The emerging scientific field known as positive psychology helps us understand how the brain can change, and that we can purposefully change it to create more positive emotions. Positive emotions, in turn, broaden our cognitive capacity, allowing flexible, open-minded thinking for creative problem solving and building of personal resources such as skills, knowledge, and relationships. […]
Archive for December, 2014
Compassion Fatigue: The Price We Pay as Professional Problem Solvers
Posted byMost of us decided to go to law school because we had a passion for justice and helping people. While we may not think of the legal profession as a traditional helping profession like we typically think of social work, the reality is that we serve in a primary helping capacity. Clients are in distress, […]
How I Almost Became Another Lawyer Who Killed Himself
Posted byThe legal profession has a problem. Lawyers are suffering and, far too often, they are taking their own lives. Lawyers, as a group, are 3.6 times more likely to suffer from depression than the average person. A John Hopkins study found that of 104 occupations, lawyers were the most likely to suffer depression. Further, according […]
Underage Drinking: A Guide for Parents
Posted byThe Lawyer Assistance Program (LAP) has been receiving an increasing number of calls from lawyers who are struggling with their tween, teen, or young adult children’s substance abuse problems. The LAP provides assistance in these circumstances and regularly guides lawyers from the intervention process through treatment and aftercare. The LAP can recommend effective treatment centers […]
Stuck? Take a Quick Inventory
Posted bySocial scientists have researched and examined the relationship between material well-being and emotional well-being or happiness. For most of the world, greater levels of material wealth have led to greater levels of perceived emotional well-being—most everywhere, that is, but in the United States. (The Atlantic, January/February 2003). In the United States, the total numbers of […]
Alcoholism and the Distance it Creates
Posted byPersonal stories can be either the easiest to tell, or the hardest. Easiest, because we know our own stories so well; hardest, because they often reveal things about ourselves or those close to us that we might prefer not to disclose. This story is both. I was 30 and divorced when I fell in love […]
When “Helping” Hurts—A Guide for Law Firms and Families, Part 2
Posted byThe LAP recently conducted an interview with a managing partner of a firm who years ago orchestrated an intervention with a leading lawyer in the firm. This example illustrates how a law firm can proactively address an issue of impairment. The following is taken from that interview and told from the point of view of […]
An Enabler’s Story
Posted byYears ago when I lived in another state and before I enrolled in law school I began dating a man who lived downstairs from me in my quadraplex. He was a very successful computer engineer. One day he was unexpectedly fired from his job. He downplayed the incident and obtained another job of equal stature […]
When “Helping” Hurts—A Guide for Law Firms and Families, Part 1
Posted byMost lawyers, regardless of practice area, are accustomed to solving others’ problems and providing solutions. Lawyers are helpers by nature. While many of us may try to project a certain image, and despite whatever lawyer-joke-du-jour may be fashionable, most lawyers have big hearts and want to help people. It only makes sense that when a […]
A Recovery Story: Being a Lawyer Saved My Life
Posted byI am a lawyer and an alcoholic, but not necessarily in that order. I was an alcoholic long before I even considered becoming a lawyer. I don’t believe that the inherently stressful nature of the practice of law caused or even exacerbated my alcoholic drinking. I do believe that because I am a lawyer I […]