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Posts Tagged ‘isolation’

Strange Days

Posted in Current Events, Interviews, tagged , , , , , on April 6, 2020| Leave a Comment »

It came as a bit of a relief, in these troubled times, to sit down for an hour with my old friend Sarah Mills, from Lawline, and record a webinar with the somewhat daunting title “How to Stay Sane, Productive, and Healthy in Isolation – Wellness Strategies for Attorneys During the Pandemic” (it’s a mouthful.) You can watch the webinar here.

When Sarah asked me to put this together, my first thought was, well…let’s not just have me lecturing with slides, not at a time like this. So instead I talked her into doing a sort of conversation, along with me. And that was a relief. Because sure, therapists can dispense advice, and occasionally I might even stumble on a good piece of advice. But what therapists mostly do best is give people a chance to talk to someone who really wants to listen and cares about what you’re saying, so you can hear yourself, and we can both heal one another.

These are scary times we’re living through. You can reality-test your fears and you might find this time that no, you’re not just being neurotic, these times really are scary. During days like these, we need one another more than ever, and this webinar was a way of acknowledging that, and bringing a bit of healing to all involved. Hope you like it. And wishing you the very best as we all navigate this pandemic together. It will end.
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Please check out The People’s Therapist’s legendary best-seller about the sad state of the legal profession: Way Worse Than Being a Dentist: The Lawyer’s Quest for Meaning

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And now there’s a Sequel: Still Way Worse Than Being a Dentist: (The Sequel)

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My first book is an unusual (and useful) introduction to the concepts underlying psychotherapy:Life is a Brief Opportunity for Joy

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I’ve also written a comic novel about a psychotherapist who falls in love with a blue alien from outer space. I guarantee pure reading pleasure: Bad Therapist: A Romance


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All By Myself

Posted in AboveTheLaw series, Thoughts and Musings, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on December 7, 2016| 2 Comments »

9987116d453904225ab5b80d3b4da749Isolation is a popular topic with my lawyer clients. There are so many varieties of biglaw loneliness I hardly know where to start explicating the phenomenon. One client summed up his particular variant:

“They stuck me on a matter that had gotten lost in the shuffle – some rainmaker too busy bringing in business neglected it, so we lost a critical preliminary motion. After that, everyone knew the case was hopeless, and since I was low man on the totem pole, it became mine. Now everything that’s already gone wrong is officially my fault, and no one’s around to help – as in, if you ask for ideas, you hear crickets. I sit in my office, staring at documents, unable to motivate. A calendar on my wall at home has hundreds of tiny boxes I check off each day until November 12th, 2018. That’s when I pay off my last loan – my final day in law.”

To add to the festive ambience, this guy’s firm is in the midst of endless renovations, which they’re taking in stages, floor by floor. Some floors are left mostly-renovated, others barely-renovated, and the stragglers still untouched. My client was assigned to a half-renovated half-floor, nearly empty except for some staff attorneys who toil down the hall in an un-renovated former conference room.

It’s creepy. And according to firm gossip, theirs is one of those “sick buildings” where the ductwork is clogged with black mold or toxic dust or something insalubrious, especially on the as-yet-not-renovated floors. Those could be unfounded rumors. Or not. He hunches beneath fluorescent lights and stained acoustic ceiling panels, trying to breath through his nose.

Law firms are lonely places by design, or at least biglaw firms are, since they’re typically located on multiple floors of sterile glass towers. One partner client was assigned to her office renovation committee. The new philosophy, she says, encourages walls of glass, to bring light in and cheer the place up. So now, as a biglaw attorney, you work in a fish bowl, with everyone looking in as you pretend to review something while surreptitiously playing Candy Crush, or merely ride out an anxiety attack. In a “modern” glass-walled law office, lawyers retreat to the bathroom if they need to cry.

A relatively recent factor contributing to biglaw alienation derives from the fact that biglaw firms aren’t really “firms” anymore – they’re closer to conglomerates or loose federations.

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Holiday Survival Guide

Posted in Radio, tagged , , , , , , , , on November 15, 2010| Leave a Comment »

This month on “The Alternative” with Terry LeGrand, we talked about surviving the holiday season as an LGBT person, especially if you’re feeling alone and maybe a little blue.

You can listen to the show here.  My segment starts about eleven minutes in, but as always, it’s worth sticking around for the whole show.

To find out more about Terry and “The Alternative” on LA Talk Radio, check out Terry’s website and the show’s website.

If you enjoy his show, you can become a Terry LeGrand “fan” on Facebook here.

Thanks, Terry!  See you next month.

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Alone in a crowd

Posted in AboveTheLaw series, tagged , , , , on March 3, 2010| 53 Comments »


Last week I did a first session with a typical client – a young lawyer worried about starting at a big firm.

I couldn’t do real psychotherapy with this guy. Some lawyers are like that – they don’t trust anyone enough to open up. It was more like an awkward coaching session. When I tried to explore his feelings, he cut me off and got down to business.

He was fine, he assured me. He’d already decided he was going to take the money. He just wanted some advice. Then he related bad experiences from the summer program, and asked for my take on big firm life.

I suggested ways to maintain emotional insulation from the worst aspects of a big firm. I also proposed that he do psychotherapy, and maybe group psychotherapy, for emotional support while he was there. This didn’t make much of an impression. His mind seemed elsewhere.

He mentioned wistfully that he “wanted to be a writer, but couldn’t make a decent living at it.” I waited for more, but he changed the subject.

Eventually he left my office, and I thought that’s that. I’d never hear from him again – another unhappy lawyer who’d contacted me in a moment of weakness, then retreated back to his cave, alone.

The next day I received an email that pretended to be a thank you, but was really a warning from this guy not to mention his story in my column. It was a curt, condescending note which ended like a law firm letter, with “best regards.” Only a lawyer could write a note like that to a therapist.

I’ve received a few of these threatening notes over the years. I consider them a by-product of working with lawyers.

I know what you’re thinking. Yes, I’m a therapist, and I charge people for my services. And of course I disguise identities in this column to preserve confidentiality. He has a right to send me any letter he wants, and to have his confidentiality preserved.

But there’s a larger issue here. Trust. And sharing. And honesty.

My column and my work as a psychotherapist are intended to help people. I work with plenty of patients – most of them non-lawyers – who open up to me and find relief.

It’s always tougher with lawyers. They hesitate to trust anyone. That makes things harder for me – but incalculably harder for them.

Big firm attorneys live in a closet. Inauthenticity is the rule at these firms – it pervades the culture. No one admits what they’re feeling because no one is supposed to trust anyone else. The result is isolation, which exacerbates every other toxic element of that life.

It’s a kind of macho code: Act like you’re doing fine. No matter what.

One of my patients said she broke down in tears last week in the bathroom stall at her firm, after a partner tore into her for some screw-up. She chose the bathroom because of her firm’s “open door policy.” She wasn’t allowed to close her office door for privacy.

I asked her how everyone else at her firm was holding up.

She shrugged.

“Fine, I guess.”

According to her, about two-thirds of the associates were fleeing after three years. I doubt they’re all doing fine.

Lawyers are good at hiding things. Especially how they feel.

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