In this episode, Nicole (she/her) talks about healing from incarceration from her experience of supporting people in and out of prison the last twenty years. She speaks about what makes imprisonment traumatic and some of the stages of healing from these experiences. Even though the episode is created for ex-prisoners, anyone recovering from trauma may find it beneficial.
Content warning – references to prison, abuse, sexual violence, suicide
Links & resources from this episode
Find them all at solidarityapothecary.org/podcast/
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Transcript
Welcome to the Frontline Herbalism podcast with your host Nicole Rose from the Solidarity Apothecary.
Nicole:This is your place for all things plants and liberation.
Nicole:Let's get started.
Nicole:Hello, welcome back to the Frontline Herbalism podcast.
Nicole:This is a slightly longer episode today about healing from incarceration.
Nicole:So it's quite a personal piece, but it's also built on kind of my experience of supporting a lot of people over the years who have got out of prison to, yeah, recover from it or to unfortunately end up back in prison.
Nicole:But yeah, like it's from my Heblism and State Violence book, which I promise I'll make available really soon as an ebook once the kind of PTSD course is launched and closed and stuff.
Nicole:That will be my next priority.
Nicole:But yeah, I wanted to get this podcast out because I'm really hoping more kind of ex prisoners join my herbalism PTSD and traumatic stress course.
Nicole:As I mentioned in all the episodes and stuff, it is no one turned away for lack of funds.
Nicole:So I know most people getting out of prison face huge like economic precarity and I just want to say that like literally this resource is free for people and yeah, I, I hope it is useful for people healing from incarceration I guess just a bit of content warning about the episode I do, even though the focus is on recovery, at the beginning, I do talk about, like, why prison is quite uniquely traumatic or some of the specifics around trauma and captivity that I think are important.
Nicole:Saying that, I think if you haven't been in prison, it will also be an important listen.
Nicole:Obviously, there's lots of prison specific details and maybe some lingo you don't know about license conditions, stuff like this.
Nicole:That's the period of time after prison.
Nicole:But I think, you can think about healing from incarceration as terms of healing from trauma in general, right?
Nicole:What are the stages?
Nicole:Like, how do we build a sense of safety in an inherently, unsafe world?
Nicole:What does it look like to be more resourced?
Nicole:To have a more kind of intimate understanding of our nervous system.
Nicole:What's the role of joy?
Nicole:There's all these things that I think will make it useful for anyone to listen to.
Nicole:But yeah, if you know someone who's been in prison, please share it with them.
Nicole:If you've been in prison and you're listening, I'd love to hear your feedback.
Nicole:And see, yeah, see what you think.
Nicole:And yeah.
Nicole:And again, I just want to emphasize like this course is for people affected by incarceration, whether that's, yourself as an ex prisoner or prisoner family members, like I've been both sides of the fence, like I've had partners in prison, I've had close friends in prison, I've been visiting like people I love desperately for 20 years now inside.
Nicole:I know the fucking heartache and the pain and the distress of having someone you love behind bars and going through that kind of hellish environment and that, that's just like UK context as well, obviously, but, we can see with what's going on in Gaza, for example, like how, Prisoners and detainees are being treated like the torture, the abuse, the fact that it's like bloody, like common joke now in Israeli society to like joke about raping prisoners and things like it's so horrific and yeah, the kind of trauma it's there's just no words like to be honest, like what people go through every single day in prison.
Nicole:So how the hell we navigate recovering from those experiences?
Nicole:is something I've been reckoning with for a really long time since I got out of prison and you know my work as a herbalist now and as an abolitionist I'm dedicated to eradicating these systems you know to you know working for a world where prisons don't exist and I also talk about how prisoners like often have experienced harm even before prison And maybe you listen to the episodes about trauma and male violence, where I really name the fact that most prisoners have come from a background of childhood abuse, sexual abuse, domestic violence, coercive control, like before they've even stepped into an environment where they're also subject to like nearly all of those things.
Nicole:So anyway, it's not an easy listen, but it's an important listen.
Nicole:And like I said, please share it with anyone.
Nicole:And when I'm kind of, back to work, like when my partner Rob is home.
Nicole:I will, yeah, return to doing like one to one kind of clinic support with people who've left prison.
Nicole:Yeah, please join my newsletter for when I announce that stuff.
Nicole:I'm just trying to do bits and bobs in stages and I'm just prioritizing the course.
Nicole:But yeah, please check out the herbalism PTSD and traumatic stress course.
Nicole:I personally think is a one of a kind offering.
Nicole:I don't think there's many courses that go into so much detail about so many plants and their role specifically in supporting the nervous system.
Nicole:I don't think there's many courses that really talk about the trauma, like the politics of trauma in a super kind of anarchist abolitionist, like systemically worldview, anti oppressive way and approach.
Nicole:And I don't think many courses talk about like the collective Resources we need to respond to trauma.
Nicole:It's not just like an individual becoming self regulated in some highly dysregulating world.
Nicole:Yeah, it's so much more than that.
Nicole:So please check out the course.
Nicole:Please share this episode with someone, okay, take care.
Nicole:Thanks for listening.
Nicole:Bye.
Nicole:Okay, healing from incarceration.
