This month’s question for The People’s Therapist gets to the heart of how psychotherapy – “talk therapy” – actually works:
Why is psychotherapy conducted exclusively face-to-face, rather than in writing? I find that I express myself much more clearly and precisely in writing, after having had the chance to ruminate on my response — it’s one of the reasons I’m pursuing law as a career. I’ll bet this is something I share with other lawyers and law students. Having time to consider my response also reduces the risk that when I happen to have my precious hour in session, I’ll be guarded and not in a very sharing mood, and the hour will be unproductive for the both of us. Having the written word as an intermediary allows me to present myself much more honestly.
Thanks,
M
And here’s my response:
To submit a question to Ask The People’s Therapist, please email it as text or a video to: wmeyerhofer@aquietroom.com
If I answer your question on the site, you’ll win a free session of psychotherapy with The People’s Therapist.
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If you’re interested in learning more about the scientific and philosophical underpinnings of psychotherapy, you might enjoy my first book, “Life is a Brief Opportunity for Joy”
At some point you have to get out of here. The question is when – and whither.
A vacation might help, if you could achieve the impossible and take one. My client pulled off a week – seven whole days! – at a Caribbean resort, only to return feeling like a condemned prisoner.
“It made things worse,” she lamented. “Now I remember the outside world.”
Sometimes it’s better to live without that distraction.
You’re in it for the money. Biglaw creates money to toss into the maw of a bank. But no one can stand this abuse forever. Change – any change – might be good, right? How about another firm? Working in a different building – working with different people – different acoustic ceiling tiles, different vertical blinds, different sound-absorbent beige carpeting, different cheap wood veneer bookshelves, different anonymous windows to stare out… Anything different counts as change, doesn’t it?
The omnipresent worry: out of the frying pan, into…someplace worse.
Could anyplace be worse?
Isn’t that what you said about law school?
Another client took the leap and fled his firm – couldn’t take it any more. Guess what? It was worse. Two months later he was begging to return to the frying pan.
Yes – it actually happened. He returned to his old firm, proving forever there are places worse than the-frying-pan-you-know. There’s the-frying-pan-you-don’t-know.
This guy was a fifth year groping for an exit from hell. Nights and weekends of endless grind congealed into a determination – no más. Anything was better than this. This – whatever this was – was killing him.
An escape hatch appeared in the form of a nearby firm (five blocks away) celebrated for “associate satisfaction.”
I was chased down the sidewalk by a breathless woman.
“You’re the guy who made me vegetarian!” she announced between gasps.
I didn’t know what she was talking about.
It turned out she’d worked as a paralegal, years before, at Sullivan & Cromwell. I didn’t feel guilty about not remembering her. We only toiled together once – a grueling all-nighter preparing for an M&A closing.
We ordered take-out burgers that night, and I opted for a veggie burger. She asked why I wasn’t eating meat. At first I played it down – mumbled something like “don’t feel like it.” Carnivores can grow testy if you fail to consume meat in their presence – they take it as a personal affront. I’ve learned to tread lightly.
But she persisted, with genuine curiosity, so I told her the truth:
“You don’t have to go there – no one’s asking you too,” I said. ”But if you do go there, you’ll stop eating meat.”
That was it.
Ever since that night, she told me on the sidewalk, she’d been vegetarian.
All it took was going there – well, having someone tell you there was a “there ” to go to, then making the trip.
No, I’m not going to spell out where “there” is – you know perfectly well and I’m not here to preach. I’m here to talk about consciousness-raising, not vegetarianism. Specifically, consciousness-raising around alcohol.
You know, alcohol – those lambent elixirs stored in gleaming bottles; the all-American can of beer that pops open to seal friendship and inaugurate cherished memories; the cork shooting from a pricey bottle of champagne to harken in merriment and delight.
Yeah. Ethanol. Ethyl alcohol. Let’s tackle the popular mythology surrounding this stuff. We can start with what I call the Maya Angelou rule.
I’ve been talking to people – well, my people have been talking to people – about speaking engagements, radio shows, panels – celebrity stuff – the daily fodder of The People’s Therapist’s life of fame and glamour.
One group wants me to teach a workshop for young attorneys on “health and wellness.” Well, okay. Whatever. I can do that. How much?
They offered the same course in a different city last year, using another therapist-who-is-also-a-lawyer (I wasn’t aware others existed, but I’m not threatened.) To make things easy on myself, I asked how that other (lesser) therapist-cum-lawyer contrived to occupy her “workshop.”
