work Archives - Lawyers With Depression

Depression’s Negative Thinking

Years ago, when I had just been told I had something called “depression,” I was having a tough time accepting it – after all, I was a litigator, a good-slinger extraordinaire. The only thing that I thought could bring me down was a lucky pistol shot at High Noon.

During a talk with my therapist in the beginning of my recovery a decade ago, I told him all the negative thoughts I was having about my life. My counselor, a large, white -bearded older man with an Obi Wan Kenobi-like aura, gently told me, “Dan that is depression talking.” Somehow that got through to me; somehow I knew it was true.

My counselor, pillar of Jedi knowledge that he was, had helped me look through a sort of psychic telescope into the constellation that was my patterns of depressive thinking. All people who have struggled with depression must do combat with their negative thoughts. They must – usually with a therapist’s help – begin to see that THEY are thinking these thoughts and they’re not just HAPPENING to them.

Negative Thoughts – and Lots of Them

It has been estimated that we have anywhere from 25,000 to 50,000 thoughts a day. If your ideas about life are predominantly downbeat, imagine how many negative thoughts you are generating daily—thousands upon thousands.

In the magazine Psychology Today, Hara Estroff Marano writes:

“One of the features of depression is pessimistic thinking. The negative thinking is actually the depression speaking. It’s what depression sounds like. Depression in fact manifests in negative thinking before it creates negative affect. Most depressed people are not aware that the despair and hopelessness they feel are flowing from their negative thoughts. Thoughts are mistakenly seen as privileged, occupying a rarefied territory, immune to being affected by mood and feelings, and therefore representing some immutable truth.

Compounding the matter is that negative thinking slips into the brain under the radar of conscious awareness and becomes one of the strongest of habit patterns. People generate negative thoughts so automatically they are unaware that it is happening; that it is actually a choice they are making.”

Lawyers are particularly prone to this type of pessimistic thinking which helps explain why their rates of depression are about twice that – twenty percent – of the general population.

In recent article in The Wall Street Journal wrote about this very topic:

“Martin E. P. Seligman, a psychologist and proponent of ‘positive psychology,’ observes that lawyers experience depression at rates that are 3.6 times as high as that of other employed people. They also abuse alcohol and illegal drugs at rates above what’s seen in non-lawyers. Why is this? In part, he says, the law selects people with a glass-half-empty attitude. His research has found that people who score low on an optimism test do better in law school. ‘Pessimism, he writes, ‘is seen as a plus among lawyers, because seeing troubles as pervasive and permanent is a component of what the law profession deems prudence.

A prudent perspective enables a good lawyer to see every conceivable snare and catastrophe that might occur in any transaction. The ability to anticipate the whole range of problems and betrayals that non-lawyers are blind to is highly adaptive for the practicing lawyer who can, by so doing, help his clients defend against these far-fetched eventualities. If you don’t have this prudence to begin with, law school will seek to teach it to you. Unfortunately, though, a trait that makes you good at your profession does not always make you a happy human being’’.

The Big Ten

For us to start making different choices about what kind of thoughts we think, it’s important to see the patterns, the way these false thought patters take place over and over again. Here are some examples of depressive thinking:

1. False extremes – “the tendency to evaluate [one’s own] personal qualities in extreme, black-and-white categories; shades of gray do not exist.”

2. False generalization – “after experiencing one unpleasant event, we conclude that the same thing will happen to us again and again.”

3. False filter – “we tend to pick out the negative in every situation and think about it alone, to the exclusion of everything else.”

4. False transformation – “we transform neutral or positive experiences into negative ones.”

5. False mind-reading – “we may think we can tell what someone is thinking about us, that the person hates us or views us as stupid. But such negative conclusions usually are not supported by the facts.”

6. False fortune-telling – “we expect catastrophe and the expectation itself produces hopelessness and helplessness.”

7. False lens – “we view our fears, errors, or mistakes through a magnifying glass and deduce catastrophic consequences. Everything then is out of proportion.”

8. False feelings-based reasoning – depressed persons “tend to take their emotions as the truth. They let their feelings determine the facts.”

9. False “shoulds” – “Our lives may be dominated by ‘shoulds’ or ‘oughts,’ applied to ourselves or others. This heaps pressure on us and others to reach unattainable standards.”

10. False responsibility – “when we assume responsibility and blame ourselves for a negative outcome, even when there is no basis for this.”

A common theme running through much of this type of thinking is a self-judgment of inadequacy and, as a result, the depressed person notices negative, misfortunate circumstances but ignores positive, fortunate circumstances.

Overachievers and perfectionist that they are, depressed lawyers may frequently receive positive feedback concerning his or her performance at work. For example, a depressed lawyer may have a caseload of one hundred cases. He might have the upper hand on 90%, but struggles with the 10%. This lawyer sees his struggle with the handful of cases as confirming what a loser he or she is, incompetent and unable to keep up “like everyone else.” The many positive comments made by colleagues or staff are not even remembered.

Because of the belief that he or she is inadequate, and his or her tendency to only notice negative experiences, the future is viewed as certain to be gloomy, dismal, and painful: “I’ll never make partner,” “I suck as a lawyer.”

Negative thinking sounds, to the outside observer, to be obviously false or negatively skewed. If so, just why do depressives repeatedly think like this over and over again? Are they idiots?

No, it’s because depressive thinking is “automatic.” It is not the result of thinking the situation through objectively – ironically enough, something lawyers are trained to do.

It just happens rapidly without any reflection.

So it’s the event itself that is sad, not life in general. And even if this thought or feeling arises, it is only temporary.

Depressive thinking leads to depression, leads to depressive thinking, leads to. . .

As we explain these thinking styles you will see how each helps to maintain depression, by altering how we perceive reality.

It’s these thinking styles that make it so hard to see an end to the depression, as they limit our possibilities of thought. Once these patterns take hold, the emotional arousal they cause begins to affect us physically.

If you are thinking now “Yeah, but you don’t know my life” – remember: there is nothing so awful that you can imagine that someone somewhere hasn’t survived without becoming depressed.

It is not your fault if you are depressed, but there are concrete, effective things you can do about it.

How to Kick Negative Thinking’s Butt

Again, Estroff Marrano offers some ways to combat negative thoughts:

Distract yourself. Engaging, pleasant activities, such as exercise or hanging out with friends, are best. Once you are feeling more positive, you will be better able to solve problems.
Stop that train of thought. Think or even tell yourself “Stop!” or “No!” when you start to ruminate.
Write it down. Tracking your ruminative thoughts in a journal can help you overcome depression by organizing those thoughts and relieving yourself of their burden.
Solve a problem. Even taking a small step toward solving one problem that is weighing you down will help with overcoming depression. Data show a strong link between goals you cannot achieve and depression-inducing ruminative thinking, so start problem solving.
Identify triggers. Figure out which places, times, situations, or people are most likely to cause a bout of rumination, and find ways to avoid those triggers or manage them better. Mornings and evenings are the times when ruminative thinking is most likely.
Meditate. Mindfulness techniques can help you get some distance from the thoughts that trouble you, while at the same time reducing stress.
Stop linking small goals to big goals. For example, you may need to challenge a belief that achieving big goals (such as happiness) completely depends on succeeding at smaller goals (such as losing five pounds).
Get therapy. Seek cognitive therapy techniques to help you question your thoughts and find alternative ways of viewing your situation.