Nicole:Healing from incarceration could easily be an article about healing from trauma in general.
Nicole:Incarceration is ultimately traumatic.
Nicole:However, I do feel there are some nuances that make incarceration, imprisonment, and captivity difficult.
Nicole:differently traumatizing in a way that demands their own responses.
Nicole:The compounding nature of trauma in prison, coupled with its normalization and invisibilization in society, compared to other forms of trauma, make it challenging to recognize and recover from.
Nicole:Likewise, it's not like life can always become easier for people once they are quote unquote free due to the structural oppression that exists.
Nicole:This piece attempts to dive into the complexity of healing from incarceration.
Nicole:It's written for people being released from prison, whether that was yesterday or two decades ago.
Nicole:In the words of a former IRA prisoner, you can never really leave prison because prison never really leaves you.
Nicole:So I've.
Nicole:I've never been able to find where that quote is from.
Nicole:I just read it in a book one day.
Nicole:So if please let me know.
Nicole:I'd love to quote the specific person.
Nicole:Okay.
Nicole:So the trauma of incarceration, like what makes prison so traumatic, so fear and threat to life.
Nicole:So prison is a state of prolonged repeated trauma with an inability to escape.
Nicole:Incarceration is an overwhelming experience that can significantly change people.
Nicole:socially, emotionally and physiologically.
Nicole:While all prisons are different, it is extremely common to experience an ongoing threat to life, to fear for our safety.
Nicole:Examples include frequent violence from officers, bending people up.
Nicole:That's when, say a prisoner speaks back to an officer or an officer feels threatened or something, or that's the excuse they give, they will press an alarm and then several people will jump on someone and commonly put their arms behind their back and yeah, sometimes kneel on the airway.
Nicole:Yeah, it's pretty horrific to watch.
Nicole:other kind of violence, maybe prisoners attacking each other, threats of sexual violence and so on.
Nicole:We've seen this in Palestine, in Gaza, like of what's been happening and the kind of like horrific rape of detainees and prisoners by the Israeli occupying forces.
Nicole:Yeah, people surrounding us maybe like frequently self harming or trying to take their own lives.
Nicole:That was definitely something that.
Nicole:was very heavy for me was this kind of like frequency of seeing that very quickly after someone had ligatured kind of being in their room or seeing wounds on people's necks and stuff like it was pretty gnarly, we may experience these things ourselves, I'm aware people listening to this may also have try to take their own life, for example.
Nicole:Or, there might be things that we're really witnessing regularly.
Nicole:And like several times a day, either way it will compound a feeling that we are like deeply unsafe.
Nicole:What else makes prison so traumatic is powerlessness.
Nicole:So prison is designed to create a dynamic of kind of overwhelming powerlessness.
Nicole:People are commonly forced to violate their own moral principles, and this is like a surrendering to the violence against us and others, which can rupture what it means to be human.
Nicole:For example, like I have quite a strong, like anarchist identity, like even at school I would always stand up to bullies, like anti authoritarianism came really naturally to me.
Nicole:But in prison, like you have to, you have to stand still, right?
Nicole:And witness people being bent up and dragged to segregation by groups of officers.
Nicole:And if you interfere, that you will be subject to the kind of same treatment or worse.
Nicole:And that kind of trying to get involved feels like a crime.
Nicole:somehow pointless because you were powerless to stop the violence you were seeing.
Nicole:And yeah, this kind of created a rupture in me in my identity.
Nicole:And, it generated many feelings of shame which kind of through counselling support.
Nicole:Years after being in prison I could transform into self compassion for both kind of the freeze response of the body experiencing trauma and also just how systemically overriding this kind of powerlessness can be.
Nicole:Okay, so lack of control is another kind of major factor of what makes an experience traumatic.
Nicole:So people in prison have an unrelenting lack of control over their lives from like the smallest thing, like accessing more toilet paper, to when they will access parole, like nearly every day.
Nicole:Every decision is controlled by other people and lack of control and consistent uncertainty really create like havoc for the body, mind, soul.
Nicole:So this is like worsened for people serving kind of indeterminate sentences like those without kind of an end date, basically, or a fixed release date, such as the IPP sentence imprisonment for public protection, which, It's a whole other episode in itself, but it was like a, it's a type of kind of indeterminate sentence that affected, thousands of people in the mid 2000s in the UK.
Nicole:And yeah, thousands of people are still in prison, like under that sentence where they've served like massive amounts of time over their original tariff.
Nicole:So my best friend Taylor, who killed himself, had a four year tariff and served 13 years.
Nicole:And it was this like.
Nicole:constant uncertainty of when he would be released that kind of drove him to like, absolute despair.
Nicole:And that's why things like immigration detention, for example, are very traumatic because people have no idea how long they're going to be there for, how long it's going to take, will they get deported, will they get released, and it is that kind of uncertainty that is just so hardcore for the body, the nervous system.
Nicole:Okay, so hypervigilance and immobilization, so prison, forces people to live in like a state of hyper arousal and hyper vigilance for like sometimes years on end, and this kind of like fight or flight energy of the nervous system can be released like in brief moments of relief, for example, exercise or like fighting to be honest, but like in general, this like surge of mobilization, like it has nowhere to go, right?
