F**k It Therapy Page 5

  It’s possible to see this in many people who become seriously ill or suffer other traumas. Those that face their illness or trauma consciously invariably recognize the ‘teacher’ element of the illness or event. Such experiences tend to snap people out of the prisons they’ve created for themselves: they transform their lives overnight, they finally do what they’ve always wanted to do – they go travelling, they leave jobs and relationships that aren’t working, they follow their dreams. Faced with huge challenges, they see that what they used to worry about doesn’t actually matter so much. They are given the huge gift, even in the midst of painful experiences, of getting things in perspective. So why not get some perspective before some difficult life experience forces it on you? Why not get perspective before perspective gets you?

  BECAUSE THERE IS AN OUTSIDE (WHICH HAS BEEN FORGOTTEN)

  The moment you begin to become conscious of your prison, you start to see what life outside could be like.

  And just knowing there is an outside creates the desire to experience it. That’s why it’s worth traveling away from home occasionally: otherwise you’d never know there was anything else.

  As you realize there’s an outside, you have memories of what it’s like to be free and to dream. In fact, when people relax deeply on a F**k It Retreat, it often happens that they’re reminded of happy childhood memories: because that might have been the last time they were truly free.

  As you realize there’s an outside, you begin to dream again. You see that’s it possible to get out, be free, and have what you want in life. It’s a remarkable feeling, which then starts to create the freedom that you’ll soon experience. Yes, really, just by getting the lovely feeling of freedom, you begin to manifest actual freedom – just by imagining what it would be like to be free, even if it feels wildly unrealistic now – makes the chances of it happening so much higher.

  Now, it’s time to sit back, close your eyes, and dream, dream, dream about what the outside could be like. Remember, just doing so will start to manifest your dreams and your impending freedom.

  A GLIMPSE OF THE FUTURE

  This part of the book is an invitation to pause: to have a go at imagining what a F**k It Life could look like for you before we take you on the journey of F**k It Therapy.

  So you could see it as if you’re getting a breath of air before climbing into our F**k It Therapy limo: taking the luxurious route to freedom.

  And as you’re standing by the limo, getting that air, we’ll whisper little suggestions to you, then leave you alone for a bit to ponder. And do please ponder. Dream. Get a real sense of what freedom could mean for you, in your life, now. It will most likely make the subsequent journey in the F**k It Therapy limo even more fascinating and transformative.

  While you ponder each question or suggestion, you could make notes if you fancy: you could use each one as an exercise to explore fully.

  But that’s up to you. You’ve bought a book with ‘F**k It’ in the title, so that, like everything else, is up to you. In fact, that in itself could be a powerful part of F**k It Therapy for you – realizing that it’s all up to you.

  A BLOCK: THE STORY

  If you visited A Block, your first impression would be that it’s noisy. Prisoners cry out at you from their cells, or talk gently to you about themselves, or whisper something across the gangway. Not like in The Silence of the Lambs. They’re not threatening. They just want to be heard.

  You see everyone on A Block has his or her very important story. And they want you to hear it. If you were to stay here for just a day, you’d hear many of them. Dr. Jay, for example. She was a Harvard-educated doctor. In her short but illustrious career, she worked at all the top hospitals as a consultant, and did pioneering research into the effect of the production of cortisol (the stress hormone) on the testes of bulls under pressure. She had celebrity patients, earned huge fees, and was big news in bull-testes research and the implications on male fertility. She will talk endlessly about what she did and whom she knew. What she won’t tell you is how she got into this prison in the first place. But maybe she’s forgotten. She seems to have forgotten any part of her story that doesn’t match her high evaluation of herself.

  Or there’s Dave. Dave isn’t so confident about himself, or so proud of his achievements. In fact, Dave is pretty down on life and being Dave. He’ll tell you about all his bad luck. How he JUST missed getting into a good high school and got in with the wrong crowd. How it wasn’t his idea to back his pickup truck into the local jewelers, so it wasn’t exactly fair when he was the only one who got caught. He can’t believe that he’s confounded the doctors with early onset of Type 2 diabetes, which is only supposed to afflict those much older. He lost his hair in his 30s. He has bad genes when it comes to metabolism, otherwise how can you explain the extra 60 pounds he’s carrying. And his bad luck continues to afflict him every day. He’s the one who eats the dodgy1 sausage in the canteen. He’s the one who gets the worst shift in the laundry. He gets the last choice of books from the library. And only gets passed the porn when it’s too worn out to make anything out. It’s tough being Dave, as Dave will tell you, endlessly.

  But maybe you’ll get on with Jim, who is one of the older prisoners. He’s in his 60s but bright as a button. He’ll tell you stories about his youth in the ‘50s, when the world was a different place. There were morals then and people respected each other. Even the criminals had their code back then, and wouldn’t step over a certain line. He makes you feel nostalgic for a time when the underworld was a better place – still under, but not so far under. He wishes people now could have a bit more respect, for him and for each other, but mainly for him. He seems decent enough, but even with Jim, you can’t help feeling, well, BORED.