Try, day by day, to chip away at the conclusion that depression just happens to you, or that it’s just a disease. Try to remember, that whatever it’s causes, negative thinking is a powerful fuel to help it arise and keep it going. Think about it.

The Suicide of a Lawyer with Depression — Ken’s Story

This is a guest blog by Cincinnati, Ohio attorney Tabitha M. Hochscheid, Esq., a partner at the law firm of Cohen, Todd, Kite & Stanford, LLC. In this moving tribute, she writes about her law partner and dear friend Ken Jameson who committed suicide in May of 2011 after a battle with depression.

How well do we know those with whom we spend our work days with? Is it possible to practice with someone and be there friend for years yet, not truly know that they are suffering from the depths of depression? Being around other attorneys can give us the camaraderie and support we need to grow and build our practice. But, often times, people keep their emotional health a secret and suffer from depression in silence. By the time their colleagues realize what is going on, it can be too late to do anything about it. My partner and friend Ken Jameson was one of the people. This is his story.

Ken Jameson was, by outward appearances, successful, well liked, a loving husband and father, a friend to everyone and a dependable partner. In fact, Ken was perhaps the epitome of the well liked, client centered and dedicated lawyer many of us envision when we think of how lawyers should behave. On the inside, however, Ken was struggling with the depression which eventually took his life.

I first met Ken in the summer of 2007 for breakfast to discuss my interest in joining Cohen, Todd, Kite and Stanford, LLC. Ken was so easy to talk to and we instantly bonded because he too had left a small firm to find a place to grow and build his practice at Cohen, Todd, Kite & Stanford, LLC. After I joined the firm in January 2008, Ken was always available to help and support me and we grew into friends, as well as, colleagues.

Like so many attorneys, Ken built a practice by creating a network of referrals, by giving his clients personal service and building long term relationships. He was an attorney who facilitated resolutions and provided estate plans for people of all income levels. Ken enjoyed his work. After joining the firm himself in 2006, his practice thrived. He became a trusted member of the firm and was on the management committee. Ken shared is life outside of the office with his wife and best friend of 35 years, Betsy, and three adult children of whom he was most proud.

Ken was a universally well liked person. He conducted himself professionally in such a way that he never seemed to have conflicts with others. Ken cared about his firm family, he always checked in on people if they were sick or if he knew you were under stress. He was active member in his Church. Ken took care of his physical health by walking 5 miles a day, attending Pilates classes twice a week and maintaining a healthy diet. By all outward appearances, Ken had success in his work, a happy home life and seemed content.

However, Ken had underlying mental health issues. Like many attorneys he had trouble sleeping well. Sleep is something that eludes most attorneys from time to time, but his type of sleep loss was chronic. He would fall asleep and wake up in just a few hours and not be able to go back to sleep. As long as I knew Ken, he had this issue. He tried relaxation techniques to help him sleep better, he read books about stress management and attempted to delegate work to others. Ultimately, Ken was a self confessed perfectionist and as such, had an inner critic who told him he had to be at work all the time.

Most lawyers struggle with the challenges of building a law practice, client demands and finding out how to have precious downtime. Ken was doing all the right things, but he still wasn’t able to sleep. In March of this year, he took time out of the office due to exhaustion. He went to see his family doctor and was prescribed something for sleep. He tried to come back to the office part time within a few weeks but was unable to sustain a schedule. Ken represented to those of us at work that he was exhausted and initially did not tell others what was really going on.

In late April, he left the office again. This time it was lack of sleep and a pinched a nerve in his back. With this new medical issue, his depression worsened. He spent sometime in the hospital to adjust to new medications and was scheduled for back surgery. At this point, Ken began expressing worry about the office and felt as if he was letting the firm down. Finally, Ken had back surgery for the pinched nerve in the middle of May. After the surgery, Ken seemed to be doing better; everyone thought his return to the office was imminent.

Ken never returned to the office. On Sunday, May 22, 2011, I received a call from our office manager. She informed me that Ken’s depression had worsened and that he had taken his own life that morning. As the next few days unfolded, details began to surface. Ken underwent surgery on his back and in the days following the procedure, had checked in with people at the office and had seemed like his old self. Ken also visited his mother and called his best friend. All the while, Ken meticulously planned how to take his own life.

No one can answer the question of what was going through his head or why he was in such despair that he took his life. The next five days were difficult at the office. People were in a state of shock and disbelief. His office door has remained open since Monday, May 23, 2011. A memorial was held the Saturday following his death and it was standing room only. Ken clearly touched the lives of thousands and his life was remembered in eulogies by his friends, his sister and his wife. It was touching to see so many people who loved him, but the confusion as to what occurred actually increased for many.

Do you ever really know the people we practice law with? Everyone at the office felt they had a personal relationship with Ken. But, did anyone of us really know what was happening. It is easy now to look back and see the signs of Ken’s illness (sleep deprivation, self criticism, feeling of letting others down, a search for answers and inability to allow others to help) and to wonder what if anything could have changed the outcome. Time, however, does not give us this luxury and these questions will never be answered. The best that can be done is to acknowledge that Ken’s illness, depression, can be deadly.

It seems that our profession gives little in return for years of hard labor. Learning a way to balance the demands of the business of being a lawyer with the need for downtime is essential to one’s mental and physical health. Ken’s depression is an all too real downside of the practice of law. His suicide is a tragedy to his family, our law firm and to the legal community. He was one of the “good” guys and the profession needs more people like him.

For those of us left behind we struggle for understanding and to carry on in spite of the sadness we each feel. Inevitably when speaking with others we are confronted with the questions of why? Most people will ask the normal questions – were there money problems, did he have marital problems or health issues. The answer to these questions is no and then people just cannot fathom why Ken chose to end his life. I know in my heart that, as the minister said during his memorial, that Ken felt he was “fixing” the situation. Ken was a fixer and this was his only choice left.

I’ll always miss Ken Jameson. The courage and commitment he showed to his clients, his family and those of us in business with him is something I admire. However, his suffering in silence has left me and his other colleagues with regrets as to what we could have done to help. In the end, however, Ken could not give himself permission to be less than perfect and eventually, felt those in his life were better off without him. It is truly a sad ending to a beautiful life that could have been prevented. My hope in sharing Ken’s story is that there will be greater recognition of depression and the despair that can accompany and that it will help someone struggling with these issues. As for Ken, I hope he has found the peace that life did not provide.

Editors note — If you or someone you know suffers from depression and may have thought about suicide, visit the website of the national organization The American Association of Suicidology which contains great information, resources and how to get help. Lawyers can also contact Lawyer Assistance Programs in their legal community. To locate a program near you, visit the ABA’s Commission on Lawyer Assistance Programs website.

How Stress and Anxiety Become Depression

Lawyers suffer from depression at an alarming rate. I am one of them.

I have been a litigator for more than 22 years, and I didn’t suffer depression in the beginning of my career. But I did have trouble managing the stress of my practice.

Over time, this constant stress developed into anxiety. I started feeling like I couldn’t control everything. I would go to bed fearing the problems and disasters to confront me the next morning. After years of this, the pendulum swung from states of anxiety to states of depression. Why did this happen? It took me a long time to understand.