Nicole:And this is like especially true when people are like physically immobilized in a cell, and I personally believe it's this like massive mix of like acute and chronic sympathetic nervous system activation coupled with the immobility that makes like incarceration so traumatic for the body.
Nicole:So for, being locked in by a two by three meter cell for sometimes 23 hours a day with all that like chronic stress and anxiety and activation, like our nervous systems The sympathetic nervous system is designed for mobilization for action to respond to threats and fears and all this, fucking bear is running at me.
Nicole:I've got to run like it's not designed to be in this like chronic, unrelenting state of fear.
Nicole:And that's what prison, can really create in people.
Nicole:And I think even like I'm going off on now, but even like long term is who are more relaxed in prison, for example, than like a new person who's just arrived.
Nicole:I think they probably still like massively underestimate how much activation there is.
Nicole:Like you have to be on guard all the time because anything could kick off at any moment, okay, coercive control.
Nicole:Prison is coercive control, like prisoner, prison officers gain control and power by eroding a person's autonomy and self esteem through acts of intimidation, threats and humiliation.
Nicole:We associate coercive control or that kind of language as a dynamic and like interpersonal violence, such as like an abusive husband, for example.
Nicole:these patterns like repeat systemically in prison.
Nicole:So yeah, I found one definition of coercive control which is like legally defined as a pattern of behavior which seeks to undermine a person's self esteem or sense of self and restrict or remove their liberty or freedom.
Nicole:It describes a variety of controlling acts including manipulation, intimidation, sexual coercion, gaslighting.
Nicole:A form of psychological abuse in which a victim is manipulated into doubting their own memory and sanity.
Nicole:So every aspect of this coercive control is really present in prison, right?
Nicole:Often from multiple people, including several officers and sometimes other prisoners.
Nicole:There is no escape.
Nicole:And I just want to name that many people entering prison will have come from an environment of coercive control.
Nicole:For example an abusive childhood or a violent relationship.
Nicole:therefore, prison can be even more triggering and compounding of someone's trauma.
Nicole:That's definitely a factor that I had, I think, compared to some of my co defendants was coming from this childhood of, like multiple men moving in and out of my life, like sexual abuse when I was six years old witnessing kind of domestic violence as an adult, being a rape survivor, like all of these.
Nicole:elements meant that I had this bodily fear of men and also lots of experiences of sexual assault and being sexualized by men.
Nicole:Being surrounded by male prison officers that have the keys, who have the power and the control is very unsettling and traumatizing.
Nicole:And, unfortunately, that is the absolute common baseline for most people going into prison is that kind of background.
Nicole:Whew.
Nicole:Okay.
Nicole:What else makes it traumatic?
Nicole:So severing from support.
Nicole:So prison disconnects and severs people from the support they need.
Nicole:Calls and visits are a lifeline but many people are deprived of these due to economic and other circumstances.
Nicole:There are like exceptions but many people feel abandoned and cast alone, like increasing the traumatization of imprisonment.
Nicole:And there is so much research that support mitigates trauma.
Nicole:So for example, having someone sued them by the roadside, like after a car accident, while waiting for an ambulance really reduces the likelihood of PTSD.
Nicole:In prison is like especially traumatic because we are lonely, isolated and separated from many sources of support.
Nicole:And while most people develop some kind of support system inside through friendships, like it can't be taken for granted that this is the same for everyone.
Nicole:And there are many like barriers to building relationships and finding affinity for people, especially for people like trapped in solitary confinement, who have no options for socializing or seeking support from the people like, close around them.
Nicole:And also like to add to that, like they often have a lot of restrictions on contact.
Nicole:So like my best friend Kev, who's in solitary confinement, like he, his phone time has been cut down to 45 minutes a day, so it's like massively impacting his relationships and friendships.
Nicole:So yeah, there's like other kind of intersecting tools of oppression that can make it even more isolating for people, and I'm really aware, like this is mostly written from like a UK, US perspective, but in many countries, like Russia or Belarus, like you can only visit like once a year or something crazy.
Nicole:Okay, dissociation.
Nicole:In order to endure imprisonment, dissociation is absolutely necessary.
Nicole:Dissociation is when we feel separated from our bodies.
Nicole:For some people, this can really be through substances, like in prison or afterwards, for example.
Nicole:And, yeah, prison kind of severs a person's relationship to their body.
Nicole:In order for them to survive, they have to disconnect.
Nicole:And this has really long term effects even after prison and a person's ability to live fully.
Nicole:Like I talk about it a lot in my herbalism PTSD and traumatic stress course, the way trauma shapes us and it shapes our worldview.
Nicole:It shapes how we experience life.
Nicole:It doesn't just steal things in that moment.
Nicole:Like it also steals like our future, right?
Nicole:Like it steals our ability to enjoy intimacy or feel love or feel pleasure.
Nicole:And it's just yeah, it's fucking tragic because That is really what life's about is having this kind of mixture of experiences and, that kind of spectrum of what you're able to feel is massively reduced by substantial trauma.
Nicole:Okay, shame.
Nicole:Prisons are considered natural, normal and necessary in society.
Nicole:The experiences of the prisoner are normalized and justified in the phrase do the crime, do the time.
