Stressed, depressed or anxious? How lawyers can build resilience

Don’t back down under stress, or if you do, learn how to bounce back in a healthy way. Building resilience is important in any profession. Any professional, let’s say any person, needs to learn resilience. Why target the lawyers? His profession has one of the highest rates of depression and suicide of all professions. You may find that surprising. I found it shocking. I deal with multiple attorneys and consult with multiple attorneys on their cases. While I know you put up with a lot of abuse from clients, opposing attorneys, and the public, I didn’t realize how depressed your profession is. When I see them as clients, I see the toll this takes on the attorney and on their relationships with their friends and family. They may abuse alcohol, have affairs, or just burn out.

I began to ask, “What contributes to lawyers’ lack of resilience?” The following is an assumption. Not enough research has been done in this area. What lawyers have told me and what I have seen is that lawyers often have a hard time realizing how much stress they are under. They become desensitized to the amount of stress they experience.

They deal with daily

– change the legislation,

– dissatisfied customers,

– detailed paperwork where a mistake could have disastrous consequences,

– need for billable hours,

– need to find new customers,

– advocate for managing partners, supervisors and associates

– are asked to practice in areas they might not be familiar with,

– threats from clients and family members of clients,

So perhaps the question is, “What keeps lawyers in the legal profession?” Attrition is high in the profession. Consider the number of books written on keeping lawyers in the profession or helping lawyers transition to new careers available in bookstores and libraries.

Lawyers also experience stigma from colleagues and others if they admit to being so stressed that they are seeking help from an outside party, such as a therapist. I found out about a site for lawyers who are depressed from a client who happened to be a lawyer. This client, who had suffered from depression for years, revealed that he could not tell anyone for fear that it would affect the success of his practice. I greatly admired the site’s creator, Daniel T. Lukasik, Esquire for his courageous act of speaking out about depression.

How can you build resilience so you don’t experience a depressive episode or anxiety disorder? First, you must develop an awareness of the signs of stress. The following are symptoms of stress:

fatigue changes in sleep irritability apathy loss of concentration tension physical symptoms, such as pain, including headaches, that have no physical cause less desire to socialize than usual feeling overwhelmed

These are just a few. If you notice that over a period of time you are becoming increasingly disillusioned, even discouraged, by the idea of ​​spending the day at the office, you may be experiencing stress. Chronic stress is not only implicated in emotional disorders but also in physical illnesses. Stress can change our physiological chemistry, which in turn compromises your immune system. In short, you get sick.

Once you recognize one or two stress symptoms, you have time to decide how you want to relieve stress symptoms. Adding exercise, meditation, healthy eating, direct time with loved ones, and setting boundaries with your career are all ways you can start building a peaceful life. What if time is a factor in adding more activities? Learning to prioritize your activities so that you get the most profitable/energetic schedule is another way to reduce stress. If you’re taking good care of yourself, you’ll have less stress and more energy available for other activities. Do you remember the instructions on the plane? The oxygen mask is placed on the face first, then on the face of your child or loved one. If you can’t breathe, you can’t help others.

More difficult, but necessary to build resilience, is changing your mindset. Developing optimism is crucial for healthy resilience. While this sounds simple, changing behavior patterns isn’t easy. If attempts to change one or two patterns don’t alleviate your symptoms, seeking out an unbiased third party, such as a life coach or therapist, may help you discover what’s preventing you from making these changes. If you’re already experiencing more than one or two symptoms of stress, you may want to consider seeing a therapist. Trying to change established behavior patterns when you are highly stressed can be demoralizing because you don’t have the physical and emotional resources to do so. Would you expect your car to start if it had no oil, gas, engine, etc.? You would call for help starting your car, right? If you are stressed, depressed, or anxious, ask your spiritual advisor, coach, doctor, or therapist for help today.