“Oh, she gave them a list of pointers for ‘self-care’,” I was told. “You know, get enough sleep, exercise, eat right, that kind of thing.”
Piece of cake – except I’m not sure they need me to dispense said epiphanies. Richard Simmons manages to preach an identical gospel while everyone performs jumping jacks in lavender leotards.
No matter. Giving advice is what people expect therapists to do.
It’s like “sex therapy.” Remember “sex therapy”? Be honest: Did Ruth Westheimer ever teach you anything you didn’t already know? Yet you found it deeply, mysteriously satisfying each time she chirp-chortled that phrase – “with a firm greep on dee head of dee penis.” Tearing your attention from a tiny Israeli woman in her sixties discussing penises is like trying not to ogle a car wreck. Why fight the hunger?
I received the following letter concerning the tricky business of maintaining a relationship:
Dear Will,
I’m a recent law school graduate studying for the bar exam. I just got into another argument with my boyfriend of four years, and I’m feeling frustrated and upset.
Our relationship tends to break down when I’m going through a period of heightened stress — writing my law school admissions essays, studying for finals at the end of each semester, and now, studying for the bar. I know I can get moody and depressed during these times, but I’m up front with him about my state of mind, and I wish he could be more understanding.
The problem is that, on the one hand, I’m starting to feel like the girl who cried wolf, since these periods of stress have happened regularly throughout our relationship. On the other hand, I still feel hurt and upset when he loses patience with me, like I can’t rely on him during tough times.
Any thoughts or advice you can provide would be much appreciated.
Thank you,
L
And here’s my response:
To submit a question to Ask The People’s Therapist, please email it as text or a video to: wmeyerhofer@aquietroom.com
If I answer your question on the site, you’ll win a free session of psychotherapy with The People’s Therapist.
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It’s hard to generate sympathy for lawyers – especially when the group of people you’re milking for sympathy is other lawyers.
At first glance, that seems counter-intuitive. I’m writing about your fellow attorneys, after all, and they’re in miserable straits. I feel sorry for them. I want to help. But then, I’m a bleeding heart psychotherapist. I even felt sorry for them back when I was a lawyer, too – incontrovertible proof I was never “cut out” for the profession.
With lawyers, it’s not a question of “compassion fatigue” – they never show enough compassion to develop fatigue. It’s more like a birth defect – compassion deficiency.
My solution? The same trick Jerry Lewis used for his telethons. I’ll fabricate a poster child – a Jerry’s Kid – a cute, lovable little spokesperson for suffering, misunderstood, mistreated lawyers!
What would my Jerry’s Kid – ahem – Will’s Kid – look like?
Let’s call him Tim – Tiny Tim. (Cue violin music.) (Cue photo montage.)
There is a curious passage in a recent book by Oliver Sacks, “Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain,” in which Sacks discusses whether Sigmund Freud liked music.
There are contemporary accounts of Freud that mention he rarely listened to music, and only permitted himself to be “dragged” to opera on rare occasion – and then only if it was Mozart. And there is a quote from a not-terribly-reliable memoir by Freud’s nephew, Harry, in which he claimed Freud “despised” music.
Freud wrote about his own response to music in the introduction to “The Moses of Michelangelo”:
I am no connoisseur in art…nevertheless, works of art do exercise a powerful effect on me, especially those of literature and sculpture, less often of painting…[I] spend a long time before them trying to apprehend them in my own way, i.e. to explain to myself what their effect is due to. Wherever I cannot do this, as for instance with music, I am almost incapable of obtaining any pleasure. Some rationalistic, or perhaps analytic, turn of mind in me rebels against being moved by a thing without knowing why I am thus affected and what it is that affects me.
This is a fascinating observation. Freud is essentially saying that, because music is such an abstract art form and he cannot analyze the source of music’s effects upon his emotions, he doesn’t trust those effects and so avoids music as an art form. That might explain why Freud wrote so seldom about music, although he wrote at length about works of fiction or theatre or painting or sculpture.
It is not the last word, however, on whether Freud actually enjoyed music. His friend, Theodor Reik, wrote that he’d gone out to hear music on at least two occasions with Freud, and that it wasn’t only the mystery of music’s effects on the emotions that troubled Freud, but a fear of actually giving himself over to those mysterious effects. Reik felt that Freud’s resistance to music amounted to:
[a] turning-away…[an] act of will in the interest of self-defense…[and the] more energetic and violent, the more the emotional effects of music appeared undesirable to him. He became more and more convinced that he had to keep his reason unclouded and his emotions in abeyance. He developed an increasing reluctance to surrendering to the dark power of music. Such an avoidance of the emotional effect of melodies can sometimes be seen in people who feel endangered by the intensity of their feelings.