Nicole:Jokes about dropping the soap and prison rape are common, and the trauma of the person in prison becomes invisibilized, unnamed, and unrecognized.
Nicole:People may look at issues that led to prison but fail to identify the traumatization of imprisonment itself.
Nicole:People may identify active addiction or childhood abuse, for example, as risk factors of what has traumatized someone, but they fail to see that prison itself is traumatizing.
Nicole:Whatever people go through, popular culture believes you deserved it.
Nicole:So shame is like a very common trauma dynamic and that is built into the prison system, like society hates you and you loathe yourself.
Nicole:And finally, multiple layers of trauma and oppression.
Nicole:So yeah, as I share in the introduction to the prison section of the herbalism and state violence book, author Carleen Faith writes that prison is a place where all injustices converge.
Nicole:And In addition to all the common trauma dynamics in the points above, prison will also magnify and enable all other forms of oppression.
Nicole:Prisoners are targeted with racial violence and transphobia through attacks and sexual violence.
Nicole:People experience ableism and all other forms of oppression.
Nicole:These are just a handful of points about what makes prison so traumatic.
Nicole: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?
Nicole:Okay, so about the health impacts of incarceration and there's so much I could say about This is just a kind of summary from the herbalism and state violence book.
Nicole:So Yeah, over many years I have witnessed the mental and physical health of my friends who I'm supporting inside decline.
Nicole:The brutality of the prison system takes its toll.
Nicole:Two friends died in the hands of the state.
Nicole:Prisoners experience intense medical neglect.
Nicole:My best friend Sam missed nine operations for her cancer.
Nicole:Due to cancellations by the private prison she was in, each time the NHS assembled an entire theatre team to only to find Sam was a no show.
Nicole:Because of security reasons, prisons don't tell you when you are due to go out for health appointments.
Nicole: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.
Nicole:The surgeon told me that there was that she was three millimeters away from death by the time they finally operated.
Nicole:The prison also failed to communicate his results and neglected necessary post surgery aftercare where she contracted infection after infection.
Nicole:I write about medical neglect in prison at the beginning of The Prisoner's Herbal.
Nicole:For people reading this in prison, you will not be surprised.
Nicole:You will have witnessed, and most likely experienced, medical neglect yourself.
Nicole:You will have been in pain and been unable to access painkillers, or seen people begging for medical attention completely ignored by prison officers.
Nicole: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.
Nicole:Chronic illnesses in prison are commonly left untreated, and people have next to no options for self care.
Nicole:They are dependent on prison officers for the most basic of needs, such as accessing pain relief.
Nicole:Accessing medication can be a massive challenge.
Nicole:There are large numbers of people with disabilities in prison and prison itself is a disabling environment.
Nicole:Infectious diseases occur at much higher rates.
Nicole:One study from the so called United States showed that individuals living in quote unquote correctional facilities are approximately three times more likely to have HIV or AIDS and are more likely to have hepatitis C and tuberculosis.
Nicole:Nothing illuminates the disparities of healthcare in prison than the COVID 19 pandemic.
Nicole:The death rate of people in prison dying from COVID 19 was three times the rate of people on the outside.
Nicole:One of the saddest statistics I ever read was that the average age of death UK is just 56 years old, when the national average life expectancy is roughly 80 years.
Nicole:What is less researched is the long term effects of incarceration on people's health.
Nicole:I believe, however, we can draw on studies of how trauma and chronic stress affect health long term.
Nicole: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.
Nicole:Authors Rupamaya 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.
Nicole:They write, stress is the main mechanism that the body has to mobilize resources to address a perpetration in homeostasis.
Nicole: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.
Nicole:When those systems are chronically activated, the body experiences increasing wear and tear.
Nicole:Chronic stress's cumulative toll is called allostatic load, and the biological expression is chronic inflammation.
Nicole:That's the end of the quote.
Nicole:There are multiple drivers of chronic stress and disease, or dis ease.
Nicole:Our bodies are complex, and everyone has a different fault line for how stress manifests in their body.
Nicole:Long term studies have shown that people who experience quote unquote adverse childhood experiences, e.
Nicole:g.
Nicole:the majority of people in prison, have increased chances of developing different diseases.
Nicole:Parental forces How we've been treated by our primary parents are important, but they're not the only people or systems that influence us.
Nicole:There are many forces that shape our bodies in childhood and adulthood from nutrition to oppression, including state violence.
Nicole:Trauma may mean that we have a sympathetic dominance.
Nicole:EG, the fight or flight response is commonly activated and often our dominant state.
Nicole:Where we are in the state more than others.
Nicole:When the 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 aging.
Nicole:This is the tip of the iceberg in terms of mechanisms in the body that contribute to chronic illness due to trauma.
Nicole:There are a million and one expressions of illness that may manifest in different patterns in each individual.
Nicole: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.
Nicole:Diabetes, allergies and autoimmune diseases and many more iterations of chronic illness.
Nicole:The nature of prison and its unrelenting chronic stress is no doubt having an intimate effect on people's bodies.
Nicole:The reason I share about health effects of incarceration is because it's not just mental or emotional consequences.
Nicole:Many people leaving prison will also need to heal from incarceration in terms of their bodies and physical health.