Recently, scientists have been focusing on the connection between stress and anxiety and the role they play in triggering and maintaining depression. This is something that should be of concern to all lawyers, who carry high stress loads in their law practices.

Too Much Stress Can Lead to Anxiety

“Stress” is anything in our environment that knocks our bodies out of their homeostatic balance. Stress responses are the physiological adaptations that ultimately reestablish balance. Most of the time, our bodies do adapt, and a state of balance is restored. However, “if stress is chronic, repeated challenges may demand repeated bursts of vigilance,” warns Dr. Robert Sapolsky, an expert on stress-related illnesses and author of the best-selling book, Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers: An Updated Guide to Stress, Stress Related Diseases and Coping. “At some point, vigilance becomes over-generalized, leading us to conclude that we must always be on guard – even in the absence of stress. And thus the realm of anxiety is entered,” writes Sapolsky.

About 20% of the population will experience some form of anxiety disorder at least once in their lifetime. Studies show that law students and lawyers struggle with anxiety at twice that rate.

Anxiety and Depression

Stress went on too long in my life as a litigator. I had, indeed, entered the realm of anxiety. I felt like I had a coffee pot brewing 24/7 in my stomach. I became hypervigilant; each file on my desk was like a ticking time bomb about to go off. At some point, the anxiety made me dysfunctional, and I was unable to do as much as I had before. I felt ashamed of this. I denied it to myself and hid it from others, but the litigation mountain became harder and harder to climb as the anxiety persisted over a period of years.

Sapolsky writes, “If the chronic stress is insurmountable, it gives rise to helplessness. This response, like anxiety, can become generalized: A person can feel . . . at a loss, even in circumstances that [he or] she can actually master.” Helplessness is one pillar of a depressive disorder that becomes a major issue for lawyers because we think of ourselves as invulnerable superheroes who are the helpers, not the ones in need of help. Lawyers often don’t get help for their depression and feel ashamed if they do.

Many lawyers do not appreciate the connection between their stress and anxiety and their risk for developing clinical depression. But the occurrence of anxiety disorder with major depression is frequent; in fact, 60 percent of people with depression are also suffering from an anxiety disorder.

Maybe this connection helps explain studies that find such high rates of both anxiety and depression in the legal profession.

Depression “is stress that has gone on too long,” according to Dr. Richard O’Connor author of the book Undoing Perpetual Stress: The Missing Connection between Depression, Anxiety, and 21st Century Illness. Many people with depression have problems dealing with stress because they aren’t “stress resilient,” writes O’Connor. It’s not some central character flaw or weakness, but a complex interplay bewteen genetics and one’s experiences over a lifetime.

How our bodies and brains deal with stress and anxiety hasn’t changed much in the last 10,000 years. This wonderful defense mechanism, which is wired into our nervous system, is called the fight-or-flight response. When confronted with a threat – – whether real or perceived – – this response kicks in and initiates a sequence of nerve cell firing and chemicals like adrenaline, noradrenaline and cortisol that flood into our bloodstream and propel us into action to meet a threat. This was an essential survival device for our ancestors who lived in the jungle and would have to flee beasts or fight foes trying to kill them.

Lawyers don’t fact these types of real life-or-death threats. But they perceive life-or-death threats in their battles with opposing counsel while sitting in a deposition or sparring in the courtroom. Our bodies respond as if we were being chased by a hungry lion. Accordingly, the stress response can be set in motion by mere anticipation, and when humans chronically believe that a homeostatic challenge is imminent, they develop anxiety.

Over time, this chronic anxiety causes the release of too much fight-or-flight hormones. Research has shown that prolonged release of too much cortisol damages areas of the brain that have been implicated in depression: the hippocampus (involved in learning and memory) and the amygdala (a fear processing hub deep in the brain). Another area of the brain, the cingulate (an emotion-dampening center located near the front of the brain), in tandem with the amygdala, helps set the stage for depression.

Lawyers need to learn better ways to deal with stress and anxiety to avoid the multiple triggers that can cause or exacerbate clinical depression. Turning and facing those things that make us stressed and anxious, and doing something about it, gives us the best protection against depression.

My Desk, My Enemy: 6 Helpful Ways to Get Organized

I spend time – too much it – trying to keep my desk in check.

Like a taciturn child, it erupts with tantrums of disorganization. The fact that it’s a mess today seems unfair, as if a hole suddenly formed in the ceiling above me and dropped a cache of briefs, case opinions and half-used legal pads onto my workspace.

I shuffle the papers that lay before me. They look back at me. Ten minutes go by. I reshuffle everything all over again. Sound familiar?

Mind you, on the Clutter-o-Scale, my desk is only a 4 out of 10. If so, why the grief?

Some of my angst comes from having trouble finding things. But an equal measure comes from the sense that I should be more organized. We have made a religion out of organization in this country which has sprouted temples of crazed worship like The Container Store or Organize.com. Maybe this growth industry is in reaction to how much stuff/junk/information we like or have to obtain and perpetually reorganize. This mania has even spawned an inane reality T.V. show “Hoarders.”

Too many things compete for lawyers’ attention besides the usual culprits of returning phone calls, court appearances and last minute deadlines. When you add a messy desk to an already stressed-out life, well, it becomes the enemy.

Desks are the pedestals of our productivity. How we organize the stuff on them has a big effect on how well or if we get things done in a timely fashion. But just as important as these practical concerns is the impact it has on our mental health.

What is your Organizational Style?

According to Kelly Lynn Anders in her book The Organized Lawyer, “Not everyone prioritizes about what the eye needs to feel relaxed. Some ideas work for some and not for others. That’s why it’s important to know your type.” She identifies four types of organizers:

Stackers organize by topic in stacks. They are visual and tactile and like to give the appearance of order. The busier these people are, the more stacks they have.

Spreaders are visual like stackers, but must be able to see everything they’re working on.

Free Spirits keep very few personal belongings around the work area. They like new ideas and keep reports, books, articles and magazines near.

Pack Rats have emotional ties to things. They like the feeling of fullness around them and like to tell stories about what’s in the office.

Which type are you? She has a lot of useful suggestions, among them is color coding files. On her own desk, she keeps commonly used files close at hand. Because she identifies herself as a “stacker,” Anders avoids cabinets and other hidden spaces for her files. “The reason I don’t have a lot of hidden storage is stackers have a tendency to squirrel things away,” she said. Check out some of her other suggestions at her website.

A Contrarian Point of View

Einstein considered his cluttered desk a help rather than a hindrance to his prodigious creativity.

While we don’t have his brain’s elephantine computing power, it’s worth considering that your desk mess might not be so bad after all.

Dr. Jay Brand, a psychology professor, argues that a squeaky clean desk doesn’t always equate with a productive employee. It can actually hinder personal efficiency because a person’s desk is an extension of his/her mind. That’s because our human memory has a limited capacity, or finite ‘cells’ available for storage and since most people do multiple things at once they almost immediately ramp their working memory to capacity. They need a place to park some of the information from their working memory into the environment and what more logical place than their desks?

According to Dr. Brand, “these cluttered desks that people use to store information from their working memory are called ‘cognitive artifacts’, and they expand a person’s capacity to think and utilize the environment”. He argues that companies with clean desk policies waste time by requiring workers to clean up their cognitive artifacts every night and re-clutter them the next morning. He points out that everyone has a different working style and piles can be organized topically, chronologically, or according to an individual system. As long as the pile means something to the person who made it, it is effective.

