The Stress is Killing Me! But Are You Sure It’s Stress?

What Lawyers May Not Know About Stress
By Douglas Richardson, JD

Do you often feel tired, cranky, edgy, agitated, pessimistic, hypersensitive, paranoid, resentful or angry?

Although fatigue takes many forms, many of us complain about our symptoms without giving serious thought to their causes. Among lawyers, there is a tendency to put every significant decline in energy and motivation into a convenient bucket called “burnout”, the cure of which is to get more sleep, a much-needed vacation, or to take a sabbatical.

In fact, there may be a lot more to it than you think. The causes may be different or more complex than you believe, leading to what engineers call “attribution error,” meaning that if the diagnosis is wrong, the remedy is likely to be off target. You may pursue the wrong “cures”, trying solutions that are ineffective — or that may even exacerbate the situation. Without wading through a technical treatise on physiology and psychology, let’s take a practical entry-level look at what happens when we crash and burn.

So, let’s look at what it really means to be worn out, stressed out, burned out.

Are You Worn Out?

To be worn out is a statement of simple physical exhaustion – the direct consequence of prolonged mental and physical exertion that calls for rest, recharging, physical replenishment; perhaps sleep. Being worn out is not primarily a psychological stress reaction. It may feel stressful, but this form of fatigue is largely responsive to external reality factors – long hours, intense activity, sleep deprivation, poor nutrition, etc. It responds well to rest, whether that means total temporary withdrawal from all fatigue factors (sometimes called a vacation) or at least a realignment of life forces so that more energy is flowing into your battery than is being drained.

Being worn out is a temporary condition. Once your battery is recharged, the self-protective symptoms of fatigue abate and you can comfortably entertain the idea of re-engaging your active world. Indeed, once your energy equilibrium is restored, more rest – too much rest – may be counterproductive. Action-oriented people may get edgy and impatient if their renewed energy is not put to use. Another way of keeping the battery charged is to remove or diminish the forces that drain it. People experiencing repeated exhaustion will do well to “reframe” their work and personal lives – perhaps by exploring a career shift, a change of setting, or even a modification of life and career goals to “lower the bar” and make life feel more manageable. It’s not easy, but the results can be striking, even exhilarating.

Are You Stressed Out?

Being stressed out is different from physical exhaustion. Although stress may create physical feelings of fatigue, loss of initiative and a desire to sleep, its causes are primarily internal and psychological. The symptoms derive from the ways in which one’s psyche perceives and explains what is happening.

Feeling stressed out is a signal that one’s internal coping mechanisms are somehow being overtaxed. People respond to emotional stress in various ways and have very different levels of resiliency. Emotional stressors – the death of a parent, loss of an intimate relationship or a job, divorce, moving, interpersonal conflicts, economic uncertainty – do not drain our battery in the same way that running a marathon does. As one put it, it’s how we explain and interpret events – what he calls our explanatory style – that shapes our reactions to events. Those reactions may be long-lasting or even indefinite; whether you yell “Get over it!” to yourself, or others advise you to “deal with it” or “get on with your life,” you do not magically diminish your distress by ordering it to go away. Our explanatory style is not a direct measure of reality. Rather it represents the “lenses” and “filters” through which we perceive reality – which explains why to optimists most events have a rosy glow, while pessimists feel that if nothing has gone wrong it’s just about to.

People who are seriously stressed out often are surprised that rest or removing themselves from the source of stress does not automatically cure things. They may take sabbaticals, change jobs, change partners, and “reinvent themselves,” only to find themselves susceptible to the same old drained feelings once the excitement of change is over. Because the symptoms are rooted in a continuing emotional experience – namely, your explanatory style – past perceptions and wounds can continue to infect present realities.

This means that the best prescription for stress fatigue may not be simply altering external events, but learning how to adjust our explanatory style. The key to reframing is not hours spent dozing in a hammock in the Bahamas; it is systematic reflection and understanding of the long-standing lenses and filters through which we experience current events. In many cases, introspection, self-help or self-study can develop an ability to reframe. In others, the support and perspective of a therapist, counselor or coach is the best way to reset one’s fight-flight-or “veg” reflex. The mere passage of time may deaden the immediacy of a stressful event, but it doesn’t eradicate its reverberations. The stress simply goes underground, planting the seeds for the re-experiencing of stress over and again.

Similarly, if the stress derives from unmet internal needs, reframing must include methods for articulating those needs and getting other people to help address them. Reframing seldom works if you do it in a vacuum; indeed, the feeling that you’re “going it alone” may increase the feelings of stress.

Or, Are You Burned Out?

So what is “burnout?” Deborah Arron, author/lawyer (What Can You Do With a Law Degree), defined burnout this way: “It’s an unacknowledged state of systematically putting others’ interests ahead of your own.”

Viewed this way, burnout is a unique kind of stressor – one that derives from one’s desire to please others, rather than from forces that impinge on us from outside. Burnout often is the hallmark of perfectionists, those of us who feel that we have to excel in all that we do and who strive for the approval of some unseen judge or jury. For these people the drive for achievement is fueled not by the pleasure of achieving personal goals, but for the need to be above the reproach of potential critics. There is a crucial difference between being motivated and being driven, and although both forces may produce stellar results, motivated people stay fresh and energized over time. Driven people burn out.

This particular form of stress cannot be ameliorated through R&R. It is experienced as an unrelenting obligation to perform for others, and attempts at self-restoration often have the paradoxical effect of producing intense guilt: “I shouldn’t be playing golf today, that’s so selfish of me. I should be at work, working for others.” You can change roles, jobs, geography, everything…and this nagging ball and chain follows you around.

If you say to a perfectionist, “You know, you can’t do everything,” he or she is compelled to agree … at least outwardly. But in their head they’re thinking, “Well, maybe I can do everything … or at least I can do more things – and do them better – than most people. All I have to do is try harder and work harder.” For people who define their self-image primarily in terms of the approval of others, the pressure to perform never takes a holiday and cannot be given a rest. As one Philadelphia trial lawyer put it, “For years I have felt as if I’m only as good as my last achievement. I feel any lapse in performance will destroy my reputation. I hate this pressure, but it’s better than being considered a failure.”

Like other emotional stressors, burnout does respond to reframing. The burn in burnout diminishes if instead of saying to oneself, “Well, okay, I guess I can’t do everything,” one can learn honestly to say, “I shouldn’t want to do everything. My choices and priorities are mine, they’re not shaped by a duty owed to others.” Perhaps no form of reframing is more difficult than this. It requires one to confront attitudes and behaviors that have evolved and been reinforced throughout life. People do not become emotionally driven overnight, and they therefore cannot suddenly decide — simply as a matter of sheer determination — they don’t want to be driven anymore. People prone to burnout remain susceptible to burnout; their guilt trails them around during their sabbaticals like an unhappy shadow.

What’s the cure to burnout? To set aside the “acknowledged state of systematically putting your own interests ahead of others” and assert one’s right to a healthy dose of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Kicking burnout is usually an extended process that requires mindfulness — that is, active and conscious reframing of the self-imposed forces that wear you down. Rest, denial and withdrawal will not rewire the underlying circuits to produce relief. However, if you can learn to focus steadfastly the causes of your burnout, to your surprise you may find that the results take care of themselves.

– Douglas Richardson, JD, is an adjunct consultant with Altman Weil, Inc.

Suggested reading — Stress Management for Lawyers: How to Increase Personal & Professional Satisfaction in the Law (Amiram Elwork, JD/Ph.D, 2007). Copies available at www.vorkell.com.