Nicole:This is what brought me to study herbalism at a clinical level because the chronic stress I had endured generated an extremely challenging.
Nicole:chronic illness hole, as I call it, that I struggled to get out of without support.
Nicole: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.
Nicole:e.
Nicole:to learn how to be empower sympathetic much more, enable rest and recovery of my tissues.
Nicole:Okay, healing from incarceration, the stages.
Nicole:I just want to emphasize before I dive into these stages that I'm not a therapist.
Nicole:These reflections come from my own journey of healing from incarceration and accompanying many other friends and comrades to recover from periods of imprisonment.
Nicole:There is no one size fits all solution, no magic bullet.
Nicole:Trauma recovery is messy and incomplete and an ongoing journey.
Nicole:I've attempted to integrate these twists and turn them into a framework that can potentially offer more structure and support to others.
Nicole:Getting out of prison is something that all prisoners dream of and fantasize about for however long their sentence is.
Nicole:We put so much pressure on ourselves and we imagine that everything is going to be amazing when we get out of prison.
Nicole:Unfortunately, we can experience a kind of shock from the change between reality and our expectations.
Nicole:A lot of people get out of prison and actually realize 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.
Nicole:All of the challenges that somehow likely, 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.
Nicole:These challenges are likely to be bigger now because of everything someone has just been through.
Nicole:Ex prisoners will also commonly face prejudice and discrimination in society and may have a lack of access to resources.
Nicole:I'm fully aware that some of the things I write will feel impossible to you if you've just got out of prison.
Nicole:I also think that 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.
Nicole: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.
Nicole:Release and survival.
Nicole:The first stage of getting out of prison is what I think of as release, as a release and survival stage.
Nicole:It's definitely not the time when you're likely to be investing loads of energy in quote unquote healing.
Nicole:You're really going to be thinking, how do I get through each day?
Nicole:And basically your nervous system is still going to be vastly activated.
Nicole:Every country has different systems of incarceration.
Nicole:In the UK, when you get out, you generally have half of your sentence left on the outside, which is called your license period, and literally the smallest slip up, like being late to a probation appointment, can mean that you're recalled back to prison.
Nicole:In some ways, you're not in prison, but in other ways, you're still very imprisoned by these conditions, and your nervous system is going to be constantly vigilant and stressed about not returning to prison.
Nicole:The effects of this period, the toll of hypervigilance and chronic stress, are quite psychologically underestimated.
Nicole:Probably the best way to be kind to yourself right now is to manage your expectations.
Nicole: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.
Nicole:You're trying to save yourself from going back to prison.
Nicole:I think the priority for anyone in this stage is really about keeping yourself out, keeping yourself safe.
Nicole:I don't mean this in the sense that I want everyone to comply with all these oppressive conditions.
Nicole:I mean that we need you on the outside.
Nicole: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.
Nicole:You matter, your body matters, your health matters, and so staying out also matters.
Nicole: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.
Nicole:I've lost count the amount of people I've supported who've got out and when, and literally within a day, have had a fight with someone in their bail hostel, or gotten really drunk and got recalled to prison.
Nicole:Know your nervous system.
Nicole:It's important to have an awareness of your nervous system.
Nicole:Know that you are likely to be distressed, you're likely to be prone to hyperarousal, activation, getting angry, feeling irritable, rage, all of these things.
Nicole:It's completely understandable given that you've been held in a cage.
Nicole:Those explosive triggers threaten you, but how on earth do you regulate enough to avoid them?
Nicole:Unfortunately, probation, all these different social worker types, are going to be constantly pressing your buttons, constantly pushing up against our triggers.
Nicole: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.
Nicole:Learn to calm yourself and stay in control and find ways to not respond to these strategies by probation that are setting you up to fail.
Nicole:I know in my Herbalism, PTSD, and Traumatic Stress course I critique the focus of self regulation a lot because ultimately the world can be inherently dysregulating, but I do think you need to cling to any strategy at all that will help you.
Nicole:For me, I would listen to music.
Nicole:I would have an iPod and would listen to music on my way to probation.
Nicole:I would listen to really ridiculous, heavy, vegan, straight edge, hardcore music.
Nicole:That would make me feel like, no, I'm not going back to prison.
Nicole:I'm strong.
Nicole:When I went into that room, I was actually in a much better place because that music makes me feel stronger and calmer.
Nicole:I'm sure other people listening to it will have a headache and freak out.
Nicole:But for me, it makes me feel safe and in control, connected to a bigger movement.
Nicole:That was important for me.
Nicole:For you, it might be listening to classical music on your way to appointments, or meditating.
Nicole:I've never been a skilled meditator by any means at all.
Nicole:I know it can be contraindicated for some people with PTSD, maybe it works for you, and listening to some audio or something to help you regulate and calm you down before interacting with these different authority figures could be really helpful.
Nicole:Again, this isn't about compliance for compliance's sake.
Nicole:I care about you and I care about you staying out of prison.
Nicole:Finding any safety we can.
Nicole:I think the priority is to try and find a sense of safety because prison takes away any access to feelings of safety that is possible for us.
Nicole:I recognize that just because you're out of prison doesn't necessarily mean you're safe in any way.