I’ve known plenty lawyers in this group. But I ain’t one of them. Maybe it has to do with my own depression over the years. Or, as Kelly Anders suggests, it’s just my type that determines how I lay out the work space in front of me.

The Depressed Desk

When a lawyer has depression, motivation and organization are BIG problems. A lack of energy blunts motivation. We already know that it’s a good idea to keep our desk together, but there simply isn’t much neurochemical juice to get it done. But, time or a court’s scheduling order waits for no one. If we don’t keep the paperwork on the conveyor moving, we end up a casualty of our work days and add to the stress/anxiety/depression mix.

In her book Get it Done When You’re Depressed, Julie Fast writes:

“Many people equate depression with the inability to work. In reality, the problem is often the inability to feel like working. People who are depressed assume that their lack of motivation is a sign of weakness, and if they could just buck up a bit, they would be more productive. But waiting until you feel like doing something is the single biggest mistake you can make when you’re depressed and need to get things done.”

Yes, we need to start working in spite of our desire not to. Dr. John Preston, in the same book, elaborates further:

“Depressed people find it very hard to ignite this self-generated action due, in large part, to decreased metabolic functioning in the frontal lobes of their brain, which are responsible for initiating behavior. So if a person waits a long time and not only not accomplish the non-rewarding tasks but also miss out on the big projects that can bring big rewards.”

So it appears that folks who aren’t depressed and are motivated people have ramped up brain metabolism. I’m envious. Yet, there is something we can do about it. As I’ve written about before, consistent exercise helps boost the happy chemicals in our brains, jacks up metabolism and improves our motivation and focus. Moving is motivating.

We must outfox depression. It would have us do nothing. So we must do something. When I apply this simple wisdom to my day, I’m always pleasantly surprised at how my feelings catch up with my doing and how my doing affects my feelings.

My experience during bogged down moods, was that I’d get most things done, but it would take lots of energy. When I’d come home from work, I’d be spent.

Six Simple Solutions

I agree with an observation made by Leo Babauta on his blog Zen Habits: “The most important thing to remember is that you must have a system in place, and you must teach yourself to follow the system. Otherwise, you just clean your desk, and it gets messy again”.

Here are a couple of tried and true tips that have helped me:

1. Get rid of all those pens. Only keep three or four. More than that, and there’s too much ink in your work space. If you love pen, keep your stash at home. I often troll the pen aisle at Office Max — strange, but true. So I know how difficult it is to part with them.

2. Take home any books that you don’t use on a regular basis. It’s just more clutter and keeps you from easily putting your hands on the important stuff you need to do your job.

3. Hide cords – these are like a floating octopi with tenticles that seemingly go everywhere. Use twist-ties or coil your cords up.

4. Only keep on your desk what you need for that day. Then section off your desk and workspace so that everything has a specific space.

5. Have a dump day. Take everything off your desk and out of your drawer and then put it in a big pile. Then, sort through what is garbage and what you really need throughout the workday.

6. Schedule a date and time to clean your desk. Ideally, at the end of a workday. Weather permitting, do it on Friday’s around 4 so that I start my Monday fresh.

The Company We Keep

Life is partly what we make it, and partly what it is made by the friends we choose – Tennessee Williams, playwright

People in and out of the law often ask, “What causes such high rates of depression in the legal profession?”

I’ve written about some of the causes in law students (too much competition and too little feedback), lawyers (chronic stress which changes brain chemistry) and judges (loneliness that can contribute to and/or help cause a depressive episode).

There’s another dimension to it, though. It’s the company we keep. It’s not just the rough and tumble of fighting with opposing counsel that grinds on lawyers’ mental health. It can also be more subtle forces . . . like our colleagues.

When we’re depressed, it’s like we’ve jumped out of a plane and are in free fall. We lose our sense of perspective and hope as we speed towards the ground trying to untangle our chute.

Hanging out with cynical lawyers is like jumping out of that plane after they’ve just handed you an anvil. This only adds more weight onto the backs of lawyers who may be already struggling to get out from under depression’s shoe. The grousing of other attorneys is unhealthy for a depressive because it only serves to reinforce their pessimistic view of the universe.

Behind Closed Doors

Over the years, my door has been a revolving one. You know there’s trouble when a colleagues enter, give you a conspiratorial glance and silently shut the door behind themselves. Often – too often – it’s to replay negative experiences they’ve had at work and how unhappy they are. They’re usually not looking for solutions as much as collusions; confirmation that others don’t like their law jobs either and that everyones common fate in the law is misery.

A lawyer friend of mine, who used to meet me for coffee, would tell me how unhappy he was in his job. “Most people are assholes in this field,” he would snort. I’d then tell him about all of the positive experiences I have had — and still enjoyed — with other lawyers. He looked like he was listening, but he had already tuned out. It simply didn’t confirm his dreary conclusions about his professional life. As if he hadn’t heard me, he’d just return to his diatribe about how much being a lawyer sucks.

I sometimes have difficulty saying “no” to people and setting appropriate limits. Especially, when I sense they’re in trouble like my friend in the above story. But, I finally concluded that I wasn’t helping matters for my friend or myself. He didn’t want to change his mind or explore options. And the exchanges only served to bring me down. I let the friendship go because I needed to set boundaries. I just couldn’t spend more time with my friend. I needed to spend time around others who, while they may be in distress, want to change and heal. Or just hang out with others who enjoyed life and had never been despressed.

Lunchtime

Bitching about the law is common fare when lawyers break bread; a midday break which leaves one with a sort of indigestion of the mind.

These brothers and sisters in arms – those who we toil beside in the legal trenches – are usually good people. But, that doesn’t change the fact that their inner discontent isn’t good for us.

We tend to hang out with the same people every day for lunch. We do so because of flat-out inertia or we just don’t know what else to do with ourselves and, well, just drift into it. I recall the times in my career when I did this too much. My cadre of complaining colleagues ramped up my stress level to the point where I felt compelled to unload. This becomes a chorus of woe because complaining just breeds more . . . complaining.

In her book The (Un)happy Lawyer: A Roadmap to Finding Meaningful Work Outside of the Law, Monica Parker, a Harvard Law graduate, recommends ditching your lawyer friends:

“I’m betting a lot of the people you know are lawyers. How many of them are happy practicing law? I can count the happy lawyers I know on one hand. How many of them are successful at finding other opportunities? Expecting these people to help you make a career change is the proverbial blind leading the blind. The miserable leading the miserable blind, actually.”

Afterward my lunches, I’d walk back to my office feeling hollow and dispirited. I kept making resolutions to not join in the negative banter. When that failed, I just decided I had to begin to break away. This involved setting up a different routine – lunch with non-lawyers, the library, church or catching up of work at Starbucks. They didn’t know why I had stopped going to lunch. But, like everything else in life, they got used to it. If I had to have lunch with them for some work-related problem, I tried to have it with only one person from this group. It was less overwhelming when dealing with only one person’s negative views on reality and gave me a fighting chance to interject some positive elements in a way I couldn’t with the lunchtime crowd. If all else failed, I e-mailed or sent memos.

