Staying SANE as a Lawyer

[00:00:00]In this talk, I'm going to introduce you to a framework I use with high-erforming lawyers navigating intense workloads.

[00:00:08]It's called the same model, and it shows you how sustainable performance is not built on what willpower or relentless pushing. It's built on safety, agency, narrative, and emotional flexibility. In the next 10 minutes, I'll walk you through why so many brilliant lawyers burn out. Not because they're weak, but because the performance strategies they rely on have never been taught to support their nervous system, their identity, or their sense of agency. If you've ever thought, "I can't keep going like this," this talk is for you. Let me tell you about the first lawyer I worked with, we'll call her Cla. She was a senior associate at a global firm, working over 70 hours a week, sleeping next to her phone, binge eating and purging at weekends. Her long-term relationship had just ended. She came to me after experiencing panic attacks.

[00:01:06]Ones, she said, came out of nowhere. She told me, "I know this isn't sustainable, but maybe that's just the price of success. I've spent nearly two decades working with high performing professionals and lawyers are some of the most brilliant, loyal, driven professionals that I've met. Yet, the traits that make them great lawyers can also make them vulnerable to burnout and other psychological problems. And I hear this myth nearly every day. Maybe it's just what it takes. I don't believe that. And the evidence on high performance doesn't support it. In fact, I think it's a belief that keeps people trapped. It's a justification not to change and step outside of the comfort zone. And we all do this when faced with the possibility of change. We come up with all kinds of reasons not to change.

[00:01:57]But this reason is surprisingly convincing when you consider that the alternative of slowing down and maybe setting some limits might seem like it would risk success. And there's a quiet logic to it. But underneath this type of logic is often fear. A fear of not being good enough. A habit of pushing hard to prove one's worth. But the pushing never soothes that fear. So the pushing gets more and more intense. It works for a while until it doesn't because the relentless pushing to prove worth leads to a state of rigidity. a hyperc controlled way of operating where you feel you must hold everything together where emotions are suppressed and perfectionism becomes maladaptive because it does more harm than good. And when the pressure is relentless, it can tip into a chaotic state. The nervous system goes into overwhelm and panic sets in which can lead to avoidance and impulsivity.

[00:03:04]Both rigid and chaotic states are states of imbalance. Neither supports clear thinking, good judgment or sustainable performance. The place where high performance and well-being live is a state of balance. And this is a dynamic state where we can adapt and stay stable, feel energized and coherent under pressure. Daniel Seagull, whose work influenced this continuum, states that good mental health isn't the absence of stress. It's the capacity to return to a state of flexibility, adaptation, coherence, energy, and stability. Now, I often use a visual image to demonstrate the rigidity chaos continuum. Imagine a tank of water with a balloon on top and the balloon represents all the pressure you're dealing with. If we exert too much control over that pressure and push it under the tank of water so that no one can see it because in your mind that balloon represents not being good enough and that keeps you in a quite a rigid and exhausted state. And then when you get too tired and let go of that balloon and it rises with such force and this represents the chaos that will always emerge after too much rigidity and that can sound like effort, I don't care.

[00:04:30]What's the point? Why should I? And a period of avoidance and procrastination follows. So over control and perfectionism don't actually make you feel better in the long run and they actually impact performance and well-being. There are four core capacities that are actually needed to stay well and perform well. These are a nervous system that feels safe, a sense of agency, ability to lead yourself and set boundaries, being aware of your internal narrative and how that is shaping how you do life.

[00:05:07]And emotional flexibility, so you are responding well to situations rather than reacting. And the acronym happens to spell sane. So hopefully that's easy to remember. Now let me say a little about each of these capacities.

[00:05:23]This image represents the nervous system and it's influenced by Deb Dana's work who has done a lot of work on how experience shapes the nervous system.

[00:05:34]The wavy line in the middle represents a state of balance where we are coping with life's ups and downs and we feel safe and alive and connected and open to growth and possibilities including taking the risk of living. And in nervous system language this is what we call a state of vententral veagal. For various reasons we can come out of that state of balance and the nervous system can be activated to a range of different degrees which are represented by the rungs of the ladder. Um, we can be a bit activated or fully activated into a state of panic and we need deactivating strategies to come down that ladder into a state of balance. The nervous system can also be deactivated a little bit and we might feel a bit low or it can be fully deactivated into a state of shutdown where we start to feel depressed. And this is where we need activating strategies to climb back up that ladder. Let's bring this back to Clare. Cla was a bright child and received lots of attention from her parents when she was performing well at school, but little attention and curiosity about who she was beyond her performance capabilities.

[00:06:56]So Cla's nervous system had learned that she is safe when she's better than others.