Nicole:They purposely put people in unsafe environments like bail hostels where there's lots of drugs and fights and violence and stuff.
Nicole:I was incredibly privileged to be able to move in with my mom and stepdad in a really wonderful rural location.
Nicole:I had lots of access to land which I think is a situation pretty much never given to most prisoners.
Nicole:I've supported a lot of people that have been relapsed into central Bristol for example, but even in cities there are places that can help us feel safe.
Nicole: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.
Nicole:Finding somewhere where we feel safe is so important because it gives our nervous system a chance to breathe.
Nicole:Getting out of prison, we have to relearn what safety means, it's so unfamiliar that we just have to find it again almost from scratch.
Nicole:Generally, it's hard to feel safe when you're alone.
Nicole:And so for me, it was connecting with plants and other non humans that created a sense of safety for me.
Nicole:But we also need friends, right?
Nicole:We need people we can quote unquote co regulate with, people who can support us to feel more safe and social, which is like a kind of polyvagal theory term that I, go into a lot in the herbalism PTSD and traumatic stress course.
Nicole:I know that not everyone getting out of prison will have friends or family.
Nicole:I'm very aware of that reality.
Nicole:I'm also very aware that prison purposely affects and destroys and takes our friendships away, especially if you're doing a long sentence.
Nicole:I don't want to assume that you have a friend who makes you feel safe, but if you do, they will be your biggest support.
Nicole:And having someone that you can spend time with who makes you feel calmer, who has your back, is really important.
Nicole:If you can, find some kind of safe space to talk about your feelings, whether that's friendships, ideally, or counselling.
Nicole: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.
Nicole:I'm also writing this book for people doing solidarity work, and one of the things that people can do is to fundraise to pay for quality care for people.
Nicole: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.
Nicole:Finding someone you trust to be able to safely disclose what's going on for you is really important because Prozen creates this weird environment where you're surrounded by people who constantly lie to you.
Nicole:Officers constantly lie.
Nicole:They say, Oh yeah, I've made an appointment with healthcare.
Nicole:Oh no, the post hasn't come today.
Nicole:Oh no, you don't have anything like that.
Nicole:And it's all just lies, right?
Nicole:Our probation officers lied to us.
Nicole:Even other prisoners lied to us.
Nicole:Oh no, I didn't take your tobacco.
Nicole:So I think part of getting out of prison and healing from it somehow is trying to navigate the truth and lies, knowing who we can trust and who we can't.
Nicole:Just being aware of that as a lens in your life is really important.
Nicole:The next section is on self censorship and disclosure.
Nicole:Another aspect of prison that makes disclosure about our experiences and history very confusing is the tendency we have to self censor.
Nicole:My mum would come and visit me in prison and I wouldn't want to upset her or cause her distress so I'd say, so for her I'd say I was fine.
Nicole:I was working in the gym, I was studying, I was doing really well.
Nicole: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.
Nicole:I never told her about any of that stuff.
Nicole:Prison creates a weird sense of self impression in you when getting out.
Nicole: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.
Nicole:Unfortunately, people will judge you for being in prison.
Nicole:They will think you're a certain sort of person or you can't be trusted.
Nicole:They will have all their own preoccupations of what prison is like.
Nicole:Maybe they'll start making jokes about prison, which for you, if your best friends just died in prison, it's not going to be fun.
Nicole: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 a subhuman.
Nicole:I'm afraid it's going to happen and you need to be prepared for it.
Nicole:If you aren't able to talk to people easily, there are more solo forms of self expression such as writing, making a zine, poetry, music, graffiti, anything can be very healing.
Nicole:Loads of people have made really beautiful offerings based on their time in prison.
Nicole:Anything that can help you find avenues of self expression, I think, is really important.
Nicole:Control and agency.
Nicole:The other aspect of prison is that it dramatically controls you, right?
Nicole:It sounds obvious, but it's all about power, control, and coercion.
Nicole:It's about taking away agency and autonomy.
Nicole: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.
Nicole:And that's really hard to do if you've been institutionalized, if you've done a really long sentence.
Nicole:It can be the most basic of things.
Nicole: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.
Nicole:I would never pick up, pick someone up from prison with a bag of clothes that I'd bought for them.
Nicole:For example, they've been wearing prison clothes the whole time.
Nicole:They've had no options.
Nicole:Instead, I would take them shopping and they can choose what they want to buy.
Nicole:Anything you can do to help exercise that muscle of self autonomy can be helpful.
Nicole:Maybe it's an exercise regime or deciding on a course or choosing a book.
Nicole:Just constantly building up that confidence again to make your own choices.
Nicole:At the same time, we should be cautious about people who want to paternalistically control someone.
Nicole:A lot of charity workers are like this.
Nicole:When people get out of prison, they're very controlling of them and their money.
Nicole: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.
Nicole:If it's, if that's made them feel alive and a bit free, then that's okay.
Nicole:Certainty and uncertainty.
Nicole:Another aspect that makes prison especially traumatic is that it takes away certainty.
Nicole:Uncertainty is very, is a very common trauma dynamic and makes certain situations very stressful.
Nicole:Precarity under capitalism is a constant source of stress.