Some Food for Thought

Pick a person who you admire or who has a career that they like or love. What do they like about it? Are there some habits they have which make them happy at work, even small ones, which you can apply to your law career?

Negativity feeds on itself. Notice that when you don’t join in the gripe, how it brings down the fervor of your day a notch. Moreover, when we don’t participate in it, we feel a little lighter than if we had. Try it and see for yourself.

When we are depressed, we go into a default mode. We don’t deliberate about going into a dark mood, so much as fall into it. There are so many triggers that cause depression that we can feel we’re being shot at from all sides. We commonly succumb. The time to work our way through this swamp is not when we’re under depression’s spell. We must prepare beforehand. Write it out a self-care plan which includes positive people.

One thing that I’ve found particularly helpful is a reminder from my psychologist that we’re always observing ourselves as we behave. For example, when we work out, we observe ourselves doing something good for our body. Not participating or setting limits on colleagues dumping their negativity on us makes us feel more in control of our life and positive. This simple approach can dispel the hopelessness that so often accompanies depression. Another why of skinning the cat of depression – which requires more practice than getting to the gym for most of us – is to describe the good parts only when you are talking about situations. In her book The 10 Best-Ever Depression Management Techniques, Margaret Wehrenberg writes:

“Get into the habit of reviewing what went right in any situation – observe what worked out fine despite stumbling blocks along the way. For people with depression this may take some practice! You are probably accustomed to instead focusing on what went wrong. But ignoring what satisfies you can be a trigger to depressed mood. So learn to rate your experiences of what went right rather than on what went wrong.”

Finally, think about joining a depression support group. While people can and do talk about difficult and sometimes painful things, the emphasis is a constructive one – learning to deal with your law job in a more constructive way so as not to facilitate a depressive episode or getting support in coming out of one. It’s important to join one because depression can be so isolating. Being part of a group teaches you that other people understand and truly care about you. You can find a lawyer support group near you by contacting your state’s Lawyer Assistance Program. If your community doesn’t have one, or you’d rather not go to a group with other lawyers, check out the Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance website which has support groups all over the country.

Search out warm hearts and contented others whether in the law or not. They’re out there. Your happiness depends on it.

Nobody’s Perfect

Striving for excellence motivates you; striving for perfectionism is demoralizing — Harriet Braiker, Ph.D.

Nobody’s perfect – that’s why we have erasers. Yet nowhere on this sweet blue orb are there more people driven to perfection than attorneys.

It’s really not surprising, after all. We work with laws, rules and regulations: ancient tomes, incantations and idealizations about how our society expects folks to behave. When one acts outside the proscribed rules, one’s in violation, negligent or culpable. When this happens, people turn to a lawyer and expect him or her to get the job done – and flawlessly.

It’s easy to calm our fears with the wilted wisdom, “Well, everybody makes mistakes.” But things can and do go terribly wrong when we make mistakes – and we can and do make them. Things can go quickly awry despite our best efforts and work.

Lawyers are on edge because they feel if they’re not perfect, they’ll fall over the edge. Besides the inner stress, there is the outer pressure to keep a calm and cool façade lest our clients and colleagues lose faith in us.

I’m a perfectionist to the core. In a sense, it’s great because I take pride in my craft as a lawyer. I love the look and feel of good work well done. I can take it too far though – I can get so keyed up about churning out a masterpiece that I lose perspective; I lose sense of the possibly that the judge and his clerk might skip over seventy-five percent of my brilliant delineations of a statute’s historic origins, that the seventh draft of a motion isn’t always much better than the fourth and that there’s real value in not deliberating too much, but simply getting things done.

In a great piece in the A.B.A. Journal entitled, Three Deadly Ps: Perfectionism, Procrastination, and Paralysis, Rebecca Nerison, Ph.D. maps out why too many cracks at perfection can lead to procrastination and then paralysis, a veritable seizing up of our work motor:

Procrastination is an occupational hazard for lawyers. Procrastination robs lawyers of peace of mind. It’s difficult to feel happy, healthy, and successful when you are forever putting off what needs to be done. We procrastinate when we feel anxious about a task, when we’re bored with it, or when we’re tired. In any event, procrastination is about avoidance. Avoidance allows us to temporarily escape the fear, boredom, or fatigue we anticipate as we contemplate the task. We are immediately relieved from the unpleasant feeling. We get to feel good instead of bad.

A dilatory dodge of our work just leads to more problems down the road. We need to take stock and see perfectionism for what it is: avoidance behaviors that rob us of energy and a sense of competency that comes from getting things done. My psychologist, a wizard of the human psyche, once observed that it’s critically important to observe ourselves engaging in healthy behavior. We build a sort of healthy resume of concrete things we do on a daily basis so that we can confidently say to ourselves, “I’m a person who get things done.” Just as procrastination is a vicious circle, not procrastinating is a healthy one.

We really need to let perfection go and let our humanity seep into our daily work; a humanity that while imperfect, is full of good humor, irony and outright silliness.

When we ignore this essential truth, we press down too hard on the gas pedal and our – and our secretary’s lives – are made miserable. Anne Lamott, author of the wonderful book Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith wrote:

Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life and it is the main obstacle between you and a shitty first draft. I think perfectionism is based on the obsessive belief that if you run carefully enough, hitting each stepping-stone just right, you won’t have to die. The truth is that you will die anyway and that a lot of people who aren’t even looking at their feet are going to do a whole lot better than you, and have a lot more fun.

What would the opposite of perfect be? Maybe just human – and that’s humbling. When we try to be perfect, we are too locked into a view of ourselves as the center of the Universe.

We’re not gods, but in reality vulnerable creatures.

I wonder if God has a sense of humor. How could he not given this goofy planet. Even Jesus knew how to party when he turned water into wine at a wedding.

We lose perspective with depression – we forget to play. Richard O’Connor, Ph.D., once observed:

Most of us have to learn to take better care of ourselves. One way is by spending more time in play. The perfectionist, the depressive, the person who thinks he doesn’t deserve to feel pleasure, believes that he’d better never let his guard down, always busy, always productive. But it’s a joyless if all we care about is getting the work done. Something as simple as playing catch with the dog for a few minutes after work connects us with a part of ourselves we can lose only too easily – the child who can laugh, who can enjoy silliness, mindless physical activity. Tomfoolery is just as much a part of life as our lamentable laments. It’s uncomplicated, mischievous good fun that puts us into contact with our ageless inner child who wants to come out and play. He or she is there – if you just look inside. We need to open that door; we need to let some fresh air in.

William James once wrote “Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humor is just common sense, dancing.”

So kick off those Oxford and Manolo Blahnik shoes . . . and start to rumba.

It’s About Time

Half our life is spent trying to find something to do with the time we’ve rushed through life trying to save – Will Rogers

Time is the enemy of our synapse challenged world. This beast is always just a step behind us; we keep losing ground as it nips at our heels and bears its sharp fangs. We tap on the brakes to try and slow down, but even the vacations and weekends aren’t always terribly relaxing. We attempt to break apart our days into manageable segments or, as the poet T.S. Eliot once wrote, “Measure out our lives with coffee spoons.”

We often experience time as a force outside of ourselves; as if the clicking clock on the wall or Timex on our wrist had its own personhood that nags at us: “Do this not that, wait, what about that other that?” There is the visceral sensation that everything – everything – must be done NOW. We spin like a top trying to take it all in. We labor to manage our time while our nervous systems overload, toasted to a crisp in the microwave of our modern times.

