So, I spent some time in prison… just kidding. Well, kind of.
The first leg of my journey as a mental health professional was in the prison setting. I value the time I got to spend with the inmates, especially the most secluded among them. I felt like I was in a special role, able to bring accompaniment to those who had become most estranged from society. At first, I was eager and excited for the opportunity. But unfortunately, as time passed, my work in the prison started becoming more and more taxing.
What Prisoners Valued…and Feared
As I am sure you can imagine, prison is a tough place. For most inmates, there is a deeply conditioned worldview of hierarchy. The most powerful have the most privileges. Therefore, pursuing the things that make one more powerful is highly valued. Looking and acting menacingly becomes a form of protection.
On the other side of the same coin is the rejection of anything that could be seen as weak. Weakness meant someone could take advantage of you. It meant you could be walked on, attacked, or abused. It meant you were defenseless. Dr. Greg put it well when he summarized the experience as a “terror of being at someone else’s mercy.”
Closely related to the power hierarchy was how the inmates felt about those who had power but “didn’t deserve it.” In the prison, that meant the correctional officers, the warden, and sometimes, as in my case, the therapists. These figures of authority were often seen as threats designed to further oppress or exploit the inmates. They were to be avoided, disrespected, and certainly not trusted with vulnerability. Vulnerability with them felt dangerous.
How the Prison Became a Mirror
You see, when you are immersed in an environment without the proper support, you start to take on some of the preexisting tensions. In the clinical world, we call this “parallel process.” What I didn’t know then was that these tensions already existed within me, and the prison environment simply allowed them to become more pronounced.
When I was a teenager, I was misbehaving. I skipped school, smoked weed, and found myself in the wrong crowd. As one could tell from the heavy metal band shirts I wore, I was angsty and angry. Parts of me hated the world and its apparent pointlessness. This band of hooligans I was part of felt similarly, though none of us would ever have admitted it to each other.
I also strongly distrusted adults. I think part of me stopped trusting adults because I could not see meaning in the world they were asking me to participate in. I started seeing everyone as simply going through the motions.
When Mercy Changed My Life
Long story short, I finally got caught after a particularly bad decision involving breaking and entering. I should have gone to jail, but because of the mercy of the victim, I never saw a judge. Word is, she knew I was a kid and wanted me to get better. She saw no justice in sending my so-called friends and me to jail. I hope we get to meet in heaven because she has no idea how this benefited me spiritually.
This became one of my turning points. I started getting my act together. I started actually going to school, showing up to work, and taking responsibility for my life. Fast forward eight years, and I had a master’s degree in psychology and was working in a prison. During those eight years, I was a pretty straight shooter. I had no idea that underneath all the studying and striving, there was still a kid holding onto a middle-finger-to-the-world attitude. Until… I started working in the prison.
What Was Really Driving My Rebellion
Looking back, I can see that much of my disregard for rules and hatred of authority came from a deeper terror of vulnerability. Trusting another person felt dangerous. Trusting the “rule giver” felt dangerous. To truly face that, I had to face the pointlessness underneath it all.
Antisocial defenses protected me during some dark periods of depression and, in a way, even led me toward community. Those defenses served a purpose for a time—a time when I could not navigate the deeper feelings of pain underneath them. It certainly does not excuse my actions during that period, but it does allow me to feel compassion for the teenager who was so hurt and broken. I know now that what once looked like rebellion was often fear, and I hope that others might begin to recognize the same truth within themselves with honesty and mercy.