Everybody gets stressed. And not all stress is bad. It’s a good bet that most of us have experienced that extra boost a bit of pressure gives us to get something done.
On the other hand, prolonged periods of stress can be physically and mentally harmful.
In a 2019 survey of 1,000 British workers, 63% of lawyers answered that they felt stressed. This percentage makes lawyers the second most stressed professional group in Britain (HR professionals are the first).
This report confirmed findings in a similar survey conducted by the Law Society Junior Lawyers Division. Their annual resilience and wellbeing report found that “one in 15 junior lawyers have experienced suicidal thoughts. Of more than 1,800 respondents, 48% said they had experienced mental ill-health in the last month, up from 38% last year. Some 93.5% of respondents said they experienced stress in their role. A quarter of those experienced ‘severe/extreme’ levels of stress.”
How to identify stress
The legal profession attracts a high number of people with a driven, perfectionist personality. This is neither a good nor bad thing in itself. In fact, the labels of “good” or “bad” are not helpful at all.
However, it is worth looking at how stress can show up for lawyers. Professionals in this field almost always work long hours and feel pressured to maintain a sense of control at all times.
Signs of stress can include:
- Lack of sleep
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- Insomnia can easily become a cruel cycle. Feeling worried about work can lead to a lack of sleep. And a lack of sleep then makes it difficult to work productively the next day.
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- Physical changes
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- Your body will always communicate with you. Headaches, colds and flu, skin ailments, tired and sore muscles, inflammation and bouts of dizziness and digestive issues are often signs of stress.
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- Poor habits
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- Lawyers can turn to drinking to deal with workday pressures. Unfortunately, alcohol acts as a depressant and smoking leads to cravings for more cigarettes. This is another stress.
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- Poor diet
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- Your relationship with food might swing to extremes. Both comfort eating and skipping meals are indications of stress.
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- Mood swings
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- Occasionally experiencing different moods is par for the course as the day goes by. But erratic mood swings are not. Feeling irritated and short-tempered, and snapping at people, are signs that your stress levels are too high.
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- Panic attacks
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- Panic attacks strike unexpectedly and there’s not always a clear reason for them.You might feel like you can’t catch your breath, or experience body tremors and perspire. It’s also common to experience a sense of detachment, as though the world around you isn’t real.
Beware of burnout
Working under immense pressure, and for too long without a break, can lead to burnout. This condition is caused entirely by unsustainable stress levels.
Burnout is not something you recover from by taking a long weekend. I advise my clients that recovering from burnout often takes a minimum of a year.
People with burnout feel empty, lethargic and powerless. Performance decreases and this leads to emotional exhaustion and an increasing fear of failure. This is combined with feelings of being completely overwhelmed, and unable to meet expectations.
Perhaps worst of all, people with burnout feel that they can’t meet their own usual standards either.
Knowing what burnout is highlights the reason why it is so important to take control of the stress in your life before it overwhelms you.
You might not have the power to change the external pressures in your career, but you can learn how to support yourself better and deal with them.
How to manage stress better
I’ve spoken before on mental health, well-being and legal professionals. I’m a strong advocate in us taking care of our well-being as a way to safeguard our mental (and physical) health.
I begin working with my legal clients in a way that allows us to explore together what the source of their stress is. Then we look at how we can plan a strategy around dealing with it.
Some of the issues identified by my clients in the past include:
- Overwhelming targets and billing to meet
- Difficult relationships with colleagues or clients
- Long and inflexible work hours
- Lack of acknowledgment and support
- Overwhelming responsibilities impacting on personal life (and vice versa)
Talking really does help
The worst thing to do when you’re feeling stressed is bottling up your worries and thinking that they’ll go away. They never do.
By speaking to a trusted mental health professional, you give yourself the best opportunity to address problems early. This prevents them from getting out of control further down the line.
My clients often find that therapy is where they can exhale. Their determined personalities have brought them many rewards – most of them genuinely love working in law – but always needing to maintain a veneer of control is exhausting.
Therapy is where lawyers can be authentic about what and how they are thinking and feeling.
This in itself releases some of the pressure lawyers experience. And once pressure is reduced, solutions begin to come into view.
This has a cumulative effect. When my legal clients feel that they have solutions at their fingertips, they sleep better. This in turn contributes to more productive days at work. They feel empowered and understand how to set boundaries. This enhances working relationships and contributes to healthier working environments (even remotely as we’re currently experiencing).
I’ve worked with legal clients for years and my therapeutic/coaching approach has helped lawyers solve professional and personal difficulties in their lives.
Please feel free to contact me if you’d like to discuss how therapy could work for you. I’d be delighted to chat with you.