  Everyone on A Block has their story, and they’re really keen to tell it to you. Not surprising when you see what’s written on the walls:

  If you have a story to tell, tell it.

  You are an important person.

  Stand up for what you believe in.

  Walls have ears, and we’re ready to listen.

  Every prisoner on A Block has a story, but now they’re stuck in it, like an author who writes a great character in a thrilling novel, but becomes that character and gets trapped in the book. The stories they have created about themselves are sometimes proud and illustrious (like Dr. Jay) or hard-luck stories (like Dave), or stories with a moral edge (like Jim’s), but they’re all stories. The prisoners on A Block don’t exist as real people living in the present, growing as human beings given the changing circumstances of life. No. They’re stuck in a story about themselves: about how they’d like to be seen by others, or how they think life has treated them, or about how life should be. But theirs is a stagnant life. It doesn’t change. Life is a stuck record; the tune might once have sounded pleasant, but with the needle stuck, it just jars. And everyone around them is left feeling bored.

  I give you one day in A Block. You’ll be climbing the walls with frustration and boredom. You’d want some action, some thrill, and a taste of the real… God, you’d even prefer the adrenalin of some fear to this hell of storyland.

  If you prefer, you can go straight to Breaking Through the Wall of the Story.

  1 Meaning of low or dubious quality and likely to cause harm.

  B BLOCK: FEAR

  Those who are sent to B Block probably imagine that it will be a larger version of Room 101 (Google it) – a place where his or her deepest fears are made real. If they fear snakes, then they will be forced to live in a cell full of snakes, like in an Indiana Jones movie, but without the flaming torch. Sleeping with snakes: just the thought would drive them mad (though typing that now, it’s made me wonder what a movie with that title would look like).

  If they fear flying, they’d be imprisoned in a flight simulator, only it would simulate the passenger’s experience, not the pilot’s. The prisoner would have to endure, for hours a day, the endless repetition of the emergency procedure, carried
out by burly prison guards dressed as cabin crew. They would experience hours of the engines revving up ready to go: all the moments that render nervous passengers shaky with sickly anticipation. And then every day, the airplane would simulate a six-hour flight: like flying to New York from London every single day, but without the joys of New York at the end of the trip. And, sad to say it now, but the flight does actually go down in the Atlantic on its 623rd voyage. The airplane hits the water after a horrifying 35-minute battle to save everyone, despite two burning engines and losing the tail.

  Others are most scared of finding themselves naked in a room of matronly but full-bodied beautiful Russian women without any hope of escape. Or so they said anyway.

  But B Block isn’t like that at all. On the face of it, it’s not a scary place. On the contrary, it looks like a very safe place to live. Everything seems very orderly. The prisoners are well behaved and usually quiet, keeping themselves to themselves. The guards look cautious and uptight, but that’s how guards should look, shouldn’t they? They permanently wear helmets, and always have their guns within reach. But it doesn’t seem like an unpleasant place to see out your sentence. There’s no screaming, at least.

  The walls, like everything else on B Block, are neat and well scrubbed. No one would dare graffiti anything here. Instead, the walls have their own (official) writing:

  68 percent of prisoners die before they’re released.

  Prison food likely cause of high incidence of bowel cancer in prisoners.

  454 prisoners injured in showers in 2012.

  Traumatized guard loses it and pulverizes prisoner.

  The many walls are covered in scary facts about daily life in prison. Not about disasters in far-off places, but the dangers that lurk everywhere – even dangers that can’t be seen.

  Superbugs out of control in prisons.

  Even the dangers that you’d never usually think about.

  Sleeping too much can lead to respiratory problems.

  And dangers that simply confuse you.

  Sleeping too little can lead to heart problems.

  So, how much SHOULD I sleep? And that’s one of the questions the prisoners endlessly debate – especially, late at night. It’s a question that keeps them awake, thus directing them more at risk from heart disease than respiratory problems. Is eight hours too much or too little? What are the facts? Ah, but scientists disagree on the facts. In fact, one historian has just declared that, until 300 years ago, we all used to sleep in two parts: we’d go to bed and sleep for three to four hours, then get up for an hour, have a meal, or read a book, or visit friends, then go back to bed for another three to four hours. Perhaps we should try that?

  Living on B Block is like living in a world where there is nothing else to read but the Daily Mail1. In fact, the Daily Mail is the prisoners’ newspaper of choice: it seems like the best place to get up-to-date information on all things to be scared of and all the terrible things that are happening in the world. And if there’s one thing that can reassure a prisoner living in fear of terrible things happening, it’s the knowledge that some REALLY terrible things are happening elsewhere in the world.

  Not that anything can alleviate their suffering. They worry from the moment they wake up to the moment they go to sleep. And then suffer restless nights because their worries have penetrated their unconscious and take elaborate, dramatized manifestations in the form of end-of-the-world-scary nightmares. The prisoners talk endlessly about their fears: about their health, their safety in such a dangerous place, about the terrible things lying in wait in the canteen or the bathroom block or the exercise yard. They’re constantly torn as to whether to do something that might seem dangerous:

  Injuries involving weights up 33 percent.