[00:07:02]But when CLA's nervous system sensed competition, she became disregulated and anxious. She came out of that state of balance. Her nervous system detected competition as a threat because she was at risk of not being the best, that place where she felt safe.

[00:07:22]She dismissed and berated herself for feeling like this and pushed all the anxiety down like the balloon in the tank until eventually it creeped up the ladder and she started experiencing panic attacks. But she interpreted that experience as it just came out of nowhere which made her feel even more vulnerable because now it felt like panic attacks had a hold over her and could make her less than quite randomly.

[00:07:50]A very scary place for someone whose nervous system only feels safe when they are better than. Claire became deflated.

[00:08:00]She didn't know how to climb back down the ladder because she was totally unaware of what had pushed her all the way to the top of that ladder. She carried the fear with her during the day and came home and completely shut down, which felt so good after being in that activated state all day. And to keep in that state of shutdown, she would binge eat, zoning out from the day. Cla had kept telling herself, "I'm okay. I shouldn't be like this."

[00:08:32]What she needed was a calmness to connect with herself and to be able to regulate herself and take steps to gradually come down that ladder into a state of balance. I taught her to understand and name the feelings as she stepped out of the state of balance and to take action to regulate.

[00:08:54]This varies from person to person, but but Clare found it helpful to discover who she was beyond being the best. She would then pause and ask herself, "Is what I am expecting of myself right now related to my own values and my goals?"

[00:09:13]Eventually, all she had to say to herself when she felt that pressure was, "Is that mine?"

[00:09:20]And this helped her to climb down the ladder and become focused in that state of balance. Now let's move to agency.

[00:09:29]Agency is the felt sense of having the power to lead yourself.

[00:09:35]When I met Cla, she was often late and would say, "Oh, sorry. I got stuck in a meeting." And we soon discovered that she said this several times a day. CLA's sense of agency was low. A sense of agency is needed to be or to go back into that state of balance. It's the capacity to make intentional choices and a self-awareness of the patterns you are in. It is protected by the routines and boundaries that we put in place. And it is strengthened by being in touch with your own values. I think it's really important these days because if you're not in touch with your own values and have a low sense of agency, you are at risk of being pulled by other people's intentions and expectations that might not actually be aligned with who you are and leading a misaligned life can be disregulating. It takes you out of that state of balance. The ability to say no is an example of agency. It is a tool that gives agency. Many of the lawyers I work with fear saying no because they think it will damage relationships, that it will damage their reputation if they say no. And some lawyers have been taught that saying no is selfish. And many of the lawyers I work with are just conditioned to overfunction. So they've developed uh a great capacity to stretch themselves. But this is often an autopilot stretch without any intentionality or alignment. And if you can imagine elastic band, lawyers are very good at stretching. But if you're stretching on autopilot without any awareness of what that stretch is doing, the elastic band will eventually snap.

[00:11:27]Once my clients have that understanding of the patterns they are in, it's easier to support them to learn how to say no.

[00:11:35]I like to encourage them to use a structure to say no that respects both the right to ask and the right to say no.

[00:11:45]When you have a low sense of agency, quite often there is anger projected onto the person who's doing the asking.

[00:11:53]But the reality is often people do have a right to ask and they will ask people who are giving signals that there's a high chance that they will say yes. So a good way to say no is first you say yes to your values. Then you say no to the request not the person and a yes to the person's right to ask by offering a solution that validates that right to ask. Another core capacity that is needed to return to that state of balance is an awareness of the stories we are telling ourselves because our internal narratives shape how we do life. Cla's internal narrative was if I'm perfect I'll be liked. Other narratives are if I'm successful then I'll be worthy which leads to more of an emphasis on proving worth and the service you're actually offering your clients. Another narrative is if I avoid conflict, I'll be liked, which often leads to loss in relationships because discord is inevitable in every relationship. And if we don't have a healthy and respectful mechanism for managing that discord, then relationships will not grow.

[00:13:15]If I fail, then I'm weak, which leads to an avoidance of challenge. And this story is very common in people burnout because burnout is not about doing too much. It stems from doing too much of the wrong things which for high performance often means that they are not challenged in the right way. They get stuck in a comfort zone which on the one hand feels safe because there's a low risk of failure. But it can make a high achiever deeply unhappy because they do like challenge and they often have a lot more potential inside of them. Lastly, we need emotional flexibility. The ability to understand our emotions is crucial to be in a state of balance and to return to that state of balance. We need to trust their emotions are not a weakness. They're important information that facilitate a wise response and good judgment. So to conclude, safety, agency, narrative, and emotional flexibility are core capacities that need attention.

[00:14:27]Sustainable well-being and success comes from knowing what has moved you out of that state of balance and to have the skills to return to that state of balance. Poor well-being is not the price of success. Good well-being is the foundation of success and continued growth.