-I'm Jason Rezaian.
I'm a global opinions writer for The Washington Post.
And before this, I was our bureau chief in Iran.
In the summer of 2014, my wife and I were arrested,
placed in solitary confinement.
She spent about three months in prison,
and I spent about 18 months in prison.
So, all of a sudden, this experience that we had
is really relevant to a lot of people.
So people have been reaching out to me over the last few days,
wondering what they should do to better survive isolation
and what some people are calling confinement.
And it's not really that.
You have the choice, the choice to be your own worst enemy
or your own best friend.
It seems like an obvious decision
to be a friend to yourself,
but a lot of us will work against that current,
until we realize that doing so is untenable.
You have to figure out a way to really embrace
the voice inside your head and use it as an advantage,
because in a situation where you're deprived of
so many of the normal things that you're used to --
and not only your social interactions, but resources --
you have to improvise.
I was in a very extreme case --
in a cell that had absolutely nothing
except a fluorescent light that was lit 24 hours a day,
sleeping on a fragment of carpet over a concrete floor,
and a couple of blankets.
That was my world.
I am gonna guess that anybody who's watching this
has a lot more at their disposal than I did at that time --
and learned to work with it.
As people who know me will tell you,
I'm a likable guy, and I never understood why,
so I kind of went in deep to figure out,
"What is it about me that other people like?"
I think part of it is that I'm a pretty good listener,
so I'd listen to myself complain.
That I'm optimistic, so I look for things to be hopeful about.
I have a pretty good sense of humor
and I'm an observant person, so I looked around me and,
in my interactions with my captors,
tried to find things that I could laugh about later on.
And these are all little things that all of us have inside of us
that we have to really not only embrace and recognize --
take advantage of when circumstances call for it.
When I was in solitary confinement,
the practice of putting someone in a very confined place
all by themselves, is designed to make you react,
to make you panic, to make you afraid.
All of those things take you away from the actual reality.
Slow down. You look around.
You see your surroundings.
You realize that, physically, you are doing okay,
that beyond the fact that you're in a tiny box
and the door doesn't open when you want it to,
that there are other things that are working like a charm.
And if you get too anxious, your blood pressure will rise.
You can't sleep. You get headaches.
All sorts of different things happen to you.
So you think to yourself,
"In a normal set of circumstances,
what would I do to alleviate some of the anxieties?
I'd exercise.
"Okay, I'm gonna go for a walk in my cell."
An 8-1/2-foot cell is not very big,
but it's also big enough that you can walk from one side
to another, turn around, and do it again.
And something about that rhythm of staying in motion tricks
a part of your brain into thinking
that the circumstances you're in are not that abnormal.
So, whether or not it's okay to get angry
or sad, of course it is.
I was extremely pissed off. I was extremely scared.
I was extremely anxious about what was happening to my wife,
what the rest of my family thought was going on with me.
But I realized giving into those negative feelings
of anxiety, fear,
and anger is not gonna make them go away,
and it's also not going to help you cope
with the circumstances of the moment.
I could hear, sometimes, prisoners in cells nearby
wailing and crying
and, you know, begging to be released.
And I thought to myself, "Okay, if I start banging
my head against the wall or if I start screaming,
asking for someone to let me go,
is that gonna result in the thing that I want?
Absolutely not.
Let's slow this down.
This is just me," right?
You bring the world back to a world of the people
that you know and that you trust.
And, people, I'm suggesting that you get to know
and trust yourself more than anyone else.
When this is all over, if you're able to successfully do that
over the next few days,
weeks, months, you'll be a lot better for it.
We're not done, right?
Those of you who are asking yourself,
"Is it too soon to laugh?"
, it's never too soon to laugh.
Laugh and save your life.