Prison Adjustment pt 2

Originally the title of this piece was much longer, but I shortened it to “Prison Adjustment”. I think I originally called it “Adjusting with a loved one in prison”, so if you read that one, this is the second part to that.

What I want to try to do is touch on some things that might help you adjust to situations revolving around jail or prison. Mainly, having a loved one in prison. We all know that when it comes to the incarceration process, your entire life can be tipped upside down, leaving you with very few venues of help or support.

When your loved one goes to jail, or to prison, you are thrust into changing your life in ways you never thought you had to consider. For many people this brings very heavy burdens on their life. But whether we want to or not, we have to make adjustments when a loved one is in prison. The very idea of having a loved one in jail or prison changes your life anyway, whether slightly or tremendously. What I would like to do is try to talk about some ways you can adjust.

Now if you read my first segment on this, I had to identify three different modes of adjustment: positive, neutral and negative. I talked a bit on each one, describing what it means to adjust in each level. Jump back a few blogs and see if you can refresh yourself with that if you have a minute.

Today, I want to talk about Neutral Adjustment, and how you can take hold of your life with a loved one in prison. This pretty much extends to prison issues in general, so I may touch on a few other subjects as we go along.

Now, if I may, let me pull a direct quote from my first segment, describing Neutral Adjustment:

“Neutral Adjustment is based more on endurance, the necessity to just make it through. Thousands of people run the Boston Marathon, but only a very, very small fraction believe they can win. Most just want to get through, to endure the challenge. That is great when in a sporting event, but when it comes to having a loved one in prison, there is no real expectation for seeing a favorable outcome.

This is where most of us are when it comes to having a loved one in prison. Our boyfriend, husband or son is in prison, and we are trying to adjust ONLY to the circumstance. Notice that the difference between the positive adjustment and the neutral one is that the adjustment does not require faith. Now I didn’t say it required NO faith, just not much.

The neutral adjustment takes into account that you have to adjust your life based on the fact that your loved one is in prison, and there isn’t much you can do about it. I mean, you can’t change what has been done with his sentence any more than you can change his charge, right?

(that isn’t true, but we usually believe that)”

This may well be where a huge majority of people are, trying to adjust or adapt their life on the basis that there is not so much they can really do to change the situation. Your boyfriend got locked up and you have no idea what to do, your husband is in prison doing 15 years and you don’t know what to do. Your son is doing 30 years and you don’t know what to do. YOU might be looking at time and don’t know what to do.

Neutral adjustments are based on the common denominator…you don’t know what to do. And it makes sense if you think about it…if you DID know what to do, you could take some form of action to prevent or counter the negative situation.

The thing about this form of adaptation is that everybody reading this deep down WANTS to do something. If you have somebody you love that is incarcerated, you WANT to do something, but you just don’t know what to do. How do you adjust and adapt when you don’t know what to do?

Remember folks, we’re not talking about positive adjustment, where you are making an aggressive adaptation to change a situation. It would be great if you could but most folks fall in the neutral category for a time. So we’re talking about how to carry on “with the cards you have been dealt”.

I think maybe 90% of people on prison support sites are in this area, and the very idea of them coming to a prison support site is to get help. Why? Because they don’t know what to do. There is certainly no sin in not knowing, and also great value in finding others that know your tribulation, but what I would like to do is try to get you moving in a more positive direction.

So one of the first things you can do is not to panic…not to allow fear to grip you like a vice. This is so critical because it prevents you from slipping into the negative adjustment, that of expecting the worse.

The big difference here folks, between neutral and negative adjustments is your belief. If you are worried sick about this, you are falling prey to the fear. What we need to do is get you to not fear so much (hopefully not at all) and stand on your strength.

You’re not going to be able to be any good to your loved one if you are in panic-mode, it is imperative that you find a neutral ground of mentality to work from. This means fighting off the great fear of prison. I know we can’t eliminate EVERY fear about prison, heck, I had numerous myself, but we can keep from going into a full blown panic mode.

This means to stop watching prison stories like Oz, Prisonbreak and some of those National Geographic shows about “Locked up Abroad”. Stop doing that! What are you gaining from watching that? Stop reading everybody’s horror story on the prison support sites IF you don’t have the strength to feel encouraged. If a story depresses you, STOP READING IT.

By doing that, you are feeding your fears and stealing your chance to adapt to a neutral life with a loved one in prison. It would be impossible to do this because instead of “holding it together” you are always going to be worried about him.

Understand, it is ok to be concerned for his welfare, I understand that, but to be worried sick, to be so worried that you cannot sleep, or cry uncontrollably… that isn’t good at all.

So it is critical that you calm down, and refuse to panic. I say again, we are always going to be worried about a loved one, that will never change, but the point is to keep it under control. Under the neutral adjustments, this helps you keep your self together.

Once you can do that, maintain your health. That sounds corny doesn’t it, but hear me out. Stress, as we all know, causes numerous negative effects on the body. Simply put, stress can kill you. And tell me what good will you be to your loved one if THAT happens?

Lots of people, when a loved one goes to prison or jail, start taking sleeping pills, because finding rest is hard, or impossible. This starts a road of possible medication abuse which does not bode well. The reason you need to be healthy is because you need to BE there for him.