What draws me to this discussion in Sacks’ book is that it reveals the “hidden” Freud, the struggle between the serious, scholarly author of countless books, the “father of psychoanalysis” – and the man who, like everyone else, was filled with secret, overwhelming emotions – perhaps triggered by something as innocent as a beautiful work of music – that he could only struggle to comprehend.
I received an offer recently that I couldn’t refuse – an invitation from “legal search consultants.”
Headhunters!
They were having a convention and asked if I wanted to drop by, and, you know, say hi.
Vague images flitted through my mind – guys in suits dancing in a conga line wearing hats with silly horns.
I don’t often get invited to shindigs. I’m a therapist. Mostly, I visit my office, my dog and whoever’s sitting in the other chair. Or I sit at my desk and write columns. Ask me to a party? Hell yeah, I’m down. I’m all over it like a tall dog in a cheap suit. You looking to turn it out? Count me in.
I never say no to headhunters, conga lines and hats with silly horns.
So I went. And it was fun.
Here’s the newsflash about headhunters – they’re good peeps.
At very least, they’re more fun than lawyers. In fact, many of them were lawyers, but had to get out because they were too fun.
They can also teach you stuff you need to know – not just pointers on beer pong and naked Twister.
Behold three key lessons acquired whilst getting down with my bad self in the company of legal search consultant party animals…
Can you explain the long term effects of psychological trauma? Four years ago I experienced two deaths in my family, sudden deaths by accident. I’ve never suffered from depression before the deaths of my kids, but truthfully just haven’t really bounced back as much as I’d have liked to.
I’d be interested in hearing what your thoughts are on depression after a traumatic death/grief and if that trauma makes one more susceptible to depression in general, what if any are other factors involved- (a second opinion if you will)? My therapist mentioned medication recently as a possible option since I have experienced two bouts of depression lasting three and five weeks respectively both occurring since Christmastime.
What factors should I be considering in making my decision regarding medication?
Thanks,
J
Here’s my answer:
To submit a question to Ask The People’s Therapist, please email it as text or a video to: wmeyerhofer@aquietroom.com
If I answer your question on the site, you’ll win a free session of psychotherapy with The People’s Therapist.
========
Last February I appeared on Steven Spierer’s radio show, and he brought on a caller, Matt, who had just started work at a big New York City law firm. You can listen to that interview here.
Now – 9 months later – I went back on Steven’s show, and caught up with Matt, and heard how things are going for this newly-minted corporate 2d year.
Here’s the show – Steven always does a great job, and it was especially fascinating to catch up with Matt and talk about how his views have changed now that he’s been working in biglaw for more than a year.
Thank you, Steven, and thank you, Matt, for another terrific experience on Talk Radio One.
It’s mid-September. I’m talking with a client , a 3L at a top-tier school.
“Here’s how it works,” she explains. “There’s the have’s and the have-nots. Either you have a job offer, or you don’t. If you don’t, it sucks. You feel like an illegal alien.”
Unfortunately, she’s a have-not. Yes, she’s working to correct that situation – trawling small firms in her hometown, attempting to milk connections. But “have-not” might as well be printed on her forehead. Around her peers, she says, it’s the body language that betrays have-not status. As a have-not, you don’t talk much, keep your eyes down, and behave generally like the undocumented guy lugging tubs of dirty dishes back to the kitchen. The aroma of failure – let’s say it, loser-hood – clings to the fabric of your clothes.
Some thoughtful charity – maybe it was Oxfam – threw a fund raiser dinner some years back, with the worthy goal of educating socialites about world hunger. The guests were divided the way the world is divided. Behind velvet-ropes, at a small central table, a handful of diners savored a gourmet meal. Across the ropes, a larger group picked at bowls of plain rice. Further out, beyond non-velvet barriers, a sizable fringe of outsiders observed the others and listened to their own empty stomachs rumble.
It was just like law school – at least at the good law schools. At the second and third tier joints, it seems like everyone’s a have-not. If the personal experience of poverty derives from comparing oneself to one’s peers, then maybe everyone feels less impoverished at the lower-tier schools, where no one gets a job, everyone’s in massive, crippling debt – and the whole class occupies the same boat.
