Scars You Can't See: Loving Someone After Incarceration

Coming home from prison doesn’t erase the damage, it just changes the scenery. In this powerful episode, we explore the invisible scars left by incarceration and how loved ones can offer support rooted in empathy, not enforcement.

Dr. Debbie Jones walks listeners through the emotional, psychological, and neurological impacts of prison life, using brain-based, trauma-informed practices to help families and partners navigate the complex terrain of reentry. From Post-Incarceration Syndrome to the importance of co-regulation and autonomy, this episode offers tools, language, and real-life examples for anyone who wants to love someone through their healing.

Whether you’ve served time or are walking alongside someone who has, this conversation is for you. This episode provides compassionate guidance on fostering connection over control and empathy over enforcementBecause healing doesn’t just happen with freedom, it happens in relationships.

🔗 Mentioned in this episode: Dr. Bruce Perry, Post-Incarceration Syndrome, and resources from the Florida Innocence Project, National Incarceration Association, and Prison Policy Initiative.

💬 If this episode resonates with you, share it with a friend or reach out to continue the conversation. Your story—and theirs—deserves to be heard. Share your experiences with us at stories@lockdown2legacy.com.

Chapters

• 2:07 Introducing Invisible Wounds of Incarceration
• 4:36 The Brain Science of Prison Trauma
• 7:58 Survival Behaviors After Release
• 12:14 How Scars Affect Relationships
• 15:00 Practical Support Strategies
• 18:17 Healing Is Not Linear
• 26:18 Final Reflections on Loving Support

Transcript

Debbie Jones: 1:04

Hey everybody and welcome back to another episode of Lockdown to Legacy. I am your co-host, debbie Jones, and I am here by myself today and I'm really excited to do this episode. You know, lockdown to Legacy is a place where we speak truth, share stories and build bridges between incarceration and healing, and what I'm hoping to dive into today is powerful and often unspoken component that is a part of reentry and that is the scars you can't see. So we're going to talk a little bit about the emotional, psychological and neurological impact of incarceration and how we can love our partners, friends, family, whomever, through that healing. This episode is for anyone who is loving someone who's home, walking beside someone reentering the world after prison and wondering how do I support them without smothering them, how do I show up for those without triggering those scars? So let's dive deep into it.

Debbie Jones: 2:02

In this first section I'm going to kind of talk about these invisible wounds of incarceration that people often carry home with them from prison, and you know the motivation, I guess, or the inspiration for this episode, has come from my own experience in loving my partner. You all know the great, wonderful and amazing Remy Jones, host of this podcast, had spent 10 years incarcerated. And while we throw around this term institutionalized and it's not one that Remy or I particularly like when thinking about incarceration it is applicable in that people bring home more than those, the way that we love our partners, and it shows up in the way that we show up for each other. So this was something that Remy and I navigated at the beginnings of our relationship. What's important here is I was not Remy's first relationship in coming home from prison. We didn't know each other during that time either, so these were kind of things I came to cold, I didn't understand, and you know there are times I still don't understand the depths of this and sometimes I do step on these triggers and bring them back out. But I wanted to share a little bit from my own expertise in this kind of brain-based science of how these things have been, these strategies. This understanding has been helpful to me as the partner of someone who I love who had to spend quite a considerable amount of time incarcerated.

Debbie Jones: 3:37

So when people says scarred by incarceration, I think most folks might picture the physical like an injury or just the visible toll of time served, but we don't talk a lot about the scars. You can't see the ones on the brain or the nervous system or even the heart. And those metaphorical scars the psychological and emotional damage caused by prison environment are similar to physical scars in that they don't just go away once somebody's released. They show up in how a person feels, how they think, how they trust and even how they respond to stress and how they connect with others. So, like I said, I want to bring a little bit of brain science into this, because that's the world that I've lived in in a lot of my career in bringing these trauma-informed approaches or this understanding of the brain into how we interact with other people. So you're going to hear me reference some of that today as a part of this conversation.

Debbie Jones: 4:36

So, according to Dr Bruce Perry, who has written a lot of books I recommend the book what Happened to you he did that in conjunction with Oprah and everybody loves Oprah, so you can pick that up. But Dr Perry says that trauma affects the brain from the bottom up, meaning that there are survival parts of the brain, like the brain stem, that kick in long before thinking parts do so. If somebody has spent months, years or decades in a space where they had to constantly protect themselves, they learn to live in that part of the brain, that survival part, and that nervous system becomes wired to then scan for threats even when the danger is no longer present. And that wiring it doesn't just shut off when the prison gates open. When I talk about this survival brain in different settings, what I often tell people is just because the threat immediate threat has gone away, so the prison environment has gone away, your perceptions of it haven't. You have become wired to expect that environment. So if you take Remy, for example, 10 years is a long time to have a specific routine, a specific type of threat consistently show up and having to navigate that environment for it to just now go away. It doesn't work like that. Our bodies just don't work like that.

