Behind the walls

Working with and organised by Karen Lawson the Health in Justice Regional Lead Social Prescriber for Practice Plus Group and wonderfully facilitated by the Social Prescribing team at Leeds, I went in as a Lived Experience Trainer, not a clinician, not a healthcare professional, but someone who has spent ten years living with chronic pain myself.

I brought that honesty with me, alongside the NHS-accredited Live Well With Pain Ten Footsteps programme, a non-clinical, self-led framework designed to help people manage their pain through practical lifestyle changes and reduce their reliance on pain medication.

What I did not anticipate was quite how powerful the session would become.

Yes, there were barriers, the environment demands that you strip back your toolkit and communicate through conversation alone, no shortcuts, no distractions.

But that constraint became the real secret gift. It forced a rawness and openness that I rarely encounter elsewhere. These men were willing, genuinely willing, to open up and talk about their pain, to engage, to ask questions, and to sit with difficult conversations about what living with chronic pain inside those walls actually means.

It was extremely humbling. It was inspiring. And it left me hopeful.

What I will carry with me is simple but profound: despite everything surrounding them, all they wanted was for someone to listen. Their openness, their willingness to engage, and their hunger to find ways to live better, not just cope, reminded me exactly why this work matters.

Chronic pain in the prison system is largely invisible. These are not statistics. They are people. And they deserve to be heard.