No doubt most folk dream of chucking it all; of hopping on a Jumbo 747 to Italy to sip Chianti in a verdant field near a Tuscan village – hence the popularity of the best-selling book and movie, “Eat, Pray, Love.” But most of us will never go aerial; we soldier on and muddle our way through our lives as best we can. This becomes all the more a sticky wicket when life’s engine seizes up in the throes of a murky anxiety and/or depression. Trying to stop this pain moves to the top of our priority list; we hammer away at it, but sometimes it just won’t relent.

We feel that we must figure out our sorrow and mind-bending stress before time runs out and we find ourselves in a real pickle: “If only I didn’t feel stressed and depressed, I could get all this shit done!”

In his book, You Can Feel Better Again, Richard Carlson, Ph.D., writes:

When you feel down, depressed, or blue, there is a strong tendency to try to figure out why you are feeling the way you do and to try to do something about it. The worse you feel, the stronger the urge. Many times, particularly with regard to a ‘depressed’ person, this need to escape from the way you are feeling is ‘urgent’. One of the tricks to overcoming depression, or even extended low moods, is to learn to relax when you feel down – having faith that the low period will pass if you are able to leave it alone and do nothing. The important point to remember is: The factor that keeps you feeling down is your reaction to the ‘urgency’ you feel.’

I love this psychological approach: I had never thought of my reaction to my depression as “urgent”, but so often it is. Depression’s five alarm pain can burn down even our best laid plans. We think that the way to stop this unruly visitor is to squash it, when we might be better served by waiting it out.

Today, walking up a leafy sidewalk thinking about past fall memories, I said to myself, “I accept where I am right now.” And I really meant it. It calmed me. I accepted all that lay in front of me today. This gave me a sense of peace and rootedness. I somehow felt a kinship with the blowing trees who so timelessly anchor themselves in the rich brown soil.

Take time for yourself today. Take time to appreciate your daily bread – moment by moment – because it’s the only loaf of time you’ve got. There is much to be appreciated beyond depression’s grasp or the clatter of our anxiety. Depression, stress and anxiety do not last forever; there are gaps – some shorter or longer – between these turbulent emotional states. Learn to see that this is so.

Sometimes, I catch myself. I sense that I have let hours whizz by without having paid attention to neither my life nor a scintilla of the dear people and events that surround me. I had lived too much in my head. We all need to step out of the limitations of our own thoughts and through the portal of all the rich possibilities and blessings that lay both within and without in the time we’ve been given.

Grinding in the Wheels of Depression

Every time a person gets depressed, the connections in the brain between mood, thoughts, the body, and behavior get stronger, making it easier for depression to be triggered again. At the earliest stages in which mood starts spiraling downward, it is not the mood that does the damage, but how we react to it. – The Mindful Way through Depression.

It has been estimated that the human brain kicks out about 50,000 thoughts per day. A majority of them for lawyers with depression are negative and pessimistic; they spin in our minds like gears in a machine. They lack an essential truth and vitality – – they’re almost parasitic – – and can suck the life right out of us. Unmoored from the shore of everyday reality, depressive ruminations calcify and harden us to our own humanity, to the beauty of others and the joy of living one’s life.

Your thoughts are rooted in your personal beliefs, morals, and principles. They are your opinions of your inner self and the outside world. Every thought you have is personal. Each one is reflective of your curiosity, experiences, and the random actions of your brain cells. Everybody has times when they get caught up in some negativity. But depression allows these thoughts and feelings to grow out of control. They can paralyze a person’s life, pulling them downward into despair.

The thoughts of a depressive mind are often boring and lethargic. When in a depressive trough, such thoughts drone on about why other people, our job and our lives stink. After years of repetition, such thoughts have worn neurochemical and structural grooves in our brains. This is why many depressives suffer from a formless ennui; doldrums that numb them to the creative engagement with the world they yearn for.

Depressive thinking ignores evidence to the contrary (e.g. that people love and care about us – – and we about them — or that our work product isn’t that bad and often times pretty good), and snubs its nose at suggestions that life can be otherwise. Folks with depression are often closed minded: the world sucks and if you try to disagree with them, they may conclude that – -well – – you suck.

Lord knows, my observations aren’t meant to be depression downers, judgmental or condemnatory. They’re meant to underscore the enormous role that habitual, unconscious ways of constructing the world with our negative thinking can lead to depression. Mind you, we don’t want Pollyannaish thoughts – happy go lucky gibberish to replace depressive thinking. Even if we wanted to, we couldn’t jettison ourselves into such a Dairy Queen-like state full of vanilla, optimistic musings about the world we live in. What we do seek to achieve is balance, a life that works and the normal rhythms of emotions that everyone deserves.

Lawyers lose sight of the fact that WE are the ones actually thinking these depressive thoughts. To heal, we must take responsibility that we are – – on some level – – choosing to think and believe in such thoughts. To get to the point where we can see this usually involves a great deal of effort and a fair amount of pain. It is often the pain of depression, and a lawyer’s desperation to stop it, that make him or her, hopefully, seek out help and question their melancholic assumptions.

Abraham Lincoln, who many forget was a trial lawyer for decades before becoming president, struggled with depression his whole life. His battles with depression, which included two suicide watches, is powerfully told in Lincoln’s Melancholy: How Depression Challenged a President and Fueled Him to Greatress. Once, when he felt the searing pain of depression, he wrote: “I’ve been driven many times to my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go. My own wisdom, and that of all about me, seemed insufficient for the day.”

Mood and Thoughts

Depression begins with a low mood – for many when they first get out of bed in the morning. Like animals that sense bad weather approaching, we can sense the fog of depression beginning to descend on us as the barometric pressure in our minds begins to fall.

In The Mindful Way through Depression, author, Mark Williams, writes:

“Negative thoughts can trigger or feed depression once a low mood is upon us. We might sink into a glum mood by thinking nothing ever goes right for me. That mood may then trigger self-criticism like why am I such a loser? As we try to unravel the cause of our unhappy state, our mood plunges. As we investigate questions about our worthlessness, we form a whole scheme of other negative thoughts, ready to be recruited at a moment’s notice in the future”.

There is, in a sense, a senselessness about depression. Or, alternatively, there may be a real reason to be upset (e.g. “I have a big trial next week and I’ve not prepared enough”), but we’ve catastrophized our circumstances to such an extent (e.g. “they’ll fire me if I lose this case) that our predicament bears little resemblance to the facts before us.

A friend of mine, who is now a judge, screwed up on a big case while working for a large corporate firm some years ago. He went home, wrote a suicide note and drove himself to a rural motel. There he downed a number of sleeping pills, drank some whiskey and lay down in bed to die. He was found, unconscious, by colleagues of his who had been searching for him all night. He didn’t lose his job – and he didn’t lose his life. But he had let his thinking take him from the fact that he had made a mistake a work to the conclusion that HE was the mistake and that such a life was not deserving of life.