Debbie Jones: 5:56

So here's a few ways in which this can show up for people, and this is sourced from a lot of different articles. I'm going to link all of them in the show notes today. So you'll hear me talk about the Prison Policy Institute that we talk a lot about. You'll also hear me reference an article by Dr Carrie Pettis Davis and Stephanie Kennedy and part of the Institute for Justice Research and Development. You will hear me reference an article from GBH done by Dominique Farrell. You'll hear me reference an article from GBH done by Dominique Farrell. You'll hear me reference post-incarceration syndrome and that is an American Psychological Association term, but there are a lot of articles that consider this. The NIA team has a great one. And then I also am going to talk a little bit about the Florida Innocence Project, who does a lot of work around this topic. So all of these examples come from those articles. Again, I'm going to source those for you in the show notes.

Debbie Jones: 6:58

But here's a few ways in which this survival brain can show up. A person might always want to face the door when sitting in public places, not because they're being difficult, but because their body is still in survival mode. So being able to see the doors and who's coming in and going out, knowing those exits, it's really important. They might jump at sudden noises or hate being touched, either from behind or just generally. The touch is a huge sensory piece that sometimes feels unsafe and avoiding large crowds. Again, this isn't just about personality, it is about protection. Folks may not want to be tracked constantly or asked about their plans.

Debbie Jones: 7:39

After being on surveillance and control for years, simple questions, even like where are you going, can feel like parole all over again For years. Simple questions, even like where are you going, can feel like parole all over again. You've heard Remy and I talk about this one at length on this podcast, so I won't go too deep. But a part of this. The goal of this is for us to share our experiences, and this is a big one for us. We had to learn how to navigate this because it felt to me normal in a relationship that I could be able to ask where are you going, or how long are you going to be there? What time will you be home? Let me know when you're leaving, work, those types of things and even sharing location which has become, you know, a newer age problem with iPhones and all those things of technology like where you just share me, share your location with me, then I don't have to ask you. That was my solution, like I don't have to ask you when you're going to be home because I can just check. But that sense of surveillance was really threatening to my husband and we had to figure out how to navigate the where are you going without it feeling like another life sentence. I don't want my marriage to feel like a life sentence or surveillance, so it was important for us to kind of think through that, and so that's a big one for us.

Debbie Jones: 8:52

Some people might also experience emotional numbness. Therapists call this kind of the flat effect, and that's not coldness, it's just a nervous system doing what it's supposed to do, which is cope with trauma. So you heard me mention the term post-incarceration system, so let me break that down a little bit. Post-incarceration syndrome is a term that describes a cluster of symptoms common in folks who have been incarcerated for a long time, like PTSD symptoms, institutionalized behaviors, social disorientation or even substance use disorders. It's a response to long-term exposure to a harmful high-stress environment, and yet we rarely name it or offer support for it during re-entry. This is not common.

Debbie Jones: 9:34

We talk a lot on this podcast about transition services and their availability within coming home from incarceration and other systems, but being aware of PICS is a next step, because most systems don't think about this or prepare families for thinking about this, and so that's my hope in kind of talking about this today too, is that us on the other side the lovers, the family members, the supporters we need to show up differently, and we can't do so in the absence of information. So, according to the National Incarceration Association. People with PICS may feel disconnected, anxious, withdrawn or intensely reactive, and without proper support they're likely to isolate, shut down or even re-offend. And let me be clear, this is not about weakness, it's about survival. So when we say prison leave scars, we're not being poetic. We're just being honest that these are real neurological, behavioral and emotional injuries that require real understanding, real compassion, real healing. And for those of us who love someone who's come home, that means that we have to be willing to shift how we see certain behaviors and not look at it as disrespect or distance, but adaptiveness. And those are messages that we are being given, but it's important that we receive them as an evidence that our partners, our loved ones, have survived. So next I'm going to talk a little bit about how these scars show up in relationships and why loving someone doesn't mean policing them. So stick with me. Okay, welcome back. So let's talk about what it means after someone's come home and how we love them.

