditator by any means at all, I know it can be contraindicated for people with PTSD, but, you know, maybe it works for you, and listening to some audio or something to help regulate you and calm you down before interacting with these different authority figures could be really helpful. Again, this isn’t about compliance for compliance sake – I care about you, and I care about you staying out of prison.

Finding any safety we can

I think the priority is trying to find a sense of safety, because prison takes away any access to feelings of safety that is possible for us. 
I recognise that just because you’re out of prison doesn’t necessarily mean you’re safe in any way. They purposely put people in unsafe environments like bail hostels, where there’s a lot of drugs and fights and violence and stuff. I was incredibly privileged to be able to move in with my mum and stepdad in a really wonderful rural location. I had lots of access to land, which I think is a situation pretty much never given to most prisoners. I’ve supported a lot of people that have been released into central Bristol, for example, but even in cities, there are places that can help us feel safe. Maybe you have a favourite cafe or a park or a woodland. Maybe you live by the sea. Maybe there’s a calm churchyard nearby. Finding somewhere where we feel safe is so important because it gives our nervous system a chance to breathe. 
Getting out of prison, we have to relearn what safety means. It’s so unfamiliar that we have to just find it again almost from scratch.

Generally it’s hard to feel safe when you’re alone. And so, for me, it was connecting with plants and other non-humans that created a sense of safety for me. 
But we also need friends, right? We need people we can “co-regulate” with – people who can support us to feel more ‘safe and social’. I know that not everyone getting out of prison will have friends or family. I’m very aware of that reality. I’m also very aware that prison purposely affects and destroys and takes our friendships away, especially if you’re doing a long sentence. I don’t want to assume you have a friend that makes you feel safe, but if you do, they will be your biggest support. And having someone that you can spend time with who makes you feel calmer, who has your back, is really, really important.

If you can, find some kind of safe space to talk about your feelings whether that’s friendships, ideally, or counselling. I know affording counselling for most working-class people is an absolute nightmare. And I know that private counselling is super expensive and not accessible for people. 


I am also writing this for people doing solidarity work and one of the things that people can do is to fundraise, to pay for quality care for people. I don’t believe that sending everyone who’s distressed off to a counsellor is going to solve everything, but I have had counselling myself and I think it is one way that can help you release and process and access perspective and support.

Finding someone you trust to be able to safely disclose what’s going on for you is really important because prison creates this weird environment where you’re surrounded by people who constantly lie to you. Officers constantly lie. They say, “Oh yeah, I’ve made an appointment with healthcare.” “Oh no, the post hasn’t come today.” “Oh no, you don’t have anything like that.” And it’s all just lies, right? Our probation officers lie to us. And even other prisoners lie to us. “Oh no, I didn’t take your tobacco.” So, I think part of getting out of prison and healing from it is somehow trying to navigate truth and lies, knowing who we can trust, and who we can’t. 
Just being aware of that as a lens of your life is really important.

Self-censorship and disclosure

Another aspect of prison that makes disclosure about our experiences and history very confusing is the tendency we have to self-censor.

My mum would come and visit me in prison, and I wouldn’t want to upset her or cause her distress, so for her I’d said I was fine, I was working in the gym. I was studying and doing really well. I didn’t talk to her about the frequent suicide attempts I saw every day or the frequent examples of self-harm or the violence or the officers trying to come on to me. I never told her about any of that stuff.
Prison creates a weird sense of self-repression in you when getting out, you’re with a bunch of people who have no idea what you’ve just been through, so how you talk to them and what you talk to them about and what stories you share or don’t share is really difficult. 


Unfortunately people will judge you for being in prison. They will think you’re a certain sort of person or you can’t be trusted.
They will have all their own preconceptions of what prison is like. Maybe they’ll start making jokes about prison, which for you, if your best friend’s just died in prison, is not going to be fun. You’re going to be interacting with news articles where people want to bring back the death penalty, and all of this stuff, or you’ll be talking to someone at the benefits office and they treat you like you’re subhuman. I’m afraid it’s going to happen and you need to be prepared for it. 


If you aren’t able to talk to people easily, then more solo forms of self-expression, such as writing, making a zine, poetry, music, graffiti, anything, can be very healing. Loads of people have made really beautiful offerings based on their time in prison. Anything that can help you find avenues of self-expression, I think, is really important.

Control and agency

The other aspect of prison is that it dramatically controls you, right? It sounds obvious, but it’s all about power, control, and coercion. It’s about taking away agency and autonomy. Healing from incarceration is about increasing that agency for yourself, increasing the power and control you have over your own life, increasing your own autonomy. And that’s really hard to do if you’ve been institutionalised, if you’ve done a really long sentence.

It can be the most basic of things. You need to be able to express choice, whether that’s choosing what food you’re going to eat or what clothes you’re going to buy.
I would never pick someone up from prison with a bag of clothes that I’d bought for them, for example. They’ve been wearing prison clothes the whole time; they’ve had no options. Instead, I would take them shopping and they can choose what they want to buy. Anything you can do to help exercise that muscle of self-autonomy can be helpful. Maybe it’s an exercise regime or deciding on a course or choosing a book, just constantly building up that confidence again to make your own choices.