Here are some examples of depressive thoughts. Reflect on how often you have thought them in the course of a day:

I feel like I’m up against the world — I’m no good –Why can’t I ever succeed? — No one understands me — I’ve let people down — I don’t think I can go on — I wish I were a better person — I’m so weak — My life’s not going the way I want it to — I’m so disappointed in myself — Nothing feels good anymore — I can’t stand this anymore – I can’t get started — I wish I were somewhere else — I can’t get things together — I hate myself — I’m worthless — I wish I could just disappear.

With this flotilla of thoughts, we filter our experiences in a consistently negative way. We cull from the raw material of daily life proof that things are as bad as we think them to be. Such cynicism corrodes a person’s soul as surely as Coke rots away the enamel on our teeth.

There has been much commentary and studies which suggest that lawyers are pessimistic thinkers and that such pessimism helps us to become better, more successful lawyers, but not very happy human beings. Read the article “Why Lawyers Are So Unhappy?” by happiness researcher Martin Seligman. We examine all of the possible dangers, pitfalls and troubles that may befall us and our clients in a case. Such thinking becomes problematic – which it does for many, many lawyers – when we turn this mode of thinking on ourselves. We can from judging facts to judging ourselves. The habit of judging ourselves severely disguises itself as an attempt to help us to live better lives and to be better people, but in actuality the habit of judging ourselves winds us functioning as an irrational tyrant that can never be satisfied.

Trying to Think our Way out of Depression

With our negative thoughts, we get perpetually stuck in a tar pit of our own making. We struggle to extricate ourselves from this gooey mess and just keep falling backwards.

“When depression starts to pull us down, we often react, for understandable reasons, by trying to get rid of our feelings by suppressing them or by trying to think our way out of them. In the process we dredge up past regrets and conjure up future worries. In our heads, we try out this solution and that solution, and it doesn’t take long for us to start feeling bad for failing to come up with a way to alleviate the painful emotions we’re feeling. We get lost in comparisons of where we are versus where we want to be, soon living almost entirely in our heads.” – The Mindful Way through Depression

We get caught up in thinking about life, rather than living life. We become obsessed with doing rather than being. The problem is our overcritical mind’s determination to solve the problem of our depression with its analytic arsenal. When we do this, our depressive mind tries to hunt down what’s wrong with us – as if we were defective people for God sake!

This way of problem-solving our depression doesn’t help us out of our distress – – it just perpetuates our downward spiral.

Be Patient with Yourself

How will I ever be able to confront all the slings and arrows of so many thoughts? It seems unachievable and impossible, we may say. We can become despondent and hopeless. Here is where patience comes in, a big deal for lawyers with depression who have a lot of trouble being patient in a loving way with themselves. They likely never learned it in childhood and our results-now driven society doesn’t teach or promote it. Without patience, we drop out of therapy, stop taking medication or generally flop around on our office’s carpet like some sort of fleshy carp.

It took awhile for us to fall into the pickle barrel of depression and it will take effort, time and patience to crawl out of it.

For once, just once, try being kind and patient with yourself today as you struggle to heal from your depression. We need to move from being hopeless to being . . . just human.

Three Skills for Overcoming Depression

“Courage is fear that has said its prayers.” Author, Regina Brett

The legal profession and those who shape it devote plenty of time to the practical side of being a lawyer; the nuts-and-bolts of how to do, for example, a Will and Estate. Precious little time, however, is spent on teaching lawyers how to maneuver skillfully through their lives not just as professionals, but as people.

Three years ago, when I first went public with my depression, I suggested to a Bar Association director that we put on a half-day Continuing Legal Education Seminar on Depression. She looked at me oddly — as if her face were about to crumble — and said “Who in the world is going to show up for that.” With some trepidation, I went forward expecting twenty people – over 125 showed up. Lawyers are hungry for meaning in their lives and want direction from other people in the business.

Ideally, every young lawyer should be paired with a mentor, a wise elder of the law. Lacking that, few lawyers have examples of how to deal with the profession in a healthy and meaningful manner. Is it any wonder then that lawyers suffer from depression at twice the rate of the average citizen?

We live in a profession where people endure a real pain, trauma and meaninglessness in the hope that it will get better “someday” in the indeterminate future. That someday may come sooner than later in the form of early retirement forced by burnout, unforeseen illness or some sort of divine intervention. I don’t see this as pessimistic, but as realistic. My goal is to wake lawyers up to the real costs of approaching their vocation with only nut-and-bolts in their tool chest. We are not crude machines in need of tune-ups. We are living beings in need of emotional and spiritual sustenance.

Depression is a type of half-living; we go to work, raise our children, sip lattes, do wheelies on our mountain bikes or grill steaks on the grill. But there is something vital within us always yearning just below the surface, something that seeks expression in our lives. Perhaps the situation wouldn’t be so dire for the legal profession if our time as lawyers were just okay – a manageable amount of stress, decent interactions with people and fair wages. But it isn’t okay; it’s completely out of balance: too much stress, combative interactions and wages, albeit much higher than the average American worker, that exacts a tremendous toll on our brains and bodies.

Is there any hope, any way out of this legal conundrum? I think there is because I have seen it happen in my own life, and in the lives of scores of other lawyers. For most – including me—the pain decibels have to be jacked up pretty high for us to conclude that change is better than living one’s life this way.

Carl Jung, a former protégé of Sigmund Freud, offers us a great deal of wisdom for dealing with our modern day psyche. He never preached a “top ten” ways to overcome depression, but some of his essential wisdom can be summarized for the modern reader. In dealing with melancholy, he said that there were three essential steps that we need to take – and no one else can take them for us.

In his book “Why Good People Do Bad Things,” James Hollis, a student of Jung, writes:

“To gain the positive values arising from the “landfill” we call the Shadow [i.e. to learn the painful lessons that depression is trying to teach us], we have to wrestle with Jung’s suggestion that to be a full , we have to know what we want, and do it. Knowing what we want, really, takes a lot of sorting. And living what we find, really, takes a lot of courage and endurance. In reflecting on the task of therapy, Jung once noted that it can only bring us insight. Then, he said, come the moral qualities of our character – courage to face what must be faced, and then to take the leap, and the endurance to stick it out until we arrive at the place intended for us from the beginning. So much of our lives have been lived through reflexive adaptations [unexamined emotional habits grounded in our past], so knowing what we really want is difficult, and then scary, but it feels right when we live it, as were meant to do.”

Here’s a great presentation by Dr. Hollis about finding a meaningful path in life.

Insight

Most of us are, at best, barely aware of things we do and why we do them. Many stuck in the muck of depression are doing things that actually encourage their distress without knowing they are doing so. As Richard O’Connor, Ph.D., points out, “Depressives keep doing the things they’ve always done because they don’t know how to do anything else.” They’ve become experts at “depressing.”

Insight means that we begin to see the causes of our distress and our role in perpetuating it. As Dr. O’Connor has said: “We aren’t to blame for depression, but we are responsible for getting better.” To fulfill that responsibility, we need to develop ideas of what and how to do things differently in our lives and we can only do that when we have some insight into why things are going so wrong. Absent this, we will continue to drift; to be a sort of unhappy ghost in the world.

