Dec. 20, 2023 – The design of the human nervous system anticipates trouble. The capacity to freeze, fight, flee, and recover from alarming experiences allows us to escape, respond to, and guard ourselves against myriad threats, learn from them, and move on.
Wiser survivors are better prepared for the next day, which may bring the next angry client, the next difficult situation in court, or the next heartbreaking case.
Sometimes, however, for a host of reasons, the nervous system doesn’t fully recover from a disturbing or frightening situation; the person becomes hyper-vigilant, edgy, jumpy, or unable to sleep. Thoughts about the precipitating cause may become distracting or even obsessive.
When this happens to lawyers or judges, their ability to work effectively may become impaired. Their relationships away from work may suffer. Their less-healthy coping skills may go into overdrive in an effort to calm down.
A Professional Hazard
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a professional hazard of working in the legal profession.
When an attorney (or judge or paralegal or receptionist) experiences an assault or a threat, finds a client’s story too difficult to professionally contain, or feels personally frightened following an attack on another attorney, their risk of developing primary or secondary trauma becomes elevated.
Like people in other professions that carry high risks of trauma and trauma exposure, such as medical workers, educators, and law enforcement officers, lawyers may often minimize their traumatic experiences and the personal toll they take, assuming that “being a lawyer” requires the will to “keep calm and carry on.”
Over time, this approach exacts its costs.
A Normal Response to Trauma
To be fair, 50 years ago, medicine and psychology in industrialized countries had little insight into trauma, which added to the shame and stigmatization experienced by people suffering from PTSD, as well as a widespread ethos that sufferers would need to “just get over it” or, worse: live with the unremitting symptoms of having experienced or witnessed terrifying or dehumanizing events.
Over the last few decades, fortunately, psychology and psychiatry have made enormous progress in identifying and treating post-traumatic syndromes and recognizing them for what they are: normal patterns of responding to distressing circumstances.
Some of those situations are unique, one-time events; some are chronic, ongoing toxic situations that induce dread, fear, and anxiety. All of them represent the dysregulation of a nervous system that needs to return to its natural state of balance.
A Need to Return to Balance
When an attorney’s nervous system has reached a state of overwhelm, they may use a range of unhealthy strategies to attempt to return to balance. Isolating from loved ones or avoiding clients is one such strategy. Using alcohol or other substances to “numb out” is another.
Attorneys may start to hate their work, avoid their clients, invest less interest and skill in their work, or not attend to personal relationships.
Fortunately, we now know more about what helps – and it usually isn’t powering through and hoping these symptoms will dissipate on their own.
In his masterwork on trauma, The Body Keeps the Score (2014),1 psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk touts the surprising benefits of noncompetitive, collective activities such as dancing, choral singing, Pilates and yoga classes, and group hikes as healing practices for dysregulated, traumatized nervous systems.
These kinds of activities are helpful to people for a number of reasons: they serve as an antidote to the isolation and disconnection that often accompany trauma; they restore a sense of belonging and community with other people in the wake of social betrayal or upheaval (or exposure to others’ experience of trauma), and they usually involve synchronized deep breathing.
Attorney and lawyer wellness advocate Adam Stivers notes that sometimes traumatized lawyers need professional support. He identifies three of the most effective interventions for treating trauma in his chapter on “Building Resilience and Well-Being” in Reduce your Risk: A Guide to Personal Safety and Security for the Legal Community (2023).2
Trauma-focused cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), eye-movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR), and trauma-focused talk therapy, all endorsed by van der Kolk, can provide relief to lawyers suffering from symptoms secondary to trauma when delivered by psychotherapists trained in these modalities. Just as competitive athletes often need physical therapy, physicians, teachers, and lawyers often benefit from trauma-informed psychotherapy as a standard way of addressing the occupational hazard of exposure to others’ traumas or directly experiencing frightening or life-altering events.
Wondering Where to Seek Help? Start with WisLAP
While the State Bar of Wisconsin Lawyers Assistance Program (WisLAP) doesn’t offer ongoing treatment for PTSD or secondary trauma, we are trained in it – and can help attorneys consider whether they would benefit from treatment, how to locate and vet therapists, and what to expect from various kinds of treatment options.
We can also help attorneys connect with lawyers volunteering as peer supports, in an effort to reduce the isolation, cognitive distortions, and self-questioning and self-judgment that are often part of post-traumatic stress.
Reach out to WisLAP at wisbar.org/wislap, or call 800-543-2625, or email us at callwislap@wisbar.org.
Endnotes
1 Bessel van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score. Penguin Books, 2014.
2 Adam Stivers, “Building Resilience and Well-Being,” in Reduce your Risk: A Guide to Personal Safety and Security for the Legal Community. State Bar of Wisconsin PINNACLE®, 2023.
