by Leo Cardez, Correctional Facility in Dixon, Illinois
Why it is so important as inmates to reclaim our joy, especially now, post 2020.
As prisoners, the holiday season can be an especially difficult time of year. We are shaken from our self-induced delusion of contentment to the harsh reality of our forced separation from our loved ones. As if that wasn’t enough to unmoor us…COVID-19.
The epidemic has been devastating to the inmate community in ways seen and unseen. Beyond the unnecessary suffering, fear, and deaths are various underlying side-effects including a slow mental and spiritual deterioration of our shadow community. Most prisons have kept population under severe lock-downs under the guise of health and safety precautions. We are locked in our concrete tombs without the ability to communicate with our loved ones, seemingly just waiting to get infected and die. It is like being stuck in a barrel at the bottom of the ocean with no options. There is no worse feeling. I can see the effects all around me, nowhere clearer than in my own celly, Corners.
Corners, (whose name has been changed for his privacy) has served 10 years of a 20 year sentence. By all accounts, he is not the same man he was upon initial incarceration. He found God. He has completed his college degree. He works in the prestigious “Industry.” An inmate known for both his kindness and easy smile. His slow demise is that much more alarming. He is not so much depressed (or so he claims) as he is in a funk. Beyond the holidays and COVID it has also been a difficult political season and tumultuous era of racial and social reckoning.
He has lost interest in things that used to excite him. He no longer makes his week-end burritos. He sleeps less, rarely smiles, spending the vast majority of each day perched in his top bunk playing game after game of solitaire on his tablet. In short, he has lost his joy.
I worry for him. Then I worry for me. Depression, like joy, can be contagious. I try my best to cheer him up. I crack jokes and keep it light-hearted, but it’s like someone cancelled Christmas on him. He admits he misses work and being able to go outside and play handball or work-out, but insists he is fine bored. He has a strong religious foundation and loving family to keep him grounded so I don’t worry he’ll try something stupid, well not really.
He is not alone. Most inmates will admit this extended lock-down and general 2020 malaise has taken it’s toll. Over half of inmates already suffer from some degree of mental illness, and 2020 took the rest of us over the edge. The mental health team is overwhelmed. Suicide attempts are at an all time high.
But there is hope. Firstly, it is normal to feel a bit down in these turbulent times. In fact, it would be abnormal not to. I would be concerned if anyone was skipping around happy-go-lucky all the time. The key is to remain vigilant of our emotions and work to keep ourselves mentally and emotionally balanced. One thing that helps is to remember that this too shall pass. Trump will leave. The vaccine will be administered. Summer is coming.
Yesterday, Corners mentioned he might request some medication to help him sleep. He is torn. As a recovering addict, he worries about taking any medication. I am glad, at the very least, he has acknowledged there is a problem. We brainstorm and have our families research options. Below is a list of strategies to help one reclaim their joy: Source: Gregory Scott Brown, MD, psychiatrist, Men’s Health Magazine advisor, and the founder and director of the Center for green Psychiatry in Austin, Texas; research from Harvard Medical School and the University of California, San Diego.
Finding your joy is a simple two-step process. One, must think back to what motivates you to make decisions. In here, that could mean trying to get a decent plum work assignment . Those are the things that bring you joy or at least help you avoid more drama. Okay, now, secondly, we have to look for alternate ways to either regain any of the things we may’ve lost.
Another way to accomplish similar goals. For example, Corners missed the fun camaraderie, competition, and exercise of playing handball at yard. We decided to create a new ball game version of handball that we could play in the cell. It was silly and a bit dangerous but it accomplished our goal of finding new joy. Most importantly, we did something and that is always better than doing nothing.
Re-frame your mindset. Stop focusing on what you have lost and start being grateful for what you have. Realize things can almost always get worse and they are rarely as bad as we make them out to be or as they could be. Try this; every morning give thanks for one thing. Every night give thanks for one thing that happened that day and remember in prison, we often need to remember to give thanks for what didn’t happen that could have: Shake-down, fight, etc.
This exercise is literally re-wiring our brains. We are what we think. Our brain chemistry is malleable and with repetition. (I.E. Training) we can determine the direction of our feelings. As we become more grateful in our lives we start to rebuild the pillars that sustain our joy. We move away from and destroy the negative influences which lead to depression.
Furthermore, research has determined a correlation between joy/happiness and our social circles. In lay-man’s terms, happiness is contagious, happy people tend to congregate and make connections with other happy people. In effect, your new joy could influence your circle to become happier or you may start to attract new, more joyous connections. Too Cool.
Lastly, along the same lines as the two previous approaches, we have to find a way to live with purpose. A famous book about surviving the Holocaust said it best about the mentality needed to survive. He that finds a reason why, will find the how. When we fill the meaning void, we inevitably notch up our joy. This is not some magic panacea, but it is a path toward making undesirable situations tolerable. “It is a process that takes time, but it’s not impossible with a little practice,” says Brown.
Listen, joy is not some elusive unicorn only available to the rich and free. We can all find joy in our circumstances with enough effort. These are difficult times and it may get worse before it gets better which is why it is so important that we, as inmates, take every step to improve our situations.
I have heard it said, life is a mental game, you win or lose before you ever set foot on the court. So, keep at it. Keep trying. I promise life will get better.