1-800-525-0210 FREE + CONFIDENTIAL SUPPORT GO TO MASSLOMAP.ORG

Lawyer Well-Being & Mental Health: Massachusetts LAP Blog

The Secret to Winning – Often not what you think it is: Competition vs. Cooperation

Recently, as I was listening to the TED Radio Hour on NPR, I was intrigued by a TEDWomen 2015 talk by Margaret Heffernan about how our traditional ideas of competition and pecking orders based on individual achievement are causing much more harm than good. In her talk, Heffernan talks about “The Superchicken Model” which was derived from the work of an evolutionary biologist from Purdue University named William Muir who studied chickens. Muir found that a flock of chickens made up of only the high producers (i.e., the “superchickens”) eventually failed over time due to the fact that all but three of them died as they pecked each other to death. In essence, the heightened competition literally killed most of them.

Read more

The Cost of Depression

The statistics are, well, depressing when it comes to the rates of depression among law students and attorneys. While law students do not differ from the general population in terms of depression prior to starting law school (about 7%), approximately 32% of law students experience depression by the end of their first year in law school. This trend continues through law school to the point of 40% of students experiencing depression by the end of the third year. After law school and the bar exam, rates of depression go down a bit but generally stay at over twice the rate of the general population. Lawyers in all areas of law are faced with various stressors (financial, pressure, long hours, unemployment, etc.) that contribute to their impaired well-being.

Read more

Increase your pain tolerance in order to get the tough stuff done

One of the most stressful situations that a person can be in is when they feel they have no control. Feeling a lack of control increases stress. Lists of the most stressful jobs are often topped by jobs in which the employee feels little control over their time and workload. A CEO who is responsible for the operations of a company and the jobs of all of its employees will most often report a lower amount of stress than a middle manager who feels like he or she is stuck in between the rules of upper management and the complaints of the ground level workers. The biggest difference between those two jobs (aside from the paycheck) is the amount of control that each person feels they have within their job.

Read more

Tips on winning the fight against anxiety – Tip #3: Pretend you’re a surfer

One of the biggest ways to increase anxiety and stress is trying to control something that we have no control over. This is the definition of futile. Yet we do this quite often when we are anxious or worried about a potential future event. Our intentions are good (we want to prevent the bad thing from happening) but our attempts at controlling the world around us will actually increase our anxiety. The more we spend our energy on things outside of our control, the more our frustration grows, and frustration in the midst of anxiety can lead to panic. Not a good outcome generally.

Read more
Back To Top