At the same time, we should be cautious about people who want to paternalistically control someone. A lot of charity workers are like this – when people get out of prison, they’re very controlling of them and their money. For anarchists and people engaged in solidarity work, it’s important to always think about increasing agency and autonomy. Even if that sometimes means that people are going to make mistakes, spend money on things they don’t need. If that’s made them feel alive and a bit free, then that’s okay.

Certainty and uncertainty

Another aspect that makes prison especially traumatic is that it takes away certainty. Uncertainty is a very common trauma dynamic and makes certain situations very stressful. Precarity under capitalism is a constant source of stress – where is my next meal coming from? How am I going to financially survive this next thing?

I had quite a chaotic childhood. I lived in twenty-one houses by the time I was sixteen and I never knew where we were going to move to next. I never knew who my mum was going to have a relationship with next. There was constant uncertainty for me, and in a weird way I think that is what made me the planner and the control freak that I am because I have to create a sense of internal certainty. 


So when I was experiencing repression, I would be making plans of what I would do if I got a five-year sentence, or a ten-year sentence. And I think it’s the same when people get out. Making plans for yourself is so important because it gives you a sense of control. Even though you might be pissing in the wind, so to speak, with all the pressures you’re up against, having some kind of intentions and goals and reasons for you to stay out of prison are really important. Do you want to get your kid back who’s gone into care? Do you want to go to university? 
Do you want to get fit in the gym? Seizing those goals on release, whatever they are, is really, really important. It gives you a sense of meaning and purpose, and some sense of agency.

Releasing energy

Imprisonment and incarceration are very immobilising things, so we have huge amounts of nervous system energy building up every single day because of the stressful environment, but it’s got nowhere to go – you’re literally locked in a cage. Finding ways to release this energy when we get out is really important, and movement can be a big part of that.

I’m aware that people have different abilities around movement, and it looks different for everyone. It might be little stretches in our room, or dancing or walking or running or going to the gym, for example. All of these things can help our bodies release all this built-up rage and anger and frustration. 


I eventually learned a tool called trauma releasing exercises which involves triggering shaking in my own body to help release trauma and that was life changing for me. I talk about this in the Herbalism, PTSD and Traumatic Stress Course. 

Relationships

Relationships are another massive factor of healing from incarceration. Prison can change your ability to be intimate with people. We make all these jokes inside that, when we get out, we’re literally going to fuck the taxi driver who picks us up. Everyone’s just desperate and gagging for it, but then you actually get out and realise that being touched is scary. Being intimate is complicated. It can be confusing especially if you have someone that you were previously intimate with and now you’re in a very different place to where you were before prison.

Intimate relationships can be hard because of how prisons affect us and our nervous systems and also the fear of going back to prison. It can be very scary to start a new relationship if you think you’re going to lose that person. What if you go back and they abandon you while you’re there? You don’t want to affect them if you go back inside. There are all these weird, complicated things to navigate.

The other factor is that prison might have screwed up a lot of your relationships. People might have abandoned you when you really needed them. Or cheated on you while you were in prison. Or just stopped visiting you. There’s a real dance when you get out of repairing some relationships that feel important enough to repair. And also just getting acceptance and letting people go.

I let go of some really close friends because I knew I’d never be able to trust them again. That was painful, but also empowering. And other people hurt me while I was in prison, but we’ve rebuilt that and worked through that. The reason I talk about building relationships with plants is because relationships are really what heal us. Just messaging friends, or having gentle phone calls, might be enough if you can’t face being around people physically. Brief cups of tea or coffee can be a lot easier than people wanting to go out partying with you or hang out in massive groups. Those experiences can feel super socially alienating after a lot of time in prison, especially if you’ve been in solitary confinement. 


On a personal level, I rejected intimacy and relationships for a long time because I was scared of going back to prison and I didn’t trust people. On reflection, I think that was actually what the state wanted. The state wants to alienate us, and actually, continuing to love people is a form of resistance. There is a war for our hearts somehow and having the courage to have intimate relationships, to allow the healing that they can bring is really important. Intimacy is really terrifying after prison but it’s something that I would never want to lose now. 


Dissociation

Feeling separated from your body is an absolutely essential survival strategy in prison. If you were completely aware of your body and your surroundings every moment of every day, it would be unbearable. The prevalence of spice (synthetic cannabinoids) and other drugs in prisons is because people want time out, they want to check out of that environment.

But we also need tools to re-associate, to re-inhabit our body. One of the simplest exercises I know is just having a shower and trying to notice how the water feels on different parts of your body. Put your hand under the water or your foot under the water and really feel the sensations there.

Other practices like yoga, massage, touch, and body work can also be helpful. Again, those are not always affordable or accessible for people. But people involved in solidarity projects could offer that to people who’ve been in prison. After years of not being touched by someone, it can be an absolute nightmare to navigate, so having that skilled support could be really empowering. 
Our bodies store much more than we’re conscious of. The effects of prison are held in our tissues and having support in that respect can take us a long way.

