I received the following letter from “S”:
This is the situation: my boyfriend of three years is an overachiever. He attended the best schools and now works in NYC. He’s in finance, from his personal office he sees most of Central Park, and I love him very much. As for me, I am currently studying for the Bar Exam. I’ll probably pass, but it’s not like I’m very confident about it. I do not have either the background or the grades to make it to a big law firm, and I am uncertain about what to do with my career. When I’m with my boyfriend, I can’t help but to compare my situation with his, and even though I don’t want to admit it, I’m jealous. My boyfriend never pressured me, and he is 100% behind me, but I still feel like a loser. How to deal then when people in your entourage succeed and you feel you’re the only one having to catch up?
Thank you, S
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”
My second book takes a humorous look at the current state of the legal profession, “Way Worse Than Being A Dentist”
(Both books are also available on bn.com and the Apple iBookstore.)
For information on my private practice, click here.
The People's Therapist 
Will, I’m interested…what did you do for play that made you realize your work should be in psychotherapy? How did you come to make the decision to invest even more in schooling so that you could become a psychotherapist rather than just try to find a career that maybe just involved a more human element, but didn’t require another advanced degree? I think a lot of lawyers who want to be ex-lawyers struggle with trusting their judgment on what to do with their lives career-wise. If they’re willing to drop $150K on what turned out to be a terrible career choice, they must be someone with poor foresight. (I say “they” but I mean “I.”)
A related question is how do you distinguish escapist play (e.g., an obsession with The Walking Dead) versus play that everyone seems to enjoy (e.g., going to the beach) versus play that speaks to your special calling? Or is no distinction necessary? Maybe you just have to figure out why, for example, you choose to watch The Walking Dead over another program?
Anyone out there who has made a successful career transition have thoughts on this?
That’s a good question. The fact is, I always wanted to be a therapist. When I was a kid, I was the one who wanted to sit up for hours and have a “heavy talk.” In college I was notorious as the guy you sat up all night with and told everything to (ask my roommates.) I loved that – always have. I love sitting and listening to people open up and realizing universal truths with them. At Harvard I was the unofficial head of the gay group, because I was the guy everyone wanted to come out of the closet to. For me, being a therapist is a continuation of my play – I get to talk with people, and listen to them talk about the most important stuff in their lives – and I get to write about it (my hobby has always been writing.) So being a psychotherapist is definitely an extension of my interests and my hobbies and natural inclinations. It might sound odd to say so…but it’s fun.
“I think a lot of lawyers who want to be ex-lawyers struggle with trusting their judgment on what to do with their lives career-wise. If they’re willing to drop $150K on what turned out to be a terrible career choice, they must be someone with poor foresight. (I say “they” but I mean “I.”)”
I think that depends on why you chose law.
I basically made a completely arbitrary decision based on future income estimations when I “chose law”. In fact, I had nearly zero interest in law when I went into law. That being said, I had zero interest in just about anything at the point I “chose law”, being completely burnt out at a time.
The problem with life is that you only understand things once you experienced them.
That’s why it’s a problem that life can only be understood backwards but it has to be lived forwards.
I mean, it’s really annoying that I would have made completely different choices with basically everything if I could have understood what the choices meant when I made them in the first place.
So of course I can’t make good decisions for myself. I don’t really understand the choices I’m making.
But that’s a flaw with my “life model”, which I have to continuously update as I go on living.
Will clearly made the right career choice. He has clients and is nationally recognized. People hate the guy out of jealousy.
A better question is ….Will do you regret your decision to attend NYU and then what was it S & C? Would you have rather gone straight from Hahhhvard to a masters program? Or did the law experience actually make your career
Good question. I went to law school and am quite certain that I’d rather do something else (non-legal). And have a good clue for what it is. But if I hadn’t gone to law school would I have gotten that realization? Or be struggling with another job and foolishly thinking that I should have gone to law school since that’s what the smart kids do?
@MS – Well, it doesn’t matter how you got the realization, just that you got the realization.
If I knew what I wanted to go do with myself, I wouldn’t care how or why I got the realization, I would just be happy that I had some sense of purpose in life.
Well, keep in mind I had a practice as a psychotherapist for years before I started writing for AboveTheLaw and specializing in treating lawyers. In fact, I started out working with gay men living with HIV. That developed into a diverse practice working with all kinds of people, which went on for years. I still don’t just work with lawyers. In fact, when I fell into the clutches of David Lat, it was the first time I’d thought about law in about a decade.
So do I regret law school? Yes, I think I do. It cost a lot – including years of my life. I could have gone right into psychotherapy – as my older brother did – and gotten myself established a lot sooner. And my years at S&C were awful (I described them in detail in my second book.) The whole thing might seem like an interesting sidetrack from so many years’ distance – but it was a pointless endeavor and one that cost me a lot of time and money.
Is there any trouble with separating your experience in law from that of your patient? Normally, a therapist in an anonymous stoic figure that asks a lot of questions and gives insight. But with you, the patient knows about your big law background. In other words, does it get confusing? Who is the patient there? Is talking to your patients cathartic for you?
There’s an old saying among therapists that you get sane along with your clients – watching people sort themselves out has a vicarious benefit. The same thing plays out with members of a therapy group. In my case, with my background in law…well, yes, it has been cathartic to work with other lawyers and hear that they’ve gone through a lot of what I experienced. Writing the columns and the book was helpful too – I did a lot of processing of old trauma. From the client’s point of view, I think my being a lawyer is mostly just convenient. I “get it” – they don’t have to struggle to fill me in. I’ve been there and done that. It saves time, at very least. At best, it means we have a strong bond from the very beginning.
Will,
From reading your blog, seems to me that your experience in law, and the sharing of those experiences, has been invaluable to your clients and a lot of people who frequent your blog = not a wast of time and money as you say above? As a currently unemployed paralegal, I have gotten so much out of your truth telling on what it is really like to work in law. Finding your blog was confirmation to me that I was not losing my mind. It brought me clarity and awareness in this area. Perhaps your training as a therapist has helped you to clarify/relay a basic message, I see, in some of your posts that living a soul killing existence where you do not feel precious and free is so much less than what we are put here to do and be. So, life experience = great therapist and teacher? Thanks.
Thank you.