If you are reading this, chances are you are feeling a bit frazzled.
You did your law degree, you went into practice full of shiny, good intentions, and now, in what feels like merely a blink of an eye, you are overworked, sleep-deprived, snapping at your loved ones, and thinking that maybe a career as a ‘Coach-in-Anything’ would be a good move.
Yes, you’d have to face the thinly veiled disbelief and disappointment of your parents/colleagues/old school friends/kids/random others you meet on the street. Yes, you’d have to explain to everyone including the postman, why you left The Law. Yes, you’d have to deal with your internal voice, the one that is always ready to sneer at you. But seriously, you know something is going to give soon and admit it, you’d rather it wasn’t you.
Well don’t despair, there is some good news. You can get your professional bounce back and we can help.
Who’s Drilling A Hole In My Hull?
There are a few sources of stress in the workplace – your Boss, your client, and your firm.
It’s important to think about them separately, because if you try and tackle all 3 things in one go, you are likely to just tip yourself over the edge quicker. Each of these issues requires a slightly different approach.
So, first things first: where is the source of your pain coming from?
Big Bad Boss
Now let’s say you are working with Atilla-The-Makes-My-Life-Miserable. You need to decide whether this is a ‘me’ problem or an ‘everyone in shouting distance to them’ problem. Your answer to that is the first step to working out what type of support and choices you need to make.
Once you have located the source of the tension, it is going to help you understand the limits of your power to control this situation. If you are the source of the interpersonal issues, there are many resources you can source to help you change, but if it’s them, that’s a whole different ball game and one that you are likely to need support to navigate.
It is a bitter pill to come to accept that you are working for someone who should come with a Health-and-Safety-At-Work-Warning and that, no amount of online courses to learn ‘People Management Techniques’ is going to change that. But if that’s who you are working with, you need to allow yourself to see this reality and not spend your time learning how to bend yourself into a pretzel just to survive. That takes outside support to guide you through.
Heartsink Client
Look, there’s no shame in admitting if you have one. Any professional worth their battle-front scars can wax lyrical about ‘those’ cases which drew emotional and psychological blood.
The important thing is to first recognise if you have one on your books and then, to give yourself permission to call in reinforcements. It doesn’t matter if you are a rookie who is cutting your teeth or a sabre-toothed old-timer, these cases can pop up at any point and cause just as much distress.
If you realise you have a client who is sucking all of your energy and keeping you up at night, you are going to need some help in categorising their psychology, as this is going to significantly impact your service delivery. Be warned, if you skip this step, the result is certainly lost time and additional stress for all involved.
Crap Culture
The truth is, some workplaces are a nightmare. They may have a glossy brochure. They may have a beautiful lobby. They may do internal well-being audits but, if you are seeing double because to get through the day you rely on caffeine, adrenaline, and gastric propulsion; then it’s time to consider if this is the place for you.
One of the biggest barriers I have to helping clients help themselves is getting them to accept that deciding to leave a workplace isn’t a failure but often the smartest move they can make.
If you keel over with mental health breakdown, stroke, or stress-induced heart failure, your workplace is not going to lose a step – other than a temporary administrative hole that needs to be filled, they will continue. You, on the other hand, well, you just might lose your life, and I am not speaking figuratively.
You need to ask yourself which you value more: your life or remaining in comfortable discomfort?
None Of The Above
‘But Dr. Anne, I love my job, I’m in my dream place, and every client I have is a total darling to work with (hmm, ok, whatever) so, why am I so stressed?’
Without enquiring too deeply as to your capacity to self-delude, what I would suggest is that you need a reset.
That is, it’s time to remember to do some basic well-being behaviours. And no, I’m not talking about planning to climb Kilimanjaro in your socks by this time next month, I just mean to start to take some simple steps towards better self-care.
Why should I care (about myself)?
Let’s get down to some brass tacks. Unless you’ve been living under a rock, then you can’t have failed to notice that every-Legal Governance-body is banging on about lawyer well-being. Why is this?
Simple: because, as an industry, your health is dreadful. You have off-the-chart levels of depression, anxiety, and addictions.
Now you may say, ‘Oh that’s all that post-COVID bandwagon stuff’.
Nope. It’s not. John Hopkins was publishing on this in the mid-1980s. If you want the numbers, message me, and I can bore you with stats.
The point is something isn’t going too well within the legal profession. And whilst I would love to announce that law firms have collectively woken up to the fact that: our most valuable asset is our staff and without them, we are sunk – even on my most optimistic day, I can’t see that happening any time soon. Instead, the legal industry is more likely to be faced with slow, scrappy cultural change.
Now you may be lucky enough to be beavering away in a little oasis of occupational health enlightenment, but chances are you aren’t. So, the bottom line is, it’s down to you: it’s all about personal health responsibility and eking out a bit of time every day to look after Number 1 (yeah, you).
Float the Boat
To help you do that, I’ve designed some free resources that you can dip into and learn about topics such as the importance of breathing; what anxiety really is (and more importantly what it isn’t); some handy tips on dealing with Difficult Individuals; and generally, small steps to improve your seaworthiness. I promise you these modules are not going to take a lot of your time and you may even get the odd ‘Ah harr!’ moment.
Remember you need to navigate by the Health Star – prevention is always better than cure and there is nothing more valuable than your health.
So, fellow seadogs, let’s cast off (Ok, ok. Agreed. Probably stretching the sailing metaphor to its limits now…)
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