We can become educated, in a dialogue with our therapist, about the origins of our depression and the old wounds that we will need to revisit in order to heal. It’s in the safety of a therapist’s office where we learn to stop blaming others and – perhaps a bigger problem for depressives – ourselves. Blaming ourselves is replaced by the recognition that bad things did happen to us as children that were not our fault. In fact, much of our negative thinking and painful emotions were learned and endured here. They don’t go away – we carry them into hood. Numerous studies have concluded that one of the major indicators for onset depression is trauma, neglect or abuse during childhood. Blaming others is replaced by the recognition that this just keeps us stuck and resentful.

We shouldn’t give ourselves license to remain stuck in our childhoods and abdicate our responsibility in the here and now to create a healthy life. Our responsibility is to find a way to empower ourselves so that we can get on with living a fulfilling –instead of futile—life.

Courage

Once we get insight, we need to then act on it. Jung suggests that this isn’t something a therapist can give you. It’s your job to leave that one hour session and go out into the world and experiment with your newly found knowledge. In short, you will need courage.

Too often, people achieve hard-fought insight, but then their recovery doesn’t go very far because they don’t put their wisdom into action. In my experience, action can be stressful because it involves stepping out of depression’s cave (a dark cave, yes, but also cozy in its own destructive sort of way) and risking new behaviors or feeling emotions long suppressed. We can even feel great shame – a sense of cowardice—if we don’t change because in some sense, we feel we now “know better.”

Pilot Amelia Earhart once wrote: “Courage is the price that life exacts for granting peace.” We are never at peace until we act in congruity with our inner truth.

I’ve have talked to hundreds of lawyers across the country who say that they “have to” stay a lawyer, as if it is a form of servitude that was somehow imposed on them. This seems to me a variation of depression’s theme that they are helpless. This is not to suggest and I’m unsympathetic or unrealistic about the very real impediments to change. What I am saying is that such impediments are given way too much power over our lives. They become heinous bogeymen that we’re afraid to confront. We give them so much power, that we remain stuck and depressed in our relationship to them. We think of our fears as “reality” and our dreams for a different life as flat-out .

The fact is it may not be your law job that is depressing; you may be bringing your depressive way of being into the job. It might be true that you’d be just as depressed if you were a librarian or sang in a country western band.

I am not suggesting any answers on this score. I am suggesting the living of questions to untangle this Gordian knot: Why am I choosing to remain in the job I am in? What behaviors support my depression while at work? Am I willing to take some chances, even small ones, to move my life in a different direction?

You will need courage, my friend, to act on the insights you’ve gained and not let these precious seeds die in the ground.

Sometimes music can get themes across when words aren’t enough. The other day, my ear inclined towards this powerful piece of bluesy jazz music by artist Lizz Wright. Watch this video of her belting out her song “You Can Fly”.

Endurance

Once we have got it together, it has to stay together. Episodic starts and stops just won’t do in the long run. We need to be determined for our recovery and personal growth to continue. We can get lazy or reckless about this. We just don’t want to put in the time to exercise, or think that it really doesn’t matter if we don’t go to therapy. It does my friend. I’ve learned the hard way. Everything counts.

We will all have peaks in valleys in this journey. The important part is not to stop. It took us a while to fall into depression, and it will take us a while to get out of it. By pressing on, we grow in stature because it is a courageous journey. Novelist William Faulkner once wrote: I believe that men and women will not merely endure. They will prevail. They are immortal, not because they alone among creatures have an inexhaustible voice, but because they have a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance.”

Getting Things Done While Depressed

In my last blog, I wrote an article about the importance of goal setting for those in the legal profession with depression. I went looking for some nifty quotes on the topic; true nuggets of insightful wisdom. Instead, I found a lot of boorish material which just rehashed what we already know – it’s important to get your act together.

That being said, I hope to humbly offer up my own take on goal setting for those hampered by the drag of depression.

Depression is full of waffling and meandering through the wastelands of our somber thoughts. We are, of course, seduced into all of this by such thoughts — as if this were a productive way to live one’s life. The thoughts gather strength and become ingrained cognitive habits as we repeat them millions of times with several variations on the same theme: “I’m no good”, “nobody cares about me,” “I can’t do anything right” or what’s wrong with me?” Listen, thinking these thoughts occasionally are normal for anyone who has been smacked around by life’s trials and tribulations. After all, we are all jerks at different points of our lives . . . . . speak for yourself Dan, you may retort!

The problem comes in when such thoughts aren’t a sometime-sort-of-thing, but an all-the-time-sort-of-thing. They take up residence in our minds and make a mess of the kitchen.

Depressive thoughts become one of the reasons we avoid, forget and/or just can’t seem to set healthy goals. It’s as if in the midst of a depression, we simply don’t care because we can’t see anything good happening in the near or far future to us whatever we do. This self-talk is a script right out of the movie, “How Depression Took over My Life.” (Not a real movie)

There are two ways to approach this issue of goal setting for the depressed professional. Though they aren’t mutually exclusive, it’s helpful to pull them apart.

Goal Setting with Depression

There will be different things you’ll be able to realistically get done depending where you fall on the depression continuum. However, some ideas which should help everybody:

Structure Your Day – Please.

People with depression can feel scattered and overwhelmed. The strain of being so exacerbates their depression because of the stress chemicals released in their bodies. As such, go through your day first thing in the morning and decide how it might play out in your mind. Try to be constructive about it. Watch the language you use in your self-talk. Instead of your stated goal being, “Not to feel like crap today,” try something like, “Today, I’m going to do my best to take care of myself.” The shift in perspective can and does make a big difference.

Keep it simple.

I keep a stack of 3 x 5 index cards in my laptop case and use one per day. On it, I write 3-5 things on the left that are priorities and 3-5 things on the right that I’d like to get done. I used to have a variety of notes scattered across piles of legal pads. You can still do that if you, like me, are a “To do” list junky. But, try the index card approach. It’s cheap and simple to do. Keep it in your shirt pocket with a pen so you don’t have to search for it. Psychologists tell us it takes 21 days for a habit to stick so give it three weeks.

Goal Setting at Work

Managing and Delegating

You must corral your work. If you don’t, it’ll sink you when you’re dealing with depression. If you have a secretary, lean on her heavily to organize your day and your desk. Sit with her every morning and go over the day. Many lawyers are control freaks and aren’t good at delegating. You have to break that habit and let go of this compulsion.

Regrouping

Many lawyers bring their all-or-nothing cognitive approach to the workday. Either they have to get everything done (“Yikes!”) or nothing done (e.g. they blow the whole day because they don’t feel well at the beginning of the day). A good cognitive tool to use is regrouping. I would sometimes have a crappy morning and think that the day was then ruined. I’ve since learned to regroup at different intervals of the day, take stock and tell myself that just because the morning was crummy (or even the past hour) that doesn’t mean that I can’t zoom in the afternoon.

Watch Your Depression Patterns

Learn the patterns of your depression as they relate to your work day. If you pay attention, depression takes on a certain pattern. For me, I felt my worst in the morning. This was often related to trouble sleeping. I would begin zooming around 10 in the morning. As such, I planned my day around this. Other lawyers find that their depression hits around 2 p.m. Keep a journal for about a week and pay attention to when this happens to you. A good idea is to wear a sport watch with a timer. Then set it to beep at one or two hour intervals. Write down your mood at that time and rate it between 1 and 10. I think you’ll be surprised to see how your mood changes during the course of the day.

It is not impossible to set goals while depressed. It’s important to watch yourself getting things done. Zoom.

Featured In: