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Goals, Depression & Work

I find the great thing in this world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving — Oliver Wendell Holmes.

There are different concerns at different stages of one’s depression journey. Lawyers who are in the throes of it, perhaps for the first time, need education about what depression is, understanding, medication, support and psychotherapy. After they’ve started to feel better, they’ll need to turn their focus to their livelihood and how they’ll work at it in a way, hopefully, which takes into account their mental health so as prevent and/or mitigate any future depression. Richard O’Connor, Ph.D., author of the best-selling book, Undoing Depression, has this interesting insight about depressives in the workplace:

“Sometimes when I have spoken to business organizations, I have surprised them by advocating for hiring the depressed; but aside from taking more sick days than others, depressed people can be the best employees. We’re [Dr. O’Connor has long struggled with depression] good at being responsible. We are good soldiers, honest and industrious. We have high standards and want to do any job well. We have too much guilt to pad our hours or take home office supplies. Treat us decently, and we’ll be grateful and loyal. Unfortunately for the depressed individual, however, we discount these virtues and have a difficult time enjoying the world of work.”

I think that’s a great insight because overcompensating, even if it makes us miserable, can make us great workers. God knows lawyers have high standards. In essence, many of these people don’t fundamentally value themselves. They may fervently chase other measures of success – money, power and status. Yet, inside, they often feel broken, sad, stressed or depressed. Here’s what Dr. O’Connor said in an interview I had with in New York City about a depressive’s need to value him/herself:

We tend to think of lawyers as colossal egos bent on being Masters of the Universe; and there probably a good chunk of those people out there — who I never could stand anyway. But, in my experience, there are many accomplished lawyers who suffer from depression who are of different ilk; “good soldiers” who bust their asses and don’t give themselves much, if any, credit.

I was doing a walk-a-talk with a friend of mine [a real non-lawyer type] recently in Central Park in New York City. I stopped to munch on some peanuts that were a real disappointment. He was baffled when I told him I didn’t feel that I’d accomplished much in my professional life. “You were just named to that that publication, ‘The Best Lawyers in America’. For Christ’s sake, count your blessings!”

It wasn’t that I didn’t want to take credit. It was because I couldn’t — I just didn’t know how to. And, as Dr. O’Connor said, not taking credit doesn’t often have much to do with our professional success, but it has a lot to do with our satisfaction with our jobs.

There are emotional bridges that connect us to various aspects of ourselves and our environment. For depressives, there often isn’t an east-bound bridge connecting their good work to their emotional selves. Others may slap them on the back and plaques may parade across their office wall. No matter, there’s still a disconnection; a sense that their accomplishments were an accident or a recent run of Lady Luck. They often have a sense that they’ll be found out; that all of their success is a put-on. They think they’re imposters who truly don’t deserve such accolades – especially from any genuine place inside of them. No matter how distorted this vision is, they’ll insist that it’s true till the cows come home. I know because I’ve banged these drums a few times over the years.

Then there’s the other bridge pointing west-bound. It connects their goof-ups, mistakes and bad decisions to themselves. You see, lawyers have an exaggerated sense of responsibility for bad things and an underdeveloped sense of ownership for the good stuff they do. This take on life isn’t about taking responsibility for our mistakes. Rather, it’s the toxic self-impugning; the inner critic run amok spraying bullets from an AK-47 at our self-esteem.

I’ve come to learn that feeling a sense of satisfaction and pride in my work because of my efforts is a skill that I have to work at – and I’ve come a long way. One of the ways I’ve chosen to do this is by setting goals. For many years, like all lawyers, I swam upstream into the time currents of my day. I didn’t have to set goals about when to get things done because the Court, my firm and other various incendiary devices did that for me. Finishing a set of interrogatories or successfully arguing a Summary Judgment motion, wasn’t a goal that I set for myself – it was simply another deadline in a litany of other deadlines.

Setting goals for ourselves that we’ve personally reflected upon is important step for those who wish to recover from depression. It counters the sense of hopelessness and the confusing lack of direction characteristic of a depressive’s attempts to navigate through life. Goals give us a Garmin for our game.

Even though setting goals would be a healthy thing for someone with depression to work at, they often don’t. Again, Dr. O’Connor:

“Depressed people, pessimistic [a hallmark of lawyers thinking style] and lacking confidence, tend to avoid setting goals as a way to protect themselves from disappointment. They don’t realize that the absence of goals leads to a completely different and frequently worse set of problems. Even if you miss your target, you grow and benefit from the practice of productive activity. But depressed people, who don’t trust their ability to adapt to bad news and hence avoid setting conscious goals, find lives that lack direction. Your goal becomes just getting through another day. In the depths of depression, that may be all you can manage, but it doesn’t take you anywhere.”

Or, as the great Indian Chief Seneca once wrote: “Our plans miscarry because they have no aim. When a man does not know what harbor he is making for, no wind is the right wind.”

Setting simple, realistic and concrete goals improve both our performance of the activity and our actual experience of it. My Catholic take on it from Mother Teresa helps me put this in the context of my part-time faith: “We can’t do great things; only small things with great love.”

Work isn’t just about what is thrown at us by our jobs. It’s also about the passion we bring to it. In this vein, it’s not just the immediate task before us that hooks us, but how we’ve set it up in our own minds. Again, Dr. O’Connor:

“Making a commitment [to a goal] focuses our attention on where we want to go and helps us focus our thinking on getting there. People feel happier as they progress toward their goals; they have a sense of involvement, they feel productive and useful, and they give themselves ego strokes for being good and industrious. Because we’re so adaptable, however, those good feelings don’t necessarily last once we’ve got to where we are going. We have to make a deliberate effort to savor and appreciate our achievements.”

The key words are deliberate effort. The word “deliberate” comes from the Latin word “deliberates” which means to weigh carefully. It requires us to reflect on our course of action and think about what actually works and what doesn’t for us on the job.

In my experience, depressives are often lacking the goal-setting skills they need to be happy and content in their work lives. What’s the consequence of not setting goals is a sense of meaninglessness; ennui that won’t go away. Depressed lawyers have an inner dialogue that goes something like this: “I have all this paperwork to get to today, but I have to be in court all morning. And . . . oh shit!! I forgot to call the judge back on that motion.” And so it goes as these worrisome thoughts pour out of our noggins. We’re just jumping around putting out fires and surviving our days. Is it really any wonder that we draw little or no satisfaction from our work with this approach?

When I talk to depressed lawyers about this and suggest that they think about their goals and what they really want to achieve, you would have thought that I asked them to jump off the Brooklyn Bridge: “Are you kidding? You want me to spend time thinking about my goals? When the hell do I have time to do that? I have no time during work and then when I get home I either want to (a) forget about my day and enjoy my family, (b) pass out on the couch and forget about everything in front of the T.V. or (c) do anything that doesn’t involve thinking about my job.

There’s no problem in using these ways to decompress after a day’s warfare at the office. But if these activities, albeit pleasurable, avoid the important questions raised by work, and our connection to it, we may to rebalance the tires.

In my next blog, I will address some practical ways lawyers can set goals and draw pleasure from accomplishing them in their everyday work lives.

Mindful On The Job

Work is about a search for daily meaning as well as daily bread, for recognition as well as cash, for astonishment rather than torpor; in short, for a sort of life rather than a Monday through Friday sort of dying – Studs Turkel, author

Sunday night rolls around all too quickly. The weekend, if we actually give ourselves a break from our jobs, can’t often prepare us for the frenzy of the week’s activity at the office that awaits us. If we like our jobs as lawyers – and granted there are alot of us who do – we still may feel it’s half-baked- “it still could be better” we think to ourselves.

Michael Carroll, author of the book, Awake at Work, was employed at such places as Shearson Lehman, American Express and The Walt Disney Company. More recently, he has been a consultant and coach to such companies as Starbucks and Proctor and Gamble. His comments, into what workers really want out of their jobs, is insightful to the lives of lawyers on the job:

“In my role as a business consultant, I regularly ask my clients to complete the following sentence with the first word that comes to mind:

At work, I want to be. . .

While my survey is not scientifically reliable, I can report there are some patterns to the responses. Here are the four most frequent answers:

Successful
Happy
Rewarded
Stress-free

Such responses come as no surprise. Given the demands, risks and relentless pace of our modern-day workplace, it is little wonder that most of us would like a little stress-free happiness on occasion. Rewards and success-isn’t that what we are all looking for at work?”

Who can’t relate to that take on the legal profession? Whether we are happy in our jobs or not, we all think about how we can embrace more of these intangibles while at the office.

Carroll, in addition to being in the business world for the past forty-four years, is a long-time meditator and proponent of mindfulness meditation. Here’s a great introduction to what Mindfulness is about:

You don’t have to be a Buddha sitting in a lotus garden to appreciate this fundamental and simple way of approaching your day. It’s not so much a different way of doing and accomplishing stuff; lawyers are great at that. Rather, it’s a different way of seeing at work. Moreover, seeing via a discipline of mindfulness meditation, seeks to plant our feet directly on the carpet. It’s not so much about being alert and wired to the swirling stimuli peppering us from every angle. It’s taking a time-out and leaning against the wall; it’s about letting the other half of our brain complement our eagerness to get things done.

Coming back to Michael Carroll’s survey about what people want out of their work, he opines that it’s not really success, happiness, being reward and a stress-free work-life:

“My survey indicates that most of us think we want to happy, successful, and to be stress-free at work, but we also know that such aspirations are wishful thinking. We all know work offers both success and failure; happiness and angst. We know that work, indeed all of life, unavoidably presents both rewards and penalties; joys and disappoints. So, while most of us wish to be happy and successful at work, what we really want, from my vantage point, is to be confident: confident that no matter what work offers up, we remain self-assured and at our ease.”

In my experience, truer words were never spoken. As lawyers, there is a wonderful sense we get about our craft when we achieve a certain level of competence and feel that we can handle whatever down the pike. We can acheive this sense of competence not just through the nuts and bolts of accomplishments in the courtroom, but through practice as sense of presence in our daily lives.

Explore how mindfulness meditation can help you at the office. Also, for those so inclined, check out the wonderful book, which I’ve previously raved about, The Mindfulway Through Depression. It’s not only for those with depression, but suitable for anyone who struggles with a sense of dissatisfaction and/or unhappiness at work.

Walking in Bigger Shoes

Lawyers are an earnest, disciplined bunch. They love evidence – the “show me the money” approach to life. They’re hard-bitten pessimist, yet love the latest self-improvement projects pitched to them by the legal establishment. You know — graphs, charts and the Oprah-like cattle call to “Change Your Life in Five Easy Steps!” The goal of all these books and slogans is Happiness, as if it were a commodity for sale. There was a snappy piece yesterday in the New York Times Review of Books entitled, “The Rap on Happiness.” It’s a great take on this country’s obsession with finding the veritable Oz of bliss.

“The real problem with happiness is neither its pursuers nor their books; its happiness itself. Happiness is like beauty: part of its glory lies in transience. It is deep but often brief (as the poet Robert Frost would have it), and much great prose and poetry make note of this. Frank Kermode wrote, ‘It seems there is sort of a calamity built into the texture of life.’ To hold happiness is to hold understanding that the world passes away from us, that the petals fall and the beloved dies. No amount of mockery, no amount of fashionable scowling will keep any of us from knowing and savoring the pleasure of the sun on our faces or save us from the adult understanding that it cannot last forever.”

Lawyers walk in shoes that are too small for them, living lives that are too confining, unimaginative and which fail to challenge them to be their best. They need to switch from pinching wing-tips to cushy loafers. This switch gives a vital bounce to their steps rather than a lugubrious gait. The opposite of depression isn’t happiness; it’s vitality. It’s like a Swordfish bounding out of the ocean’s waves in defiance of gravity or B.B. King playing a blues riff on his guitar. They have a vibrancy that can’t be contained; they express themselves in a space where great stuff happens.

Part of the equation involves not so much pills or therapy, as the lifting up of our individual imaginations. Putting aside what’s possible in a concrete sense ( you know, the mortgage or student loans), have you ever looked out your office window and imagined the life you’d like to have? This is not the same as rumination; a constant churning of negative thoughts in our cranium which a depressive is prone to.

Rather, it’s an exercise in lively engagement with our Self. To engage in this effort, we have to pop our life’s stick shift out of “Neutral”, the frozen state that depression and/or anxiety can keep us stuck again. Locate the “Drive” on your shift and engage.

In this exercise, it might be helpful to think about the choices we make in a different way. Not in a self-recriminating way, but in a fashion that moves us in a constructive direction. We need to separate the wheat from the chaff in our lives; to decide what reduces or enlarges our spirits. Quality questions can help in regard. Not the common lament of depressives, “What the hell is wrong with me?” That’s a dreary question that goes nowhere because the answer we give ourselves is – – “Everything!” James Hollis, Ph.D., in his wonderful book, “What Matters Most: Living a More Considered Life” offers us a keen approach ourselves to view ourselves:

“Ask yourself of every dilemma, every choice, every relationship, every commitment, or every failure to commit, ‘Does this choice diminish me, or enlarge me?’ Do not ask this question if you are afraid of the answer. You might be afraid of what your soul will require of you, but at least you then know your marching orders.”

Incline your inner ear. Listen to your response to this challenging question. Enlargement of one’s self isn’t so much about happiness, as meaning. Deep down, we all want a life of purpose; where we feel our lives have a point, or many points of light for that matter. You don’t have to look far. It’s right beneath your bouncing feet.

Turning Your Life Around

Lawyers often sense that their lives have gone off track; they just don’t know how to fix them. They’re hit by daily demands that make it difficult to find their true north.

There are the demands that hurtle at them from the lives they occupy – the boss that’s yammering for more billable hours, families that feel upset by all the hours they spend at work or you-name-it-crap from this frenzied world.

Then there are the demands that emanate from somewhere inside of them; the part of themselves – their true selves – that wants a life with less stress, more meaning and a sense of connectedness to other people. While they pine for such a life while looking outside their law office windows, such reverie gives them a brief respite from the grind. But after the moment has passed, there’s an abiding sorrow. A sense that something has been lost that can’t be found.

Perpetual stress can keep lawyers from ever dealing – in a constructive and persistent way – with what they really want in life. They check their Blackberry’s more than check in with themselves. They don’t really know what they want most of the time; they just know that it’s not this. Emotional pain may be leaking out of them; for some lawyers, this has been going on for years. The pain might be mitigated in healthy (e.g. exercise) or unhealthy (e.g. drinking, drugs) ways. But, it will not go away – until they turn around and face themselves.

Lawyers need to become conscious of the choices they’re making during their waking hours. Of course, there’re exceptions, but the majority of lawyers have choices. They aren’t victims that are being forced to stay at their jobs. They’re choosing to stay at their jobs and do the work they’re paid to do.

Most lawyers, however, just don’t see it this way. They feel stuck in their jobs and lives with few viable alternatives. As odd as it may sound, they feel like victims. Friends of mine who aren’t lawyers scoff at my observation: “Lawyers victims? Give me a break.” Nonetheless, it’s true on an emotional level for many lawyers.

Lawyers can feel this way because (a) the “golden handcuffs” in which they’re just making too much money to quit; (b) they’re in too much debt; (c) they’d rather complain than face the abject fear that comes with making tough changes; or (d) they’re simply paralyzed by stress, anxiety or depression.

However, by turning from a stuck-victim status to a choice-maker posture they can begin to awaken to their true potential. They might have to make small changes in their lives or maybe a closet full of whoppers. Perhaps they’ll have to go back to the drawing board of their lives and sift through and separate what’s really important versus what’s trivial. This will take time; let nobody fool you on this one. People in our country are basically impatient; we want relief from our distress NOW. But, meaningful and realistic changes never seem to unfold this way. That’s just the facts-o-life.

Turning your life around may come down to this: What are you willing to do to change your life? Lots of people — not just lawyers — know that their lives aren’t working. The same group approaches their lives with all the right intentions of changing it for better. Most, however, will not change despite the chorus of voices from within telling them to do so.

I had a friend who would call me once a month and lament how unhappy he was. I’d listen for thirty minutes and then he, having discharged his discomfort, would say goodbye only to repeat this weather pattern about thirty days later.

Finally, six month in this telephonic waltz, I said “Tom, what are you willing to do to change your about life?” The question must have stunned him like a taser because there was silence — a dead silence — on the other end of the line. He evaded the question, said we would have to get together soon for lunch and hung up. Tom never called again.

Tom didn’t really want to change – – he wanted to bitch, a common past-time for many lawyers. He wanted my sympathetic ear to appreciate just how much he’d been screwed over by opposing counsel, an irate judge or his cranky wife. I had sympathy for Tom, but also a good deal of frustration because I realized that I wasn’t really helping him.

I would ask you the reader: “What are you willing to do to change your life” Are you willing to the feel the free floating anxiety that’s inevitable if you are to start changing your life? The longer the discontent goes on, the bigger the changes will have to be. The longer we delay, the bigger the kick in the pants from Life to wake us up.

Yes, work is only a part of life and many lawyers no doubt find outlets of meaning and joy along other avenues. However, as Gregg Levoy, author of Callings: Finding and Following an Authentic Life, such sizing up of our days miscalculates the energy and time we must invest in our daily jobs:

“Work is merely one of the arenas in which you play the game – the one the Gods are watching from the press-box atop Mount Olympus while sipping mint juleps. It is only one of the arenas in which you express your humanity, search for meaning, play out your destiny and dreams, contribute your energies and gifts to the world and spend your precious nick of time. It is also an arena in which you spend two-thirds of your waking lifetime and it is legitimate to love your work! Life is a thousand times too short to bore yourself. If someday your life does flash in front of your eyes, the very least you want it to do is hold your interest.”

Rear-ended by Depression

The abject pain of clinical depression is magnified expontentially when one considers that sufferers usually blame themselves for their plight. “What’s wrong with me?” is a common refrain. Most people with depression feel “bad” to their core. They can’t always articulate why this is so, but they know that they can’t shake their own self-condemnation. There is no place to hide from it, no true rest for the weariness it brings. We lay awake at night and hope that tomorrow it will be better.

I had a conversation last week with a mental health professional who asked me, “What in the world do lawyers have to be depressed about? They’re rich and powerful. Lawyers should stop complaining and realize how good they have it.” Yet a lack of gratefulness has little to do with depression. I used to recite a list of things I had to be grateful about – and there were many – but it all fell on depression’s deaf ears.

When others tell us to “snap out of it,” we may buy it hook, line and sinker and even believe that they know what they’re talking about. Well-meaning friends may try to reign in our sorrow by suggesting that they can identify with our suffering.

In her book about her own depression, An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Mood and Madness, psychiatrist, Kay Redfield Jamison writes:

“Others imply that they know what is it is like to be depressed because they have gone through a divorce, lost a job, or broken up with someone. But these experiences carry with them feelings. Depression, instead, is flat, hollow, and unendurable.”

Such attempts by others, even when well intentioned, always brought about a deep sense of loneliness in me. I had, like most people, gone through my fair share of difficult experiences in life like losing a job. But this experience – this blast furnace of melancholy – was not that. We get over losses in our lives, we adapt. We can’t just “get over” depression.

There is a sense that we have been rear-ended by depression; out of seemingly nowhere, our lives are crashed into and changed forever. In a very real sense, we will never be the same. Some will recover from their depression, many will not. That’s not a very popular thing to say, but it’s been my experience from talking with hundreds of lawyers from around the country who I’ve been privileged to share with. For many, recovery will be an on-again off-again sort of affair. They will have to work hard to recover and make lots of effort to stay healthy.

Part of the reason why too many lawyers don’t get better is simple: most don’t get any form of treatment for their depression. A study by the National Institute of Mental Health revealed that as many as 80% of people in this country get no form of help whatsoever. Looking out a window, I wonder how high the rate is for lawyers. It’s most likely a mixed bag. While it’s true that people from a higher socio-economic class tend to get treatment – mostly because of their access to good medical care – most attorneys still don’t because of the stigma associated with mental illness.

Such shame – dumped on people from others and the self-inflicted variety – is particularly deep for lawyers. This is so because of the myths surrounding their internal world. Lawyers feel like they’re supposed to be veritable Supermen able to bend steal and solve all manner of a clients’ problems without wrinkling their power blue suit. If they’re in pain, they’re told to “suck it up.” We live in a nation of winners where, deep down, many feel like losers.

This sort of mentality, in part, explains the epidemic rates of depression in the law. Studies have concluded that lawyers suffer from depression at a rate of twice the national average or about 20%. This means that 200,000 out of the one million lawyers in this country suffer from depression.

What’s a depressed lawyer to do? First, one must stop blaming oneself. This is tough because most people with depression have been living with this cognitive distortion for a long time – maybe their whole lives – and this corrosive self-talk promotes the viscous cycle that is clinical depression. If one can’t stop blaming oneself for having depression, it’s tough to get better. Little by little, we need to learn to let that bullshit go and start walking a healthier path.

The poem, The Journey, by Mary Oliver, captures some sense of this path for me. I hope it will for you.

One day you finally knew

what you had to do, and began,

though the voices around you

kept shouting

their bad advice – –

though the whole house

began to tremble

and you felt the old tug

at your ankles.

“Mend my life!”

each voice cried.

But you didn’t stop.

You knew what you had to do,

though the wind pried

with its stiff fingers

at the very foundations,

though their melancholy

was terrible.

It was already late

enough, and a wild night,

and the road full of fallen

branches and stones.

But little by little,

as you left their voices behind,

the stars began to burn

through the sheets of clouds,

and there was a new voice

which you slowly

recognized as your own,

that kept you company

as you strode deeper and deeper

into the world,

determined to do

the only thing you could do – –

determined to save

the only life you could save.

A New Year to Kick the Depression habit

For last year’s words belong to last year’s language and next year’s words await another voice. And to make an end is to make a beginning – T.S. Eliot

With the New Year comes new choices; we can choose to leave behind ways of being in the world that cause and maintain our depression and embrace healthier and saner approaches to our days. Or we can simply do nothing.

Why do lawyers with depression keep repeating behaviors that prevent them from feeling good about themselves? Why do they relentlessly drive, isolate and unmercifully think of themselves as the biggest piece of crap this side of the Mississippi?

In his revised and updated book Undoing Depression: What Therapy Doesn’t Teach You and Medication Can’t Give You, Dr. Richard O’Connor offers this insight: “People persist in self-destructive behavior because they don’t know how to do anything else. I’m convinced that the major reason why people with depression stay depressed despite therapy, medication, and support from loved ones is that we are simply unable to imagine an alternative. We know how to ‘do’ depression. We are experts at it.”

Lawyers can’t envision healthier alternatives because depression shuts down their capacity to creatively imagine themselves productively engaged in the world. We simply have no reference point for that. So we stay in our offices with the doors closed looking out the window as the birds fly by and one season changes into another.

Our brains love habits — even when they stink and hurt us. It’s a more predictable way to go through life because we don’t have to rethink everything and change. We become used to depressive habits as we cruise through life on auto-pilot. Many lawyers with depression usually view their jobs as the sole source of their depression; surviving “it” becomes the focus of their lives. They use depression habits at their jobs that might work for awhile, but at a very high cost to their physical and emotional well-being. These aren’t stupid people; they just can’t imagine doing their jobs any differently. As educatior Parker Palmer once wrote about his depression, “It wasn’t so much that I was in the darkness as I became the darkness.”

Dr. O’Connor writes:

“We depressives become shaped by our disease as well; the skills that we develop with depression in a vain effort to save ourselves pain – skills like swallowing our anger, isolating ourselves, putting others first, being over-responsible – prevent our recovery. We have to give up the depressed habits that keep us down and make us vulnerable to relapse.”

Deepak Chopra wrote: “A habit is a frozen interpretation from the past that is applied to the present.” I think that’s why depression can have such a deadening sensation associated with it. In a sense, depression warps our perceptions about events happening in real time and pulls us under the frozen river of our past. People and events happening in real time trigger old interpretations of how life works. Since most people with depression come from dysfunctional or abusive childhoods, a current conflict with others becomes a ride back to their traumatic past.

For me, this distortion has often revolved around anger. I not alone on this one; how we handle anger is a big issue for most lawyers. As lawyer and psychologist Andy Benjamin wrote and studies have concluded, there is a strong connection between hostility and depression. Anger seems to be situational, while hostility is an overarching and aggressive approach to life. Anger that is repeatedly stuffed or inappropriately expressed becomes hostility. Many lawyers don’t want to be assholes, but feel they have to do so to survive in the shark tank of the law. Most lawyers I’ve known feel deeply conflicted about this and if they’ve had problems with depression, it just compounds it all.

In my childhood home, my alcoholic father had a volcanic temper – you knew to scram when you saw lava cresting at the rim. I learned that anger was painful, “bad” and always unjustified. As such, I used to avoid conflict and stuff my own anger because it was dangerous. Instead, I became a people pleaser. I developed exquisite antennae to read clients, colleagues, opposing counsel and judges’ reactions for any signs of aggression, anger or conflict. I molded my behavior to their behavior rather than living out of a core of my own reality. This distortion gave others too much power and myself too little. It is, as psychologist James Hollis once wrote, an emotional conclusion in which we tell ourselves “the world is big and I am small.” Most depressives think this way and feel overpowered by the events of their world and lapse into a state of helplessness.

As we enter a new year, let’s start leaving some depressive habits behind and embrace some new ones. This will take work on your part. No one is going to save you from your depression. While you are not to blame for your depression, you are responsible for getting better. Dr. O’Connor writes:

“Overcoming depression requires a new set of skills from us. But now we are recognizing happiness is a skill, willpower is a skill, health is a skill, successful relationships require skills, emotional intelligence is a skill. We know this because practice not only leads to improvement but also to changes in the brain. This is a much more empowering and adaptive way of understanding life than assuming that these qualities are doled out form birth in fixed quantities and that there’s nothing we can do to change our fate. The skills required to undo depression will permeate your entire life, and if you keep practicing, you can go far beyond mere recovery.”

Happy New Year!

10 Ways to Deal with Depression

A lawyer with depression used to call me once a month. He would tell me about the emotional problems in his life. Many times, he cried. This went on for a year. I listened each time for about a hour and then the conversation would routinely end with, “catch you later.” Yet, nothing changed for him. At some point I said, “Bob, what are you willing to do to change your life?” He seemed surprised by the question. He never called back. Perhaps a good starting place for you to think about healing, is what old behaviors are you willing to change or what new behaviors are you willing to try to help you get better?

In her book, Listening to Depression: How Understanding Your Pain Can Heal Your Life , psychologist, Lara Honos-Webb, views depression not just as an “illness”, but as a wakeup call; a signal that we have been traveling down paths in our lives that have been unhealthy. She encourages us not to see depression as just a disease, but as an opportunity to change our lives. There is something in us, if we would only listen, that is telling us that we are killing ourselves.

We often don’t listen. So that voice turns up the volume until we get sick with anxiety and depression – or heart disease, hypertension and cancer.

As lawyers, we are experts at looking at problems from an analytical angle. When we turn that powerful lens on ourselves, seeking to “solve” our depression, it just doesn’t work. That’s because much of our distorted thoughts and strategies that got us into trouble with depression, can’t get us out.

After we have been diagnosed with depression, we can evade responsibility for our own recovery. Some time ago, I was in a great deal of pain. I told my therapist that my depression wasn’t going away despite my sincere efforts. I felt punished by my depression. He gently told me, “Dan, you haven’t done anything wrong. You’re doing it to yourself.”

This was a turning point for me in dealing with my depression. When I stopped letting depression victimize me, I began to take responsibility for getting better and started behaving and thinking in more constructive ways. That being said, what constructive steps can lawyers take to deal with their depression?

1. Get help

You can’t handle this by yourself. It’s not your fault. It is a problem bigger than any individual person. There are Lawyer Assistance Programs in most states that can get you started in the right direction, provide resources and help you with referrals. Click here to search by state for a program nearest you. While this advice sounds self-evident, believe me, it is not. Recent statistics reveal that eighty percent of Americans don’t get any help for their depression.

2. Maybe you have to take medication

That’s okay. You may have a chemical imbalance which you need to address. For many, psychotherapy won’t help until they quiet down there somatic complaints (e.g. extreme fatigue, sleep problems) so that they can have the energy and insight to work on their problems. However, “one size doesn’t fit all.” Medication can – and is – over proscribed. I also have a problem with family physician diagnosing depression and recommending antidepressants. Eighty percent of the scripts for antidepressants in this country are written by such doctors. Better idea: go to be evaluated by a well-regarded psychiatrist who specializes in mental health and doesn’t also treat stomach upset, fungus on the feet and the flu. For a fair and balanced review of the pros and cons of medication, check out HELPGUIDE.org, a not-for-profit organization.

3. Negative Thinking

Whether you will need medication or not, you will need to confront your negative thinking with a therapist. You really can’t do this effectively with friends or family alone. A lot of research suggests that cognitive behavioral therapy is a particularly effective form of treatment for depression. It teaches us that a large part of depression is made up of cognitive distortions. One example is the all-or-nothing thinking approach. Lawyers often think to themselves that they’re either “winners” or “losers” in the law. This is a distortion because the reality is that most lawyers both win and lose in their careers. Check out this excellent website article for a list of other cognitive distortions. I recommend interviewing a couple of therapists before you settle on one.

4. Exercise

The value of exercise is widely known: It’s is simply good for everybody. For a person with depression, it becomes not just about a healthy habit, but a critical choice. In his book, Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain, Harvard psychiatrist, Dr. John Ratey devotes a whole chapter to the importance of exercise in treating depression. Please check this book out. Also check out this short article from the Mayo Clinic about how exercise can help with the symptoms of anxiety and depression.

5. Spirituality

If you have a spiritual practice, do it. If you don’t, think about starting one. This could include anything from a formal meditation practice, going to Mass or just taking a walk in the woods. A lot of research suggests that people who do have a spiritual practice do better with depression. If you believe in God or a higher power, you can avail yourself of help and support from Someone who is bigger than your depression. If you do not believe in God, maybe you believe in some other form of spirituality you can tap into. Spiritual growth and development, in my opinion, is an important pillar of recovery.

6. Join a support group

I started a lawyer support group in my community and it has been going strong for two years. Such groups can be invaluable in helping you to see that you are not alone and that others share in the very same struggle. Contact a Lawyers Assistance Program in your state. If you don’t feel comfortable being in a support group made up of lawyers, there are plenty of other routes to go. Check out the website run by The Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance. They run depression support groups meetings in all fifty states.

7. Get educated

Read some good books on the topic of depression. As part of your education, learn about the powerful connection between stress, anxiety and depression. I recommend you read Dr. Richard O’Connor’s, Undoing Perpetual Stress: The Missing Connection between Depression, Anxiety and 21^st Century Illness. Dr. O’Connor opines that depression is really about stress that has gone on too long. The constant hammering away of stress hormones on the brain changes its neurochemistry. This can and often does result in anxiety disorders and clinical depression. I list a number of other great books on my website at Lawyers With Depression. The site also offers guest articles, news, podcasts and helpful links for lawyers.

8. Build pleasure into your schedule

As busy lawyers, we have the “I will get to it later” mentality – especially when it comes to things that are healthy for us. We have to jettison that approach. We must begin to take time – NOW – to enjoy pleasurable things. A hallmark of depression is the failure to feel happiness or joy. We need to create the space where we experience and savor such feelings.

9. Restructure your law practice

Nobody likes changes. Lord knows, I don’t. Yet this pointer falls into the category of “what are you willing to do?” Maybe you will have to leave your job. Is this stressful? Yes. Is it the end of the world? No. Maybe you will have to change careers. I have spoken to many lawyers who haven’t been particularly happy with being a lawyer since day one. But they kept doing it because they didn’t know what else to do, the legal profession paid a good buck, they didn’t want to seem like a failure, they were in debt, etc. I am not trying to minimize these very real concerns. However, your good health (as I learned the hard way) has got to reestablish itself as a top priority in your life. I changed the nature and variety of my practice and am the better for it. I do less litigation. As a consequence, I have less stress which has been long known to be a powerful trigger for depression. It can be done.

10. Practice mindfulness in your daily life

A lot of attention has been focused on the use of mindfulness lately as a way to help depression. In mindfulness meditation, we sit quietly, pay attention to our breath and watch our thoughts float by in a stream of our consciousness. We habitually react to our thoughts (e.g. “I will never get this brief done”). In mindfulness meditation, we learn – slowly – to let the thoughts and feelings float by without reacting to them. If such an approach to depression seems far-fetched, read the compelling book, The Mindful Way through Depression: Freeing Yourself from Chronic Unhappiness, for an excellent primer on how you can incorporate mindfulness into your day. Check out this article written for my website by one of the book’s authors.

In closing, I often tell lawyers to remember to be kind to themselves. When I say this they usually look puzzled – like many a judge who has listened to my oral arguments. They’ve rarely, if ever, thought about it and don’t know how to be kind to themselves. I believe that it first begins with a conscious intention – “I am not going to treat myself poorly anymore.” Such a simple refrain can help us.

Depression is often built upon poor mental/emotional and physical habits. Our inner pain can bring us to the point where we have had enough. It begins to dawn on us that we are worthy of love from ourselves and others and that part of such love involves taking care of ourselves. I hope these suggestions help you on your path.

Where does the Rat Race Lead Us To?

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Lawyers are very busy people. They multi-task like a short order cook flipping pancakes in a busy diner. First or second gear is simply not an option.

Speed becomes a large problem for the depressed lawyer. The murky bog of depression short circuits a lawyer’s capacity to move, think and act quickly; everything takes longer and is incredibly more difficult to accomplish. We see our work getting away from us, but are pinned down in a foxhole. Depression is spraying bullets at us as we feel them whizzing by our heads. So we stay stuck in this foxhole, unable to gain traction to meet our daily demands.

I think there’s a couple different ways to look at the lack of productivity in our work; whether it’s due to depression or not. Since you’re reading this blog, your difficulty in pumping out the paperwork is likely due, at least in part, to depression. It may also be that you just don’t like your job, the type of law you practice or are even dream of quitting the profession. What the precise cause or causes are need to be sorted out with a good therapist and wise friends.

For example, is the work slow down due to a neurochemical mix-up in your brain affecting your ability to concentrate? Or, is it a general malaise which suggests that you’re just burnt out and tired of all the bullshit? They’re really different animals.

Depression treatment, because it involves a real impairment in our ability to function as lawyers, must involve care which tries to return us to some normal or pre-depression levels of functioning. I like to imagine it as the ascent of a diving bell to the ocean’s surface.

Burnout, on the other hand, has been defined by experts as situational exhaustion and helplessness that’s usually specific to our job or burdensome task. We’re asked to do work that’s beyond our capacity to get it done. It’s not defined as a psychiatric “illness” per se like depression and usually demands a different kind of healing approach.

But what if we aren’t “technically” depressed, at least not in a clinical sense, or burned out? What if the real spur in our saddle is that we’re just unhappy in our lives as lawyers? We may find ourselves yearning for a greater sense of fulfillment and happiness in our daily lives, but it all seems so illusive. As a result, we keep doing what we already know how to do: put the old nose to the grindstone, try to just survive the blowtorch-like stress and drama and, hopefully, find some semblance of happiness.

Tal Ben-Shahar, Ph.D., a Harvard professor and author of the book “Happier,” says that how we go about searching for happiness is an important part of finding it. He identifies four archetypes – or patterns of behaviors and attitudes – with which we pursue happiness. One of the patterns he identifies is the “Rat Race Archetype.” This pattern of behaviors and attitudes “. . .sacrifices present enjoyment in order to be happy in the future.”

As applied to law students, lawyers and judges, we do well in law school to get that well paying job that requires an eighty-hour work week. We’re supposed to be happy because that’s why we sacrificed so much of our time and energy to get to where we are or want to be. But more often, we find that “the sense of fulfillment disappears, though the drudgery remains,” says Ben-Shehar.

Paradoxically, outsiders may regard the rat-racer as a paragon of success. “Others may even see him/her as a role model for younger children, suggests Ben-Shehar:

“’See, if you work hard, you can be successful like [Bob] too.’” But Bob actually pities these children, but cannot imagine what alternatives there are to the rat race. He does not even know what to tell his children: Not to work hard in school? Not to get good grades? Not to get a good job? Is being successful synonymous with being miserable? Being a hard worker is not the same as being a rat racer; there are supremely happy people who work long hours and dedicate themselves to their schoolwork or to their profession. What differentiates rat racers is their inability to enjoy what they are doing – and their persistent belief that once they reach a certain destination, they will be happy.”

There’s no easy remedy to counter the rat race archetype in the legal profession. Yet, I feel that offering some insight into the problem can lead us to think differently about our predicament. After all, insight is one of the major goals of all psychotherapy. Such insight may even result in our making small or large changes in how we structure our daily law practice. We need to reassess the motivation that is running our lives; the “why” of what we do and not so much the “what.” Lawyers complain about what they have to put up with: the demanding clients, impatient judges, opposing counsel who (we swear!) has it in for us or the Himalayan-like stack of papers on our desk. Yet, we don’t often ask ourselves where this “putting up with” approach is leading to.

Our society rewards doers, especially in the legal profession.

“We learn to focus on the next goal,” say Ben-Shahar, “rather than our present experience and chase the ever-elusive future our entire lives. We are not rewarded for enjoying the journey itself but for the successful completion of a journey. Society rewards results, not processes; arrivals, not journeys. Once we have arrived at our destination, once we attain our goal, we mistake the relief that we feel for happiness. The weightier the burden we carried on our journey, the more powerful and pleasant is our experience of relief. When we mistake these moments of relief for happiness, we reinforce the illusion that simply reaching goals will make us happy. While there is value in relief – it is a pleasant experience and it is real – it should not be mistaken for happiness.”

If our legal life is a series of moments of relief, we will not experience much happiness. I had to learn this one the hard way. I needed to reassess: why was I doing what I was doing? When I was honest with myself, I found that I saw completing my work as, primarily, a source of relief. I had become a very good lawyer, but much of my motivation was spurred on by this motivation; of flopping onto the sofa at the end of the day and thinking, “Thank God that’s over.”

Happiness, in some sense, seemed unrealistic to me before. I now believe that thinking of happiness as unrealistic is a small box view in a big box world of possibilities. We can change our motivation from one of chasing cheese to one of seeing that life happens in the present moment and not some future success. Our life is really a series of moments, isn’t it? And if we bet the house on the American anthem of “no pain, no gain” to obtain some future level of success, we may find that we end up not where we really, truly want to be.

The Need for Community

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My psychologist said something remarkable months ago: “You’re a real loner Dan.” I really never thought about myself that way – and I’m 48 years old! But after reflecting on it awhile, I found what he’d said to be profoundly true. It didn’t mean that I didn’t have people in my life that I love and who love me. I have the best wife, a beautiful daughter and great friends. Yet, I often didn’t see just often I isolated myself by choosing solitary activities. There’s nothing inherently wrong with this. It’s a question of balance. For me, the scales are tipping in the direction of reaching out and enjoying the fruits that only happen when really sharing with others.

And it’s not just lawyers that feel lonely. In a recent edition of the national publication for judges, Judicature, it was estimated that 70% of judges feel lonely. While there haven’t been any depression studies on judges, as there have been for law students and lawyers, one can only imagine their high depression levels.

I know that when I went through the worst of my depression, it was a very lonely experience. Not because people didn’t try to be there for me and help. Rather, it was because depression short circuits something in our brains that makes us essentially human: our capacity to engage with and feel connected to people. I’ve often said that being a lawyer can be a lonely job and believe that most lawyers, at least in their private thoughts, feel this way. When this loneliness in our jobs is compounded by the isolation we feel during a depression, it has a crushing effect. Oxygen disappears from the room only to be replaced by the vapor of melancholy. It feels like there is no escape and we are pounded into submission; a submission that on one level makes no sense because we are still carrying on with our lives – but just barely.

Lately, I’ve felt the desire to end my isolation. I have begun to recognize that what is most important in life, really, is family, friendship and community. It may sound trite and simplistic to offer this up, but such a simple truth has long eluded me in my life. My best friend, my wife, has seen me reach out to her more and it has only deepened our marriage. How many of us who have dealt with depression don’t reach out to the most precious person that we live with everyday? For some of you, it may not be your spouse. It could be anyone that you feel close to. If you don’t have someone like this in your life, it’s critical to develop one because a hour of therapy per week and a trip to the psychiatrist once a month simply is not enough support, love and encouragement to recover from and stay out of depression.

Think hard about your life. How much time do you spend with friends that you really connect with? What is your relationship life with your spouse and children? As lawyers, we often think and say, “Time is money.” However, the span of our lives is short and none of us is guaranteed even another day on this earth. If you are spending all of your time at the office and neglecting your need to connect with others, the cost is simply too high.

Stress, Depression and Our Bodies

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Working as a lawyer and struggling with clinical depression is tough. I know, because I deal with both every day. In a peculiar sense, it’s really like having two full-time jobs that absorb all of our time. As we know, the daily demands and stress of our jobs as lawyers are often unremitting: Deadlines to meet, phone calls to return, and that motion to argue in Court the next morning. We often feel that others who aren’t lawyers really don’t understand us and our work because they haven’t walked in our shoes.

The “job” of being depressed seems to parallel my experience as a lawyer. A common experience of feeling depressed is feeling alone and isolated. When people who care about us reach out to help, there are times we push them away out of a sense of bitterness, thinking: “You really don’t know what it’s like to be a lawyer”.

Yet, there may come a time when we might want to begin seeing depression and our vocation as lawyers a little differently. Not as two jobs, but really one. The one job is to find a way to take care of ourselves. Mother Teresa once said that what God expects of humanity is that we be “a loving presence to one another.” Taking that further, I would suggest what God equally expects is for us to be a loving presence to ourselves.

In any law firm, the barometric pressure of stress rises and falls frequently. Consequently, we often find it difficult to be a “loving presence” to ourselves: to eat well, exercise, get enough sleep, and nurture a support structure of good friends. The gale-force winds of stress, burnout and depression can begin blowing and disconnect us even from this basic agenda. Yet, if we are to regain our health in the midst of chronic stress, burnout and depression, we must return to these basic concerns because these maladies afflict our minds and our bodies. Our physical state -our precious bodies- gets hammered by the unremitting punishment which they dish out. I have often described my depression to friends as “wet cement running through my veins.”

The biochemical imbalance that is so often a part of depression affects every part of our physical makeup: our eating, our weight, our energy level, and our ability to sleep. How can we realistically hope to “feel better,” to regain the healthy ground that depression has knocked us off, if we don’t offer a loving presence to our tired and afflicted bodies left unbalanced, weakened and fatigued in depression’s wake?

Being a loving presence to our bodies is like being a loving parent. We need to pause – and to have a support structure of people who remind us to pause – to ask ourselves what is good for our bodies. My family doctor once told me that our bodies are like giant tape recorders that remember everything we have done to them. Too little sleep, too much stress, not enough exercise tells our body that we simply don’t care and/or don’t have the time for it. This pattern can have catastrophic consequences when depression hits because the body that we need to help us is not fully able to be our ally. Because it has been ignored, it is of little help to fight depression and actually participates in it. Anti-depressant medication can be a way, especially in the beginning, to begin to soothe our bodies, to calm our minds enough, so that we can begin thinking of how we are going to rebuild that loving relationship with our bodies.

One of my favorite parts of the Bible comes from the Old Testament, the Twenty Third Psalm. To me, it speaks about the journey: “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for You are with me; Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me.” All humans must make this journey. We must all “walk through the valley” of a life which is certain to have its victories and times of happiness, but also its stunning defeats and times of deep sorrow. The shape of those victories and defeats take a particular form for lawyers. Even more so for lawyers who struggle with depression. The valley can feel more like a deep trench with no way out. Our bodies can feel buried in this trench with no light or air able to penetrate depression’s paralyzing weight. Yet, there are steps each of us can take to begin our climb out of this hole. In my experience, our bodies are like the ladders propped against the trench of depression. The great Psalm tenderly says to us that we are not alone; God is there with us in the deepest darkness. Yet, I would also suggest that our bodies are there for us also, waiting to assist us in our journey towards wholeness.

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