Nicole:Where is my next meal coming from?
Nicole:How am I going to financially survive this next thing?
Nicole:I had quite a chaotic childhood.
Nicole:I lived in 21 houses by the time I was 16 and I never knew where we were going to move next.
Nicole:I never knew who my mum was going to have a relationship with next.
Nicole: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.
Nicole: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 10 year sentence, and I think it's because I think it's the same when people get out.
Nicole:Making plans for yourself is so important because it gives you a sense of control.
Nicole: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.
Nicole:Do you want to get your kid back who's gone into care?
Nicole:Do you want to go to university?
Nicole:Do you want to get fit in the gym?
Nicole:Seizing these goals on release, whatever they are, is really important.
Nicole:It gives you a sense of meaning and purpose and some sense of agency.
Nicole:Releasing energy.
Nicole:Imprisonment and incarceration are very immobilizing things.
Nicole: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.
Nicole:You're literally locked in a cage.
Nicole:Finding ways to release this energy when you get out is really important and movement can be a big part of that.
Nicole:I'm aware that people have different abilities around movement and it looks different for everyone.
Nicole:It might be little stretches in our room or dancing or walking or running or going to the gym, for example.
Nicole:All of these things can help our bodies release all this built up rage and anger and frustration.
Nicole: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.
Nicole:I talk about this in the herbalism PTSD and traumatic stress course.
Nicole:Relationships.
Nicole:Relationships are another massive factor of healing from incarceration.
Nicole:Prison can change your ability to be intimate with people.
Nicole:We make all these jokes inside that when we get out we're literally gonna fuck the taxi driver who picks us up.
Nicole:Everyone's just desperate and gagging for it, but then you actually get out and realize that being touched is scary.
Nicole:Being intimate is complicated.
Nicole: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.
Nicole:Intimate relationships can be hard because of how prisons affect us and our nervous systems and also the fear of going back to prison.
Nicole:It can be very scary to start a new relationship if you think you're going to lose that person.
Nicole:What if you go back and they abandon you while you're there?
Nicole:You don't want to affect them if you go back inside.
Nicole:There are all these weird, complicated things to navigate.
Nicole:The other factor is that prison might have screwed up a lot of your relationships.
Nicole:People might have abandoned you when you really needed them, or cheated on you while you were in prison, or just stopped visiting you.
Nicole:There's a real dance when you get out of repairing some relationships that feel important enough to repair.
Nicole:And also just getting acceptance and letting people go.
Nicole:I let go.
Nicole:of some really close friends because I knew I'd never be able to trust them again.
Nicole:That was painful but also empowering and other people hurt me while I was in prison but I've rebuilt that and worked through that.
Nicole:The reason I talk about building relationships with plants is because relationships are really what heal us.
Nicole:Just messaging friends or having gentle phone calls might be enough if you can't face being around people physically.
Nicole: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.
Nicole:Those experiences can feel super socially alienating after a lot of time in prison, especially if you've been in solitary confinement.
Nicole:On a personal level, I rejected intimacy and relationships for a long time.
Nicole:Because I was scared of going back to prison and I didn't trust people.
Nicole:On reflection, I think that was actually what the state wanted.
Nicole:The state wants to alienate us and actually continuing to love people is a form of resistance.
Nicole: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.
Nicole:Intimacy is really terrifying after prison, but it's something that I would never want to lose now.
Nicole:Dissociation.
Nicole:Feeling separated from your body is an absolutely essential survival strategy in prison.
Nicole:If you were completely aware of your body and your surroundings, every moment of every day it would be unbearable.
Nicole:The prevalence of spice brackets synthetic cannabinoids, and other drugs in prisons is because people want time out.
Nicole:They want to check out of that environment.
Nicole:But we also need tools to re associate, to re inhabit our body.
Nicole: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.
Nicole:Put your hand under the water or your foot under the water and really feel the sensations there.
Nicole:Other practices like yoga, massage, touch and body work can also be helpful.
Nicole:Again, those are not always affordable or accessible for people, but people involved in solidarity projects could offer them, offer that to people who've been in prison.
Nicole:After years of not being touched by someone, it can be an absolute nightmare to navigate.
Nicole:So having that skilled support could be really empowering.
Nicole:Our bodies store much more than we're conscious of.
Nicole:The effects of prison are held in our tissues and having support in that respect can take us a long way.
Nicole:Taking care of our bodies.
Nicole:I know getting registered for health care can be a massive faff.
Nicole: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.
Nicole:Get a full set of blood tests to check for infectious diseases or anemia.
Nicole:I was so severely anemic when I got out of prison.
Nicole:I really encourage ex prisoners to see a herbalist if you're able to, or someone who has a lot of training in holistic health care and nutrition.
Nicole:They might be able to help you address the way that your body's been expressing distress, whether that's.
Nicole:Musculoskeletal pain or digestive or other problems.
Nicole:We might be expressing our distress emotionally through bouts of anger and rage, or it might be nightmares, freeze and shut down responses.
Nicole: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.
Nicole:And yeah, I just referenced people to check out this other section of the Hublism and State Violence book about trauma in the body, but it is again super comprehensive in the Hublism, PTSD, and Traumatic Stress course, which, if you're listening to this just want to emphasize no one is turned away for lack of funds.
