Can You Live Happily In Prison While Incarcerated For Life?

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Doesn’t every person require love and a sense of belonging? Is it not fulfilling living in a complete society with all its privileges and having your loved ones around?

Imagine if all the privileges are taken away from you. Imagine a world without your smartphone to surf the internet or connect to your loved ones. Imagine being in a facility where the only connection you have with the outside world is through mail you receive once a month.

Being incarcerated for the first time is a horrifying experience, irrespective of who you are. You have a mixture of feelings, including fear, anxiety, anger, and adrenaline, which is very confusing. Instead of living around your loved ones, prison forces you to live with rough colleagues who can be too harsh.

When the prison doors are closed, it is time for you to face your situation. You have to learn how to survive amidst the tough conditions. But is it possible to live happily in prison, especially when you have been sentenced to life imprisonment?

Yes, you can. You need to ensure you stay out of trouble with your fellow inmates and prison authorities. It will also help a lot if you can manage your emotions. But how do you stay out of trouble in a facility with so many provocations? Is it possible to hide your anger, fear, or anxiety?

How to Live Happily in Prison During Life Imprisonment

As mentioned earlier, being incarcerated for life is not an easy thing. It can make you confused about your next step, anxious and angry. If you want to live happily in prison for life imprisonment, you need to make some serious adjustments in your life. Such adjustments include:

Managing Your Emotions

Being incarcerated for life means you have to bid bye to your friends and family members for life. Any contact with your loved ones will be through emails or when they make occasional and limited visits.

When you get into the prison, you encounter a new crop of people. Your colleagues will be tough and harsh inmates involved in serious crimes such as rape, murder, etc.

As such, it may be challenging to have a deep connection with your colleagues as you did with your family and friends. This may affect your emotions negatively and cause you to live an unhappy life in prison.

So, how can you manage your emotions?

Most correctional facilities have various programs geared towards making the life of the inmates better. Such programs include educational and vocational ones that equip the inmate with various skills. Additionally, other self-help programs help the inmate to deal with their emotions.

When you get to prison for life imprisonment, you should ensure you join as many self-help programs as possible. Additionally, you should train yourself to hide your emotions. Ensure that you don’t portray feelings of fear, anxiety, pain, or anger as other inmates and correctional officers can use the emotions against you.

Since the inmates are mostly free and bored, they can try to manipulate and instigate you. Giving in to their manipulation can make your life in prison challenging, causing unhappiness. Plus, you should try to avoid challenging other inmates, correctional officers, and the prison staff. Doing so can make you suffer and make your life unbearable in prison.

Avoid Snitching 

As mentioned earlier, most of the inmates serving life imprisonment have committed serious crimes. As such, most of them are harsh and ruthless individuals, and snitching on them for any reason may be the last thing you want to do.

If you snitch on an inmate, you are likely to attract beatings or other forms of punishment from other inmates.

Therefore, if you want to live happily in prison, avoid snitching other inmates. You should avoid badmouthing your colleagues to the correctional officers as it can result in unfriendly relationships.

Additionally, it would help if you were careful how you talk to the guards. If you seem too friendly to the prison security, other inmates can label you as untrustworthy or a snitch. This can make your life in prison unbearable.

Respect the Guards

When you get to prison, and the prison gates close behind you, you are under the responsibility of the prison security. There is no other way to behave around the correctional officers other than to respect them.

How can you show respect to the correctional officers?

If a guard is being rude or is provoking you to react, restrain yourself from fighting back. Even if you are on the right, there are more chances you’ll be the one to suffer if you fight back. Also, if a correctional officer asks you to undertake a particular task, it will be best to do it. If you are not sure of what is expected of you, it will be best to ask for clarification.

When you are talking to the guards, you should check what you say and choose your words carefully. Anything you say to a guard can be used to manipulate you or even betray you.

Another strategy to help you enjoy a happy life in prison is to assume that the correctional officers don’t care. As such, you won’t ask the guards to solve your issues as they are not obligated to do so. This saves you from disappointments.

Stay Sane

Prison life is not easy at all. If you don’t take care of your mental health, there are chances of feeling crazy. Therefore, taking care of your mental state is essential in ensuring you are happy while behind bars.

How can you ensure you stay sane?

Most correctional facilities allow your friends and loved ones to send reading materials, though they should come directly from the publisher and shouldn’t be used before. Reading helps to empower your mind. You can read magazines, newspapers, and books that touch on various topics, including current affairs, education, and general knowledge.

Reading enables you to escape the unpleasant prison life by creating a fantasy world in your mind. Plus, a knowledgeable brain will come in handy in helping you deal with various challenging situations in prison.

Additionally, if you want to live happily while serving life imprisonment, you need to come up with a way of dealing with depression. Spending life in prison is difficult. Being away from friends and relatives makes it even worse, and it is enough reason for you to feel depressed. Additionally, prisons are full of boredom and other situations that can make you depressed, such as fights and sexual predators. While in prison, you may or may not have access to a counselor, doctor, or any medication.

As such, if you feel depressed, you have to look for ways of dealing with it. For instance, you can get another inmate who seems mature and willing to listen. Talk to them about your fears, anxieties, pains, losses, and everything else that is disturbing you. Once you’ve talked about it, you’ll feel relieved and happy again. Ensure the inmate you tell your issues is someone who can use them to blackmail or arm-twist you to do something in the future.

Additionally, you should try as much as possible to stay away from drugs. Taking drugs or alcohol will only make your depression worse. You can also try to make a few acquaintances with the other inmates. This will help you not to spend too much time alone, and the acquaintances can give you some encouragement to enable you to face life in prison and remain happy. You can also deal with depression by shifting the stress to your body rather than your mind. You can do so by exercising your body which also helps to release hormones that deal with stress and depression.

Note, being in prison and depressed can stir up your anger. Life in prison seems to make people angrier as there seem to be more frustrations than solutions. When the anger piles up, you may eventually explode, which will cause you more problems.

If you want to deal with the anger:

1. Ensure that you take things easy in prison.
2. Don’t try to come up with new rules and try imposing them on other inmates.
3. Do not violate the rights of others and avoid overgeneralizing as it will make you angrier.

Maintain a Healthy Lifestyle

Maintaining a healthy lifestyle is essential in ensuring you live happily in prison. When you get incarcerated, the prison will offer three meals daily. However, the food quality may not be what you’d enjoy in your classy joint of a five-star hotel.

You can complement the food or improve your diet using food from the canteen or commissary. The meals at the commissary sell foods rich in minerals and vitamins. Also, ensure that you take a lot of water to stay hydrated. Ensure you don’t complain about the food they offer at the facility. This can offend the prison staff or the other inmates.

Additionally, you need to ensure you keep fit and strong. It will help a lot if you can exercise regularly. Some of the exercises you can do in prison include aerobics, stretching, and resistance training. Prison life is stressful and exercising will help you release the negative emotions.

Idleness in prison may not be the best thing. Instead of lying in your cell, it will be best to engage in positive activities such as sports or join a club.

Final Thoughts

Getting incarcerated for life is not the easiest thing in the world. You have to bid goodbye to your friends and loved ones and the life you are used to. Additionally, it involves a lot of fear, anxiety, and stress. Thus, it can be difficult to live happily in prison. However, you can try to live a happy life during life imprisonment by practicing the tactics above.

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