I tell the truth in these columns – at least, to the degree I find convenient or advisable. There is such a thing as a surfeit of veracity. My clients are lawyers, so god help me if I record something a little too candid with regard to their doings. Just talking about myself raises issues.
I haven’t worked at Sullivan & Cromwell since 1999. A statute of limitations must cover misdeeds perpetrated in that dim, dusky epoch. But I’m not betting the farm on it.
I will, therefore, tread with caution as I recount events that occurred in the life of a close friend who practiced at Sullivan & Cromwell during that time, someone whose tenure at this august institution coincided precisely with my own. A dear, personal friend.
It is possible this person occasionally misrepresented his billable hours.
I know. You’re sickened. Awash with a visceral revulsion.
Could I be saying what you think I’m saying!? Not that. It’s unthinkable.
I shall not shy away from the painful truth. I’ll say it: my close personal friend cheated on his hours. At least I think he did. I only think, because he was so sloppy in keeping track of his hours it wasn’t clear what they actually were.
If it’s happened to you, keep reading. If it hasn’t, keep reading anyway. It happens a lot.
It begins with the standard set-up. You feel trapped. Hate your life. Nerves shot. Self-esteem shredded. You know the drill: biglaw.
That’s when the dæmon lover appears. It doesn’t end well.
There’s biglaw hanky-panky and biglaw sexual harassment. There’s also biglaw romantic infatuation. It’s the one you talk about least because you least feel like talking about it. Once you reemerge on the other side and wish it never happened, you never feel like talking about it again.
It’s no coincidence life-crushing, soul-annihilating infatuations collide on a regular basis with the lives of young associates – any more than cars colliding with deer on an expressway is a coincidence if you locate the expressway in the path of the herd’s migration. Life-crushing, soul-annihilating infatuation is the logical outcome of life-crushing, soul-annihilating law firm existence.
The firm swallows your life, denies you sleep and vacation, works you into the ground, and subjects you to an endless stream of criticism. You got there in the first place because you’re a pleaser – the kid who earned “A’s” to please teacher. Now you can’t please anyone.
Enter the dæmon lover. He gets you when you don’t love yourself – when you hate yourself. That’s infatuation – not falling in love, but hating yourself so much you try to escape your own identity by merging into someone else.
For some reason, he’s British. I’m not saying he has to be British, but three of my clients – by some stroke of fate – ended up obsessed with British guys at their firms. Oh, and I did, too. So we’ll make him British.
As The People’s Therapist, my door is always open. I don’t turn away poor clients.
“Pay whatever you can afford,” I tell them.
Naturally, they get what they pay for. If I’m a little sleepy, or staring at the clock – who are they to complain? Come to think of it, why do we have to talk about them all the time anyway…
Just kidding.
But let’s be real – are things any different with the the high-fidelity first-class traveling set than they are with folks flying “comfort class”? I ask myself that question a lot. I do it to stay honest.
For one thing, my wealthy clients – mostly partners at big firms – pay a lot more, which means they literally pay my rent. That means something. Therapy can feel conspiratorial, too – you tell your therapist everything. So when I’m on duty in the Platinum Elite Lounge, I’m aware I’m also pow-wowing with a supremely powerful boss making life-shattering decisions affecting my clients on the other end of the socioeconomic spectrum.
But I have to be everyone’s therapist. That’s my job. I’m consciously working two sides of a divide.
The following is not an unusual scenario: I spend fifty minutes with a JD two years out of law school who’s making $25 per hour doing doc review – all to eke out monthly payments on a $170k financial carcinoma euphemistically termed a “school loan.” Five minutes later, in the same chair, I face a senior partner who brings in $2.8 million every twelve months. I witness abrupt social discordance at least once a week. Welcome to my world.
One of my wealthiest clients, a hypothetical composite who claims half of a large law firm as a personal asset, explained to me an especially profitable element of his firm’s business:
I was hiking in Iceland this past summer. We were pretty high up – around 1,000 meters – and it was raining hard, high wind, snow on the ground.
“Damn, it’s cold,” grumbled one of my American companions.
An Englishman behind us stumbled over a patch of frozen volcanic ash. “There’s a clue in the name, mate,” he offered helpfully.
Some things are so obvious they really don’t need to be explained anymore. Like it’s icy in Iceland. Like it sucks working at a big law firm. You kinda ought to know that by now…
…which is why interviewing 2L’s feels so heart-breaking.
