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The Locked up Living Podcast: Surviving and thriving in prisons and other challenging environmentsAuthor: Podcasters David Jones & Dr Naomi Murphy
Can institutional culture challenge your mental health? What if your job makes you feel shame, sadness, grief, disgust and fear? What if you are expected not to feel? Or you are expected to be relentlessly competitive? What its like to live or work in a prison? Does working with people who commit murder, child abuse and rape affect people who work in prisons and the wider criminal justice system? How do people survive and thrive when facing significant challenges to our emotional health over a lengthy period? How do we protect ourselves and stay compassionate, loving and trusting? Importantly, how do we find and preserve hope? Fyodor Dostoevsky wrote that The degree of civilisation in a society can be judged by entering its prisons. In this weekly podcast ,your hosts, David Jones (Forensic psychotherapist) and Dr Naomi Murphy (Consultant Clinical & Forensic Psychologist) hope that exploring less visible aspects of prisons will help listeners see that prisons are a window into society and let us see people not only at their worst but also at their best. We feature a rich range of guests sharing snap shots of life in prisons and take a look at hospitals, schools, sport and the police in order to learn from other institutions. We learn about challenges to human integrity and hear important lessons and heart-warming stories about survival and growth when facing adversity in harsh places. We hope that sharing our conversations can help you make changes to your own relationship with institutions that might challenge your emotional health and well-being. Follow and connect with us and give us feedback. Let us know what you think works, and also what doesnt. We want you to look forward to the podcast each week. Well also be extremely grateful for any reviews that you give us. A simple star or two or a thumbs up will do.Email: lockedupliving@gmail.com or connect with us on:Substack: https://lockedupliving.substack.comTwitter: https://twitter.com/LockedUpLivingLinkedin: h Language: en Genres: Society & Culture, True Crime Contact email: Get it Feed URL: Get it iTunes ID: Get it |
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Joseph Millson (Video); How Abuse Shapes a Life—and How Stories Help Us Survive
Episode 466
Tuesday, 8 September, 2026
In this conversation Naomi Murphy and David Jones are joined by Joseph Millson, actor, writer, filmmaker and singer, currently appearing in The Phantom of the Opera in London’s West End. He’s also the author of Miller Rose Roberts, a novella that moves between psychological realism and something more mysterious while exploring trauma, memory, identity, love, and recovery. In this conversation, Joseph talks about why creativity matters to wellbeing, how writing became a kind of journaling for him, and why he prefers ambiguity over neat explanations. They also discuss resilience, grief, anger, motherhood, and the role storytelling can play in making sense of painful experience. Key topics In this episode, Joseph argues that creativity is not reserved for artists, because everyone uses creative thinking in some form, from mechanics to doctors to chefs. He shares the “right hand and left hand” idea: one side of life handles rent, family, and responsibilities, while the other side protects creative expression and imagination. Joseph explains why actors often feel the urge to move into writing and directing, because acting is usually interpreting someone else’s story rather than telling their own. We discuss how writing, especially journaling, can function as emotional processing even when no one else ever reads it. Joseph describes Miller Rose Roberts as a seven chapter novella built around seven year cycles, with the protagonist revisited at ages 7, 14, 21, 28, and beyond. He shares how the book blends realism with magical realism, including the recurring ringing in Miller’s ears that becomes an instruction to walk away. They talk about ambiguity in art and why Joseph prefers not to over explain mental health, grief, or the meaning of Miller’s experiences. Joseph reflects on writing female characters, saying he is fascinated by women’s experiences and by people who carry pain privately rather than sharing it. The conversation also touches on anger management, emotional numbness, and the idea that people need an outlet for grief and pain instead of suppressing it. Joseph closes by explaining how actors can access deep emotion safely through imagination, scaffolding, and play, without relying on unhealthy emotional recall. Timestamps 00:00 - Introducing Joseph Milson and the themes of creativity and wellbeing 00:37 - Why creative work and day jobs often coexist 01:37 - The “right hand and left hand” model of creative life 03:33 - Why acting is a uniquely difficult art form 04:32 - Writing as mental health support between auditions 05:57 - Creativity as something everyone does 07:47 - Why Signs of Life emerges from struggle 08:13 - How Joseph moved from acting into writing and directing 09:14 - Work and Other Four Letter Words and the value of self-reflection 10:33 - Lockdown, screenwriting, and the start of Signs of Life 11:33 - Grief, kindness, and the idea behind the film 12:58 - Why actors eventually want to tell their own stories 15:41 - Journaling as a form of creative processing 18:42 - Writing from a woman’s perspective 22:30 - The caravan park, the name Miller Rose Roberts, and the book’s origin 23:55 - Seven year cycles and the structure of the novella 24:49 - Tinnitus, the desert, and the magical realist premise 26:51 - Leaving space for multiple interpretations 29:29 - Grief, psychosis, and privacy as a defense mechanism 30:36 - Anger management and the need for emotional outlets 32:15 - Plant medicine, journaling, and looking at what hurts 33:39 - Writer’s block and finding the ending 35:08 - Why Joseph chose to write a novella rather than a full novel 37:02 - Stephen King’s influence and Joseph’s admiration for novella length 38:12 - Why resilience is hard to explain and impossible to reduce 41:12 - Motherhood, loss, and the book’s emotional core 44:08 - The deliberate use of “the mother” as a distancing device 46:46 - Researching the 1980s, cigarettes, and period detail 48:24 - Storytelling as a way of healing and narrating our lives 50:42 - How actors protect themselves when working in deep emotional territory Notable quotes “The mistake are mistake. Something a lot of creatives do is put their creative life over here and everything else over there.” “I believe my creative work is my journaling.” “Art is a question mark.”