Nicole:I strongly encourage former prisoners to enroll in it.
Nicole:I really encourage people to look at this trauma response framework that I talk about in the introduction, which looks at different stages, release, rest, reconnection, and also resistance.
Nicole:And again, it's these frameworks that are part of this herbalism PTSD and traumatic stress course.
Nicole:Deeper healing can come from engaging in these frameworks and getting collective support.
Nicole:It doesn't have to be linear by any means, but moving through these different steps can help.
Nicole:After a very traumatic period of incarceration, you might just need a serious rest.
Nicole:You might just need to lie in bed and watch TV for six months and that's what your nervous system needs.
Nicole:You might want to go and hide yourself somewhere and be completely alone.
Nicole:Or you might want to never be alone again.
Nicole:You might want to be constantly with a close friend or partner or adopt a rescue dog.
Nicole:Everyone is different.
Nicole:I think this is the time to be selfish in the sense of really checking in with yourself and finding out what you need.
Nicole:I put a lot of pressure on myself to heal quickly, too quickly.
Nicole:And now I keep coming across this idea that the slower we go, the faster we get there.
Nicole:We need slowness and gentleness.
Nicole:We need to gently understand our experiences and make changes in our nervous systems.
Nicole:We need gentleness to feel into a safe and social state.
Nicole:What we don't need is a generalized workaholic response of I must do everything I can to feel better and get better and not be sick.
Nicole:I've learned that the antidote to trauma is actually joy.
Nicole:Prison is so dehumanizing and it takes so much joy away from us.
Nicole:That rediscovering joy is a part of healing.
Nicole:I remember once, I was with some close friends, new friends from a campaign who took me to this place called Worms Head on the Gower Peninsula in South Wales.
Nicole:It was beautiful and we camped overnight in this location that gets completely cut off by the sea.
Nicole:In the morning we went swimming in the sea and three seals popped up around me and it was just beautiful.
Nicole:just one of the best moments of my life.
Nicole:In that moment I remember realizing that joy is my revenge.
Nicole:The fact that I can still access this joy and feel alive and experience the magic and that awe and the wonder of being alive, that was the best medicine for me.
Nicole:After that I became much more open to experiencing joy, being vulnerable and having intimate relationships with people, prioritizing days off by the beach, all of that shit.
Nicole:Reclaiming joy is very important and there's a really nice book called Joyful Militancy that talks about this.
Nicole:Rebuilding your identity.
Nicole:There is this kind of quest after prison to rebuild your identity.
Nicole:In prison I wasn't allowed most of the CDs or books or things I needed.
Nicole:I wasn't allowed to be in contact with people with shared politics or values.
Nicole:Getting out I had a sense of who am I?
Nicole:Prison and repression takes so much away from us.
Nicole:And finding ways to rebuild your own identity, finding new interests or passions or reconnecting with old ones is really important.
Nicole:It's about having the courage to re find yourself again.
Nicole:Resistance and recovery.
Nicole:This might just be a strong part of my personal identity.
Nicole:But for me, fighting back against what's been trying to destroy us has been very therapeutic.
Nicole:In hindsight though, I think I threw myself into resistance too fast after prison and I didn't prioritize things like rest or recovery or joy or counseling.
Nicole:I just went to all out war against the prison system.
Nicole:I was involved in various abolitionist collectives and projects and was supporting loads of people in prison.
Nicole:My whole life became dominated by prison.
Nicole:I have seen ex prisoners get involved in campaigns and that has been very therapeutic for them because they've a been able to share their experiences and feel validated and feel seen.
Nicole:They've been able to take action for their friends, which they couldn't do when they're in prison.
Nicole:For example, prisoner family members have been able to feel like people care about them and some sense of collective power.
Nicole:And I think ultimately that is what keeps me coming back to organizing.
Nicole:It's overcoming this feeling of powerlessness that society creates in us.
Nicole:And it brings me into close contact with other people with shared values, shared purpose and meaning.
Nicole:When it's the right time for you, I would encourage you to see if there are places you could volunteer with, people you could organize with, or collectives you could join.
Nicole: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.
Nicole:But take it slowly.
Nicole:Find the work that helps you heal and rediscover yourself too.
Nicole:I just want to share again that my herbalism PTSD and traumatic stress course is open to all.
Nicole:No one is turned away for lack of funds.
Nicole:I also support former prisoners one to one with my clinic for whatever they can afford, including supporting people for free.
Nicole:All right.
Nicole:That was like a chunk on healing from incarceration.
Nicole:And yeah.
Nicole:There's just so many other things to say about that.
Nicole:And I'd love to get other ex prisoners on the show to talk about their experiences and their journeys.
Nicole:So if that's you please get in touch with me, but yeah, please share this with someone, who's been through incarceration because, it's a really traumatic experience and recovery from it shouldn't be taken lightly.
Nicole:And there are like collective ways we can respond to that kind of state violence.
Nicole:Okay, thanks for listening.
Nicole:Thanks so much for listening to the Frontline Herbalism podcast.
Nicole:You can find the transcript, the links, all the resources from the show at solidarityapothecary.
Nicole:org forward slash podcast.