Debbie Jones: 11:23

Home isn't always healing. Being out doesn't automatically mean being free. Those are not the same things and they especially are not necessarily true. Emotionally, coming home from prison is often painted as this joyful, triumphant return, but for many it's confusing and overwhelming, and even traumatic in its own ways. The world has moved on. Family routines have shifted. People expect you to just jump in like nothing happened, and for someone who's carrying these scars of incarceration, that can feel like being thrown into deeper water before they've even learned to swim. One of the biggest issues is expectations survival, like finding a job, staying out of trouble, managing flashbacks and navigating a world that suddenly feels fast and foreign to them, particularly dependent upon the amount of time that they've spent behind bars. So this is where relationships get tricky.

Debbie Jones: 12:29

Well-meaning partners, friends, family members might start asking questions like where are you going? Who are you with? What time will you be back? These often come from a place of care, but to someone who just left prison, they feel like surveillance, like parole, like being back inside, and that's why it's important that we don't accidentally start policing our people when they come home. So let's flip the script. Instead of what's your plan for the day, I have had to shift a little bit to is there anything you want to share with me about your day? Right, this gives my husband power in that conversation and the ability to say as little as he would like to, instead of, who are you hanging out with? I have tried things like I'd love to know who's supporting you these days. There's a difference there, right, one is control. One feels like connection and we're aiming for connection Again through that trauma-informed lens, especially Dr Perry's regulate relate reason model.

Debbie Jones: 13:30

We understand that safety comes before deep conversations of reasoning. If a person doesn't emotionally feel safe in their home, they're not going to open up and they're not going to feel calm and they're not going to trust. And that's not about us failing our partners, it's about their brain doing what their brain is trained to do under extreme stress. So the question becomes how do I show love in a way that doesn't feel like control? And that's what we're going to talk about next. So let's get practical. What does support actually look like when your loved one is navigating those invisible scars? Because love isn't always enough. Love alone is not always enough. We need tools, we need strategies and we need a trauma-informed mindset.

Debbie Jones: 14:16

So let's start with this co-regulation. If someone's nervous system is activated, your calm presence can help regulate their stress response system. So what that means is that if you see somebody who is dysregulated or kind of amping up and you're seeing that behavioral response. If you remain calm, you can help somebody else be calm. So this might be lowering your voice or slowing your pace, even softening your facial expressions, not demanding explanations, just being present. Even sitting together in silence can be powerful if it feels safe.

Debbie Jones: 14:54

Next, we can offer predictability without control, creating a structure but letting it breathe, such as hey, I'll be making dinner at six, you're welcome to join, or you want me to check in before the weekend to see what we both need? It's not about micromanaging, it is about creating rhythm and choice. Third, we have to respect the trauma response. It's not personal if they don't want to go out. It's not a red flag if they want to sit with their back to the wall, and it's not rejection if they pull away when they feel overstimulated. Bodies are just doing what bodies do to survive. And the truth is, in the environment in which our partners have come from, they had to do a lot to survive. According to the Florida Innocence Project, many returning citizens experience things like survivor's guilt, emotional shutdown and disconnect from their surroundings, and unless those around them recognize this is what it is, it often leads to misunderstanding, conflict and withdrawal.

Debbie Jones: 15:54

So here are a few things that we can do. First, make space for quiet moments without pressure. Second, invite but don't insist. Third, learn about post-incarceration syndrome and how it might show up. And fourth, focus on shared rituals. My husband and I like to share music. We don't like the same music individually, but there's a specific kind of music we come to together, and so we've created a couple of playlists and we play them. When we do other things that we enjoy doing together, like going on a walk or cooking, we play our shared playlist because those activities don't require intense emotional labor, but they allow us to build connection over time and, above all else, be patient.

Debbie Jones: 16:38

Healing is not linear. There will be good days, there will be hard days, but every time we choose empathy over enforcement, we help soften up those scars. We become part of the healing environment, and that's what we're leaning into. Next is what healing can really look like and why. We don't need all of the answers to be part of the solution. So the truth is that healing doesn't look like what most of us expect. It doesn't always look like someone opening up the right way. It doesn't always sound like someone saying I need help, and it rarely happens on a timeline that we can predict.