I should know, I’ve been listening to senior and mid-level associates for the past month, telling me how much it sucks interviewing 2L’s.
Why? Because if you hate them, you’re interviewing someone you hate. And if you like them…then you feel a moral obligation to clue them in on the hellish misery they’re clambering to claim for themselves.
It’s hard not to hate law students, especially from the vantage point of a senior or mid-level associate. They’re clueless, and yes, many conform to the worst stereotypes. There’s always the tall dork who wears a suit to class and raises his hand to ask obvious, meandering questions. There’s the girl with hair dangling over her face, who trails the professor after class to smarm, in her peculiarly nasal voice, over the subtle charms of today’s lecture. We all hate them.
One of my senior associate clients reserves her remaining tolerance for part-time law students. “At least they’ve got a clue,” she says. Maximum disdain is reserved for the full-timers who slid into law school directly out of undergrad, scribbling their name on loan documents like so many fevered lemmings racing to be the first off a ledge.
The worst story I’ve heard so far came from a mid-level associate, miserable and deeply in debt, who interviewed the obnoxious 2L son of a huge corporate client’s CEO. While this over-privileged sack of ordure grinned in his preppy suit and barely bothered answering her questions, she returned to an old fantasy of firing a pistol into her mouth in the firm’s dining room, taking special care to splatter the head of litigation.
LGBT people confront widespread hatred, yet each year take new strides towards equality. What’s the secret?
“Straight allies” – a concept every lawyer needs to understand.
As an LGBT person, you face a stark reality – there aren’t many of us. It might not seem like it, but we’re a tiny minority. And it’s a myth we recruit straight people to be gay – we would, but it’s impossible.
“Straight allies” are the folks who aren’t LGBT but – because they’re caring, patient, loving, open-minded and plain decent – they help LGBT people persevere in the struggle for equal rights.
What’s this got to do with lawyers?
You need some allies, too – allies who aren’t lawyers. It’s key to your survival.
Look around – all you see, probably, is lawyers – lawyers and more lawyers. That’s because you spend 90% of your waking hours at a law firm, where that’s all there is to see.
At some point in your day, or your week, or maybe your month, you’re going to have to see someone who isn’t a lawyer. And that person is going to have to put up with you. It may be your spouse, your romantic interest, your buddy from college or a member of your family.
That’s your non-lawyer ally. And you know deep in your heart it’s not a fun job. Whoever he is, he’s putting up with a lot – helping you keep it together.
One of my clients complained to me that he regrets coming back from work every night and grumping at his wife. I reminded him she might not be savoring the experience either. But it went further than that. The following week she blew up at him and gave him an earful of what being a non-lawyer ally is like.
Based on that earful – and other earfuls like it – here are a few tips for getting along with your non-lawyer allies:
My client’s concise estimate of her second year at a big law firm:
“Meh.”
For months, the “career” consisted of 1/3 idleness, 1/3 word-processing, and 1/3 pointless research. That morphed over time into “managing” doc review, which morphed into doing doc review, which translated into odious hours staring at odious documents on a computer and clicking “responsive/relevant” “privileged” or some euphemism for “embarrassing.” According to rumors at her firm, there’s juicy stuff squirreled away in electronic nooks and crannies – most notoriously, emails from execs hiring hookers. To date, my client’s experience of “doing doc review” has matched the edge of your seat excitement of watching drywall compound discharge moisture.
“There are days I want to scream, ‘Who are we fooling?!’” she remonstrated. (Granted, there wasn’t much use remonstrating with me, since I’m her therapist. Sometimes you just need to remonstrate – to demonstrate you can remonstrate.) “This isn’t a career – it isn’t even a job. It’s a joke. Every day I think about quitting.”
But she doesn’t.
Why?
The $160k per year.
Money changes things. Especially when your school loans top $200k.
Another client, from a while back – an NYU undergrad – was introduced to an older gentleman at a gay bar. This éminence grise offered a proposition. A partner at a major law firm, he possessed quantities of money, and an apartment on Park Avenue. They devised an arrangement. Each week, my client would ride the subway up to Park Avenue, undress in this guy’s living room, and, then… ahem …“stimulate himself to climax”…in the presence of said partner.
Why?
$400 in cash. Usually with a nice tip.
If the partner called, he showed up, no questions asked. You could say there was something in this arrangement that piqued my client’s entrepreneurial spirit. Or you could say it paid the rent.