So many people ignore their body and succumb to the effects of long term stress while a loved one is in prison. Let me tell you guys something…we all know that it is stressful IN prison, but many of those guys find ways to stay healthy, to burn the stress.

One of the most common ways for a guy to fight stress while locked up is to do pushups. All you need is a floor and you are off. When I was in county jail for over a year, I knew many other guys in other cells that told me that they did pushups to keep their mind occupied.

Read between the lines and you understand why they were doing it…because they were stressed. Many times the only way to relieve stress is to do something physical, to tax the body and “purge” the stress out. I am not saying it will get rid of it all, but it certainly seems to help. I used to jog quietly in my cell, sometimes for a couple of hours, to burn the stress out of me.

In prison, guys have access to weight piles and other sports equipment. Many guys are active in many ways because it takes their mind off their problems. Now, if the guys IN prison can do that…why can’t you?

I’m not asking you to go lift weights or do pushups, I am asking just to do something active. Take a brisk walk two or three times a week, anything to burn a little of that stress out of you. The more it builds the more damaging it will be to your body.

The importance of this is that YOU have to take care of YOU so that you can become a strength to your loved one in prison. Do not forget that during this situation, you have to adapt your life to the stress that is on your shoulders and heart. Your life has likely gotten more stressful, so your adjustment must include a way to cope with the additional stress. Exercise is a very powerful way to do that.

You don’t have to run a marathon, just do anything to relieve the stress.

The third thing you can do is to learn more about prison. This almost counters what I said earlier about not reading all those sad stories on prison support sites. But that’s not quite what I mean.

There are some posts there to inspire, some to inform, some to gossip, some to just bicker and vent, and of course some that just share negative news. To learn more about prison, you need to separate the valued posts from the lesser ones.

And why is this important? Because one of the main reasons we worry about a loved one in prison is because we don’t know what goes on there. The unknown creates a fear with us, especially when it comes to prison. When your loved one was not in prison, did you worry about him going to the store? Or to church? Or across town to see grandma?

It sounds silly but only because of the simplicity of it. You didn’t worry because you KNEW the place he was going. You were very familiar with it, and that familiarity didn’t cause fear. Or, take parents sending their children to school for the first time. The first day can be stressful or anxious because the parent is going to worry about her child going to an unknown place. There are many questions about how the child will fit in, how they will react, how others will react to them, things like that.

But that same worry won’t be there in March, long after the child has adjusted. Why? Because you know much more about the environment, and with that knowledge you were able to conquer any fears about your child or the school.

Prison works kinda the same way…although we are talking about apples and oranges. The less you know about prison, the more subject you will be to the stereotypes and fears. This is one reason why a first time offender brings a lot of stress to his family, and why so many mothers, wives and girlfriends are so stressed out.

It’s stressful enough to know that prison is a very negative, and sometimes violent place, but to know so little about how it works can easily create fears with any mom, wife or girlfriend.

This is why I say it is so important to learn more about prison, to understand some of the basics of it. I said on another blog, it’s not like you have to know how to make a shank or stuff like that, I am talking about some of the more basic things about prison.

The idea here is that in order to calm some of your fears, we have to fill those gaps of unknown with known stuff.

I mean, think about it, what do inmates eat? When do they eat? Who cooks that food? How many meals a day do they eat? Do they HAVE to go to each meal? Can they share food? How much time to they have to eat? See, those are several questions that, if you had some more understanding, might take a sliver or two off your fears, because the more you understood about prison, the less you would be worried about your loved one.

But don’t misunderstand this, I am not saying that knowing about prison will cure you from all fears. But on those night when you can’t sleep, wondering what your husband or boyfriend or son is doing at 10pm, or what he did that day, these are the things that can help.

If I told you about how the prison canteen works, what guys do out on the “yard”, how the dayrooms operate, and how some guys have a “hustle”, it just might give you a little comfort to know that life in prison can be pretty “normal”…all things considering.

Look, there are some very rough prisons in this country, but not every prison is like that. Many prisons are full of guys who want nothing better than to just do their time, and go home if they can. There are troublemakers in every prison, bar none, but a host of guys that are incarcerated just want to be left alone, or do their time as peacefully as they can.

But most people don’t know this because they are constantly barraged by violent stories, and some sites seem to thrive on sharing ONLY the violent and very negative stories. But by doing that, they are only feeding the fear, creating no venues for hope.

That’s got to change folks, and you can start by learning a little more about prison life. If through my blogs I can talk about things like the prison library, the clothes house, the grievance procedure, sending letters, watching tv, and things like that, I can hopefully open some doors of understanding for you. It won’t have you dancing in the streets, but even a little bit of info can be helpful in fighting off the unknowns.

When you are dealing with neutral adjustments, it is critical for you to stand your ground, and not slip. We have all been there, many are still there, so I understand how difficult it can be if you have a loved one in prison. But the adjustments you make, the adaptations you make can give you some strength to hang in there, rather than slip into negative adjustments. Above all things folks, you can’t give up. And granted the neutral adjustments may not build up your faith, or create a powerful sense of hope, but what it can do is give you the ability to stand, and not fall down in a heap of stressed and depressed humanity.

If we can get you to stand…then maybe we can get you to believe. That that takes us to the primary level of adaptation, that being Positive Adjustment. We’ll talk about that next time.