Debbie Jones: 17:14

Healing, especially after incarceration, is nonlinear. It takes time, it takes safety and it takes relationship. But the good news is that the brain can change. With enough repetition and consistency and safe connection, even the most deeply wired trauma responses can soften. Framework really shines that we talked about from Dr Perry earlier. When we first relate, what we mean is breathing together, listening to calming music, cooking side by side, going for a walk in rhythm. Anything that activates those lower parts of the brain in a predictable and safe way can help in calming the nervous system. Then we lean into relationship. That's that relate part. So after regulation we build that connection and that could be just laughing together or watching a favorite show or sharing stories from childhood. We don't have to start with the trauma, but we do have to start with the relationship.

Debbie Jones: 18:13

As I mentioned, remy and I, you know, got together after his obvious incarceration, but we didn't know each other while he was incarcerated. And so what I wanted to do, particularly at the beginning, when our relationship was still new, we had a lot of connection right that you often do in those honeymoon periods you lean into each other and that learning of each other. But I had to recognize that he deserved space to share at a pace that was fair to him. Now I got to give Remy props. You have heard him say, as we've talked about our love story before, that it was really important for him, on like one of our very first phone calls, after we had been talking, you know, via text or email for a couple of weeks, for him to say hey, I need to let you know that I've been previously incarcerated and it's not fair to you or to me if I don't move forward without letting you know. And it wasn't a deal breaker for me, it didn't matter to me that he had been previously incarcerated and I didn't even ask at that time for what it wasn't. That didn't matter. I very much believe in rehabilitation, so none of those things were concerns or red flags to me.

Debbie Jones: 19:23

What was important is that he was able to share at a pace that was determined by him, and I had to lean back a little bit and lean back into that regulation and relationship, because I really wanted to start with the trauma. I wanted to understand the things he might be experiencing at home and you know part of that is this is the work I do on a day-to-day basis, right. So even as a trauma-informed practitioner, even as somebody who does this in the day-to-day world, I was like, well, tell me about it, tell me about it. And I did the thing I'm not supposed to do, right, because we're human and that's what we do. But I had to pull back and really think through what matters to me in building this relationship with this person. This is a thing that I see as a potential long-term thing for me, and it's important that we find things that we like to do together. And I think, particularly for folks who who maybe have gone through part of the relationship with each other and that person was incarcerated and now they're transitioning home, this might look a little different for you, right, because you were there, at least on phone or video chat, throughout part of that incarceration, so you know what that environment was like for them, but in the transition home that's harder. It's harder to identify what those shared things are for you now that this environment no longer exists.

Debbie Jones: 20:50

Remy and I didn't have that same barrier because we didn't have a relationship during his incarceration, nor was I his first relationship in coming home, but we still had to do a lot of the learning, so we had to figure out that we don't share a lot of the same taste in music. I do not like to watch movies, and he really loves movies. We had to figure out what our differences were so that we could understand then. What does it mean for us to regulate together? What does it mean for us to have relationship together? And at the end of the day, it was connection. It was all rooted in connection for us, and it was important that we leaned into that. So only after we had that understanding could we then move into the reasoning. That's where the deep conversations happen, not just about the past and the pain, but the goals. And trying to reason again without relationship or regulation just leads to shutdown and conflict.

Debbie Jones: 21:46

So here's what healing might look like in real time. This could be choosing to stay present when you would normally withdraw, saying no to an old pattern and yes to something new, asking for space instead of exploding in anger, or initiating a hug, a joke or a moment of connection. All of those things are really small, right, but they are huge to the person that we are loving. Through this healing right, it is crucial that we step back and say what is our role and responsibility in this? You might've listened to this episode thus far and been like, well, that's a lot for me to do, and them not taking ownership of their trauma, right, like they're not doing any of the healing. I'm doing all of the healing, and so here's the way that they should have to show up too, like it shouldn't all just be on me. We've heard that before and I think that's true. People are responsible to work through their own trauma, and nor is it your responsibility to make sure everybody is good. It's not your responsibility to fix anybody, and what I would counter is that we do have a responsibility for showing what is possible.

Debbie Jones: 23:05

As I talked about earlier, safety comes in the form of predictability. Safety comes in the form of consistency. Safety comes in the form of presence, and when we deprive that of our partner because they are still working through some things, then we just make it that much harder for them to work through the things. But instead, if we step back and say, okay, here are these metaphorical scars, here are these things that my partner is struggling with, my loved one is struggling with, how are the ways in which I show up? What are the small things that I can tweak? These aren't difficult things. The language changes I've offered are not difficult to do. Choosing to stay present when we might normally withdraw or they might normally withdraw, isn't difficult. Saying no to an old pattern and yes to something new challenging in the moment, but not difficult overall.