My client wasn’t getting enough sleep. I assumed it was insomnia, but that didn’t fit the bill. It wasn’t that she couldn’t sleep – it was that she wouldn’t sleep. She was staying up from 11 pm to 2 am, lying in bed – mostly, playing Angry Birds.
Those few hours were the only time she was left alone all day – no one from the firm called to assign her something awful to do or yell at her for something awful she’d done. To relinquish this sliver of “me time” – even for sleep – was out of the question.
Morning to night, she spent at the firm. Weekends didn’t exist, in any meaningful sense – they were workdays. Laundry went undone, as did other stuff, like getting her driver’s license renewed or her taxes filed. The only hours devoted to anything for herself were stolen from her sleep schedule, and spent slingshotting daredevil birds at sneering pigs (that’s an Angry Birds reference.)
She needed to vegetate. You need to vegetate, too. There’s only so much work anyone can do. That’s why you find yourself playing video games at 2 am instead of sleeping. You need to play and you need to sleep. You need both.
A medical resident told me law sounded worse than medicine. At least with medicine when you’re on-call, you’re on-call, and when you’re not, you’re not. With law, you’re always on call. Just because you’re asleep in bed doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be working.
Another lawyer client crawled home from the office recently after midnight, only to be awakened at 3 am by the alarm on her Blackberry. She turned it off, but noticed an email from a senior associate, still at his desk. She glanced at the email, but decided to ignore it – nothing critical – and deal with him in the morning.
She forgot his account was set up so he could see she’d opened the email.
Will Meyerhofer, JD LMSW is a psychotherapist in private practice in Lower Manhattan, in New York City.
You can visit his private practice website at: www.aquietroom.com.
He holds degrees from Harvard, NYU School of Law and The Hunter College School of Social Work.
He likes to do things differently.
This is your space, too, and psychotherapy is experiential. Let's relate and explore together.
This month’s question for The People’s Therapist gets to the heart of how psychotherapy – “talk therapy” – actually works:
At some point you have to get out of here. The question is when – and whither.
I was chased down the sidewalk by a breathless woman.
No, I’m not going to spell out where “there” is – you know perfectly well and I’m not here to preach. I’m here to talk about consciousness-raising, not vegetarianism. Specifically, consciousness-raising around alcohol.
I’ve been talking to people – well, my people have been talking to people – about speaking engagements, radio shows, panels – celebrity stuff – the daily fodder of The People’s Therapist’s life of fame and glamour.
I received the following letter concerning the tricky business of maintaining a relationship:
It’s hard to generate sympathy for lawyers – especially when the group of people you’re milking for sympathy is other lawyers.
There is a curious passage in a recent book by Oliver Sacks, “Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain,” in which Sacks discusses whether Sigmund Freud liked music.
It is not the last word, however, on whether Freud actually enjoyed music. His friend, Theodor Reik, wrote that he’d gone out to hear music on at least two occasions with Freud, and that it wasn’t only the mystery of music’s effects on the emotions that troubled Freud, but a fear of actually giving himself over to those mysterious effects. Reik felt that Freud’s resistance to music amounted to:
I received an offer recently that I couldn’t refuse – an invitation from “legal search consultants.”
I received a letter regarding trauma and grief:
Last February I appeared on Steven Spierer’s radio show, and he brought on a caller, Matt, who had just started work at a big New York City law firm. You can listen to that interview 
It’s mid-September. I’m talking with a client , a 3L at a top-tier school.
I tell the truth in these columns – at least, to the degree I find convenient or advisable. There is such a thing as a surfeit of veracity. My clients are lawyers, so god help me if I record something a little too candid with regard to their doings. Just talking about myself raises issues.
If it’s happened to you, keep reading. If it hasn’t, keep reading anyway. It happens a lot.
As The People’s Therapist, my door is always open. I don’t turn away poor clients.
I was hiking in Iceland this past summer. We were pretty high up – around 1,000 meters – and it was raining hard, high wind, snow on the ground.
LGBT people confront widespread hatred, yet each year take new strides towards equality. What’s the secret?
My client’s concise estimate of her second year at a big law firm:
My client wasn’t getting enough sleep. I assumed it was insomnia, but that didn’t fit the bill. It wasn’t that she couldn’t sleep – it was that she wouldn’t sleep. She was staying up from 11 pm to 2 am, lying in bed – mostly, playing Angry Birds.
