Lawyer assistance organizations are hoping to spark conversation about a problem that all practicing attorneys experience but few openly discuss.
On Wednesday, the Colorado Attorney Mentoring Program and Colorado Lawyer Assistance Program collaborated to present a CLE on stress management. The hour-long seminar at the Ralph L. Carr Colorado Judicial Center was part of a Colorado “Lawyer Wellness Day” CAMP and COLAP promoted to raise the awareness of wellbeing in the state’s legal community.
“We know every lawyer struggles with stress issues, and we just don’t talk about it enough,” said CAMP executive director J. Ryann Peyton. “So part of the Wellness Day [is] just an opportunity to get the conversation going and put it out in the forefront.”
CAMP is a Colorado Supreme Court Program that connects lawyers with volunteer mentors to help their professional development.
COLAP is an independent program that assists legal professionals and law students with mental health and substance use issues. The organization often refers clients to a pool of mental health professionals that are particularly equipped to work with lawyers, judges and law students.
“Stress is actually more a mind game than anything,” COLAP clinical director Ron Wilcoxson said in opening his presentation. “There is good stress and there is bad stress. And the way that we define our own stress is going to determine how well we respond to that stress.”
Wilcoxson, a licensed professional counselor who previously worked as an emergency room therapist, talked about the physiological effects of stress in general, from back problems to difficulty sleeping. Stress can also hamper work performance; stressed attorneys often become too preoccupied with the “big picture” to be able to concentrate on small tasks, which makes it harder for them to remember detailed information, from people’s names to where they left their keys.
Wilcoxson offered some insights on how stress might affect attorneys in ways they’re not aware of and also some techniques for combating its negative effects.
Anger can be an addiction. So can stress.
If attorneys know someone — or perhaps even themselves — to be frequently angry, there’s a chance those people are actually addicted to that anger. Adrenaline and other chemicals flush through the body when a person feels anger, and when the body receives those chemicals frequently enough, it can develop a dependency. Some people will pick fights or raise conflict mostly to get another hit of adrenaline, Wilcoxson said.
“The problem is a lot of people like that addiction, especially lawyers,” Wilcoxson said. Attorneys can also have that same chemical dependency on stress, he added, and furthermore it’s often a claim to status among other overworked colleagues.
“It’s very common for people to be standing around and talking about how stressed they are … and the person who is most stressed, they’re the one who gets the badge of honor,” Wilcoxson said. “So we like that stress, and it’s an addiction. The question is are you addicted to your stress? Is it something you hold onto in your life?”
Your client’s stress is theirs, not yours
People can feel compelled to mimic the behavior or affect of the person they’re talking to, like feeling the need to yawn after the other person does.
That’s a function of mirror neurons in the brain, Wilcoxson said, which can spur attorneys to imitate some of the behaviors of the clients they’re talking to.
Those mirror neuron responses can be detrimental if the client is distressed, however. “You’re recognizing their stress, and you’re becoming stressed as well,” he said.
One way to avoid absorbing the client’s stress is simply to be aware of it — Wilcoxson said it’s important for attorneys to practice mentally separating their client’s stress from their own feelings, otherwise they might absorb that stress as secondary trauma. “If we’ve heard these horrible, horrible stories from clients over the years, we start taking in all that information ourselves, and we start to feel like we’re the ones being traumatized.”
Symptoms of secondary trauma — such as anxiety, nightmares, or weight loss or gain due to unintended changes in eating habits — are identical to those of trauma experienced first hand.
Deep breathing is key
Wilcoxson said one of the most effective relaxation techniques that stressed lawyers can use, which works anytime or anywhere, is deep breathing. He recommends a technique known as “square breathing,” where one inhales, holds the breath in, exhales, and then holds out the breath, counting to four at each step.
It helps to picture moving around a square, with each four-count step representing a side. Deeper breathing, Wilcoxson said, allows the brain to process more oxygen and achieve better focus as well as relaxation.
‘Rename’ your stress
There is such thing as “good” stress, or at least stress that doesn’t result in such damaging physiological effects, and the difference often lies in what people tell themselves about the stress they’re experiencing, Wilcoxson told Law Week.
When someone recognizes their body’s signals of shallow breathing, tensing muscles and other stress reactions, they can rebrand it in their mind as excitement or something less negative. But it doesn’t help to deny or ignore the stress entirely, he said. “You can’t say to your body, ‘I’m calm.’ That just doesn’t work because your body is sending all these signals to your brain already.”
Instead, people would do well to acknowledge the stress reactions but think of them as energizing — like being excited to give a presentation as opposed to being nervous, Wilcoxson said. “I can tell you I do that, and it works brilliantly.”
— Doug Chartier