Debbie Jones: 24:02

Asking for space instead of getting angry. It's easy for us to escalate when somebody else has escalated right. That's why fights happen, that's why arguments occur. But if we can hold on and ask for some space and step away from that and revisit when we have an ability to, we're going to see a deeper level of healing. And then initiating a hug, a joke, a moment of connection. These are things that we want with moment of connection. These are things that we want with our partner anyway. These are things we want with our loved ones anyway. So being able to share that in real time allows our person to know that we are consistently safe. You don't have to be a therapist to help somebody heal. You just have to be consistent, kind, curious and willing to show up. And if we are walking alongside somebody on this journey, we are helping them rewire that trauma. We are helping them to literally rewire their brains and that is sacred work. You may not think it is. I'm letting you know what you are doing is sacred work. We are helping someone believe that freedom doesn't just mean out of prison. It means being safe and seen and supported and that, my friends, is where legacy begins.

Debbie Jones: 25:24

Before we wrap up, I want to leave some space for reflection. If this episode stirred something in you, whether you're someone who's coming home, someone who is loving somebody through this process, I want you to know that it's okay to feel all the things. There is no perfect way to do this. I think that what I can share about my almost five-year marriage at this point is that, like every other marriage, there are ups and downs, but what is truly important for me in supporting my partner is the understanding that I'm likely going to get it wrong and I'm likely going to continue to activate some triggers.

Debbie Jones: 26:03

There are things that I just can't plan or solve for, things that I just can't plan or solve for, and when I step on that and the situation blows up in a way I didn't intend, it is still my responsibility to come back and revisit that. Do I do that? Well, every time? No, my husband will tell you. It is difficult for me to say sorry. It is difficult for me to come back to something, and so, even with all of this knowledge and understanding, it is hard for me to think through what those things might be, what I have learned over the years about who my partner needs me to be so that we don't step on those things, or how I need to come to that conversation differently, and oftentimes that takes stepping away and revisiting it at a later time, but also not pushing him, and I think that that's been the hardest and most difficult thing for me is that I lean into the role of wanting to fix, and I thought that that was a helpful place to be.

Debbie Jones: 27:05

It turns out most often, folks just want you to listen, right, they want you to see them for who they are as they go along this journey, because what is true is, my husband is not who he was in 2008 when he went to prison. He is not who he was five years ago when he came home, and I think that that's one of the privileges of long-term relationships and I don't just mean in marriages, I mean like being a parent, or being a son and or daughter, being a loved one of someone who has gone along this journey that you're very close to. You get to see several iterations of who this person is and you get to love them through all of them, regardless of what that journey might be or look like. Now, to offer some clarity, I'm not talking about relationships that are harmful or toxic. I'm talking about relationships that a person is bringing home these metaphorical scars that we've been talking about and that we are trying to help them see the other side of. So there are differences in distinguishing components of that. That would be a lot to get into today, but I want to make sure that I distinguish or differentiate that.

Debbie Jones: 28:18

So maybe you're realizing that some of your questions or habits could be triggering to your loved one without you even knowing it. Goodness, maybe you're the one who's just trying to breathe, trying to feel safe in a world that still feels like it's watching your every move, and the truth is you're not alone. Neither of those people in that circumstance are alone. Healing happens in relationship. It happens through repair. It does not happen through perfection. It happens when people show up, imperfectly but consistently. So let me offer you this affirmation today. I am learning to see beyond the behavior, to the brain behind it. Love can look like safety, space and showing up again tomorrow. Take that with you into your week, into your conversations, into your moments of frustration and tenderness, and if you mess up, it's okay. Keep learning and loving and listening. You are doing hard work, we are doing hard work, our loved ones coming home are doing hard work, and every single time that we choose empathy over enforcement and connection over control, we are creating that legacy of healing. We are facilitating that. So it is important for us to continue to show up here today, not to control or fix, but to witness support and love with patience and presence. Scars tell a story, but they do not define the future.

Debbie Jones: 29:49

Thank you so much for joining me for this shorter episode of Lockdown to Legacy, my solo episode this week. I'm paying my husband back for taking it solo for me while I was sick last week. If you're walking this path, whether you're the one who's coming home or the one that's waiting at the door, you are part of a story that matters. And if you found this helpful, consider sharing it with someone who needs to hear it. And if you have a story of your own you would like to share, anonymous or not, we would love to hear from you. As always, you can reach out to us at stories at lockdowntolegacycom, or you can reach out on any of our social media sites. Until next time, keep building, keep loving and keep showing up. Take care, y'.