Taking care of our bodies

I know getting registered for healthcare can be a massive faff. It’s logistically difficult and might not be your top priority, but when you can, get a check-up with the dentist and the doctor. Get a full set of blood tests, to check for infectious diseases or anaemia. 
I was so severely anaemic when I got out of prison.

I really encourage ex-prisoners to see a herbalist if you’re able to or someone who has a lot of training in holistic healthcare and nutrition. They might be able to help you address the way that your body’s been expressing distress, whether that’s musculoskeletal pain or IBS or other problems.

We might be expressing our distress emotionally through bouts of anger and rage or it might be nightmares, freeze and shut down responses. I think it takes a lot of time and self-observation, and sometimes observation from other people like a counsellor or close friends, for us to really understand how we are expressing distress.

I really encourage people to look at this trauma response framework that I talk about in the introduction [of the Herbalism and State Violence Book], which looks at different stages – release, rest, reconnection and also resistance. Deeper healing can come from engaging in these frameworks and getting collective support. It doesn’t have to be linear by any means but moving through these different steps can help. After a very traumatic period of incarceration, you might just need a serious rest. 
You might just need to lie in bed and watch TV for six months and that’s what your nervous system needs. You might want to go and hide yourself somewhere and be completely alone. Or maybe you want to never be alone again, you might want to be constantly with a close friend or a partner or adopt a rescue dog. Everyone is different. I think this is the time to be selfish in the sense of really checking in with yourself and finding out what you need.

I put a lot of pressure on myself to heal quickly – too quickly – and now I keep coming across this idea that ‘the slower we go, the faster we get there.’ We need slowness and gentleness. We need to gently understand our experiences and make changes in our nervous systems. We need gentleness to feel into a safe and social state. What we don’t need is an adrenalised, workaholic response of ‘I must do everything I can to feel better and get better and not be sick’.

I’ve learned that the antidote to trauma is actually joy. Prison is so dehumanising, and it takes so much joy away from us, that rediscovering joy is a part of healing. I remember once I was with some close friends, new friends from a campaign, who took me to this place called Worm’s Head on the Gower Peninsular in South Wales. It was beautiful, and we camped overnight in this location that gets completely cut off by the sea. In the morning we went swimming in the sea, and three seals popped up around me, and it was just one of the best moments of my life.

In that moment, I remember realising that joy is my revenge. The fact that I can still access this joy, and feel alive, and experience the magic and the awe and the wonder of being alive, that was the best medicine for me. After that, I became much more open to experiencing joy, being vulnerable and having intimate relationships with people, prioritising days off by the beach, all of that. Reclaiming joy is very important. There’s a really nice book called Joyful Militancy that talks about this. 


Rebuilding your identity 

There is a kind of quest after prison to rebuild your own identity. In prison I wasn’t allowed most of the CDs and books and things I needed. I wasn’t allowed to be in contact with people with shared politics or values. Getting out, I had a sense of, ‘who am I?’ Prison and repression take so much away from us and finding ways to rebuild your own identity – finding new interests or passions, or reconnecting with old ones – is really important. It’s about having the courage to re-find yourself again.

Resistance and recovery

This might just be a strong part of my personal identity, but for me, fighting back against what’s been trying to destroy us has been very therapeutic. In hindsight though, I think I threw myself into resistance too fast after prison, and I didn’t prioritise things like rest or recovery or joy or counselling. I just went to all-out war against the prison system. I was involved in various abolitionist collectives and ABC projects and was supporting loads of people in prison. My whole life became dominated by prison.

I have seen ex-prisoners get involved in campaigns and that has been very therapeutic for them because they’ve been able to share their experiences and feel validated and feel seen. They’ve been able to take action for their friends, which they couldn’t do when they were in prison for example. Prisoner family members have been able to feel like people care about them and feel some sense of collective power and I think ultimately that is what keeps me coming back to organising. It overcomes the feeling of powerlessness that society creates in us, and it brings me into close contact with other people with shared values, shared purpose and meaning.

When it’s the right time for you, I would encourage you to see if there are places you could volunteer with, or people you could organise with, or collectives you could join. Look for projects that will give you support and purpose and meaning and help you use all those horrible experiences and all that trauma and somehow compost it so that you can support other people. But take it slowly. Find the work that helps you heal and rediscover yourself too.

I just want to share again that my Herbalism, PTSD and Traumatic Stress course is open to all, no one is turned away for lack of funds. I also support former prisoners one-to-one with my clinic for whatever they can afford (including supporting people for free). 

References

1. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0272735821000416
2. https://www.traffordsafeguardingpartnership.org.uk/Learning-and-development/Resource-bank/7-Minute-Briefings/7-Minute-Briefing-Coercive-Control.aspx
3. https://www.aafp.org/about/policies/all/incarceration.html
4. https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2021/mar/covid-19-death-rate-among-people-prison-three-times-higher-public
5. https://www.medact.org/2020/blogs/mind-the-gap-healthcare-disparities-in-uk-prisons/
6. https://www.ajpmonline.org/article/S0749-3797(98)00017-8/fulltext
7. https://chronicillnesstraumastudies.com/