Trauma & Grief Bingo: Lawyers’ Edition
Death, injury, suffering, and the fallibility of humanity permeate the practice of law. In some ways, they are the foundations of it. Lawyers experience some of the highest rates of trauma and burnout of any profession. Studies have shown that the law is not simply a magnet for the anxious and depressed or the perfectionists with unreachable goals. Practicing law causes and worsens all those things. As attorneys, we cope through humor, diligence, competition, and sometimes, even some emo feeling sessions. As a profession that is often not viewed as occupied by humans, many of us know all too well how very human and fragile we are.
Last week, as I was watching an old video of Toni Morrison responding to a question about how anyone gets through trauma, I was reminded that it is about:
Behaving as beautifully as one can under completely impossible circumstances . . . Good is just more interesting, more complex, more demanding. Evil is silly . . . It needs a tuxedo, a headline . . . But the opposite, which is survival, blossoming, and endurance, are just more compelling intellectually, if not spiritually . . . We are already born. We are going to die, so you have to do something interesting you respect in between.
What’s the interesting and respectful thing in-between when we’re confronted with everything from the petty to the life-changing daily as lawyers? When we build professional lives based on fear, misery, and cynicism, we can find it difficult to set down those modes of being. Maggie Smith’s poem What I Carried describes the weight of carrying fear and the refusal to let it go, including the perverse incentives to believe that a fearful, vigilant state is safety and wisdom:
I carried my fear of the world/ and it became my teacher./ I carried it, and it repaid me/ by teaching me how to carry it.
Being a thoughtful, feeling, empathic attorney is not a liability, even though grief can be uncomfortable. As Lama Rod Owens writes in Love and Rage:
My broken heart is not a judgment or a crime. It is a detailed record of how I have tried to meet the violence of the world with as much openness as possible.
Lawyer friends (and friends-to-be), always remember that the disproportionate levels of violence– whether interpersonal or global– that we witness are not simply evidence of the worst; they can be signs of how much we have tried for goodness and how much we continue to feel even when it’s unbearable.
Without any transition to hope offered neatly here, I’m presenting the Trauma & Grief Bingo card. The format is not intended to make light of any grief or trauma. I just know that sometimes lawyers process their darker feelings through humor and in summary form. If you’ve experienced any of these– you’re a lawyer and a human. If your card is looking full, know you aren’t alone and that we need you in the fight. Take good care of yourself and reach out to any of the resources presented below for additional support.
G R I E F
| Being stuck in an abusive clerkship | Losing a client to suicide | Losing a case for a client that needed a good outcome to survive | Managing the impacts of a supervisor’s addiction | Watching others around you burn out |
| Not being able to turn off cynicism | Converting a painful experience into self-mocking | Being reminded that there is no meritocracy | Explaining again to a client that justice is often about resources | Pretending that everyone else in the world loves guns, golf, and drinking as much as lawyers |
| Receiving death threats | Watching triggering investigation videos or leafing through graphic images | FREE SPACE FOR A FULL MIND: Swinging wildly between “I’m the problem” and “Everyone else is the problem.” | Being told you are a terrible lawyer or person and agreeing with it quietly | Enduring a supervisor that tells you that all your work is shit– as if that is concrete feedback |
| Always getting professional advice that reinforces the hierarchy | Not being able to refrain from analyzing everything and assuming the worst | Hiding the truth about an open position because you don’t want to be alone in the work | Losing a colleague to suicide | Feeling numb about successful outcomes |
| Striving for perfection everywhere | Under-reacting to others’ grief and pain | Forgetting why you became a lawyer, except maybe the competition part | Struggling to make decisions personally, even though you excel at it in your professional role | Devaluing your own feelings |
Resources:
Washington State Bar Mental Wellness Program: https://www.wsba.org/for-legal-professionals/member-support/member-wellness-program
American Bar Association Mental Health Awareness, including national resources: https://www.americanbar.org/groups/lawyer_assistance/profession_wide_anti_stigma_campaign/mental-health/
Harvard Law’s Center on Well-Being in the Legal Profession: https://clp.law.harvard.edu/knowledge-hub/magazine/issues/approaching-lawyer-well-being/
Aligna doesn’t provide mental health counseling or psychological assessments. We love knowing other lawyers, especially those with big hearts and overactive minds. We’re currently reading What My Bones Know by Stephanie Foo.
Acknowledgments: Therapy, caffeine, trees, loud music in the car, crip hop, water, stretching, funny friends, loving family, cute animal videos, air.