  Or whether not doing it is more dangerous:

  Muscle waste in prisoners causes early-onset arthritis.

  Their fears usually render them passive, tight, and suspicious. Even though the crime levels on B Block are remarkably low (though the writing on the walls would never say: IT’S ACTUALLY VERY SAFE HERE, because it wouldn’t make a good headline), and the prisoners talk a lot with each other (and scared people talk an awful lot), but they always think the worst about what someone else could do to them or say about them. So no real friendships are developed; no confidences are exchanged. It’s better to stay on a safe subject:

  Danger, risk, and threat.

  And it seems funny that, in their few quiet, solitary moments, the prisoners choose to read newspapers, watch TV news shows, or surf the net for more scare stories. It’s almost as if they LIKE this fear stuff. And that’s the sad fact. As B Block demonstrates, when people live in an environment of fear, they somehow start to crave it, to like it even. They want to know how much worse it could get. They want to know about the fine details of the dangers lurking everywhere around them.

  On B Block, fear is the drug. And it’s freely available. All the prisoners are addicted. And no one has even thought of the long-term effects of this form of drug abuse. No one has even considered that the biggest thing to fear could be… fear itself.

  If you prefer, you can go straight to Breaking Through the Wall of the Story.

  1 British newspaper renowned for its scaremongering headline stories – read and duly absorbed by around two million people in the UK each day.

  C BLOCK: SERIOUSNESS

  On every single wall of C Block is a large plasma screen. In the ceiling there are inset surround-sound speakers giving an excellent audio quality to the perpetual broadcast that prisoners in C Block experience night and day. Even the bars of the cells are made from transparent, toughened Perspex to allow the prisoners an unblocked and unremitting view of the screens.

  The broadcasts consist of a man speaking to the prisoners – usually the same man but sometimes another who looks remarkably like the first man. The men have angular faces and waxed-back hair. They both have mustaches and talk in the same monotonous tone. Just like when your Uncle Ted has to go speak to a foreman, or the management, or has a chance meeting with a member of a higher social rank in the bank or post office.

  The prisoners no longer watch. They know what’s coming, after all. But they can’t help but see. The only way not to see the images is to close their eyes. Sure, the screens don’t just show the faces of the mustached men: the broadcasts occasionally cut to scenes to illustrate the point the broadcaster is making. But the prisoners have seen the scenes many times before.

  It’s not that those in charge of C Block don’t try to vary the content of the broadcasts. They have a studio, and are constantly trying to create new messages and footage. But, given the 24/7-nature of the broadcasts, they can’t help but include repeats. C Block is an ongoing government-backed experiment: to create a system for prisons all over the world. Government regulations, however, require that the system is tested for ten years, and the prisoners analyzed for their responses and behaviors before it’s finally rolled out. We’re in year seven now.

  But it seems to be going well. The prisoners keep themselves to themselves (though it’s hard to hold a conversation above the constant drone of the broadcast), carry out the necessary duties, and behave well. They are given a test every month: an interview to check for any changes in their responses to a variety of questions that test levels of honesty, consideration, and moral views… In fact, everything that a makes a good, responsible citizen. And there are significant improvements.

  Let’s listen to what’s being broadcast at this very moment. We’re cutting in mid-broadcast, but you’ll pick it up soon enough, I’m sure:

  … To be able to carry out your duties for the good of those around you.

  Remember, as a good citizen, to take your responsibility to society seriously. A citizen isn’t just responsible for themselves and their wellbeing. You must think about others and act accordingly. You must take your work seriously, because your work, as well as serving you in the form of a wage, serves the good of the country and the commu
nity – business benefits and all other citizens benefit in the form of taxes.

  As a good citizen you must always set a good example to others: you must not swear, you must not drink alcohol or smoke cigarettes, you must not spit in public. As a good citizen you must take your duty to your family seriously: whether to your parents, spouse, or children. You must never do anything to jeopardize these relationships, and always act in the highest interests of others and not yourself. If the citizen has desires that may harm other citizens in any way, then these desires must be suppressed. It is the duty of the citizen to suppress all desires that might cause any harm or discomfort to anyone else in the community.

  The good citizen will use all waking hours for work or for serving the family or community. There is no time for slacking or playing. There is no serious result from playing, including playing with children. Children can play with each other. Play corrupts society. It makes people lazy and disrespectful. In societies where play is prominent, the serious values and intentions of a community break down.

  A serious citizen does not drink beer, spend hours outdoors playing sports, or cooking barbeques.

  Take communication seriously. Say what you want to say carefully, succinctly, without expletives, or grammatical laziness.

  Take your health seriously. Eat well. Exercise for health not for play. If you are sick, see a doctor and follow his or her advice to the letter. Take doctors seriously. Take any figure in authority seriously. Watch only informative programming on TV. Do not watch sitcoms, quiz shows, dramas, or fictional movies. Watch shows that will inform you of the serious events happening in the world, or educate you about something you are ignorant of. Always keep learning: take your education seriously…