Hi, and welcome to The Former Lawyer Podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Cottrell. I practiced law for 10 years and now I help unhappy lawyers ditch their soul-sucking jobs. On this show, I share advice and strategies for aspiring former lawyers, and interviews with former lawyers who have left the law behind to find careers and lives that they love.

Hello everyone, so there are some questions that lawyers often end up being in a position to ask themselves when they're thinking about leaving the law. One of those questions is, "Am I depressed or am I burnt out?" We've talked about depression and burnout on the podcast before.

If you want a really good deep dive into what burnout is, definitely check out the episode with Ilona Salmons, who's a therapist who works primarily with lawyers. Of course, we frequently talk about mental health here on the podcast and the fact that we know that many, many, many, many lawyers not only suffer from clinical anxiety like I do but also have experience with clinical depression.

It's interesting when lawyers are struggling and thinking about leaving the law, you often hear them make statements like, and in fact, these are statements that I know I made myself, I would say things like, "I'm not depressed. I'm just burnt out," or "I'm not depressed. This is just a very depressing job," or "I'm not really depressed because I know the emotional dysregulation that I'm feeling is just caused by my job. If I wasn't in this position, then I wouldn't be experiencing this.”

Setting aside whether that is true or not true, that was certainly how I felt and it’s how many lawyers feel. Often one of the ways, as lawyers, that we deal with our misery is by intellectualizing things.

A lawyer who's having a difficult time might spend a lot of time trying to figure out whether they are depressed versus whether they're burnt out. Here are a couple of things that I want to say to you if you find yourself in this position.

Number one, I know I talk about therapy all the time on the podcast, but absolutely if you are in a position where you think you are either depressed or burnt out, it is extremely helpful to engage a qualified mental health therapist to work with you because they are in a position to help you evaluate what is going on with not only some objectivity but also clinical expertise in recognizing the symptoms of different types of mental health issues as well as burnout which has its own host of mental health issues.

Here's part of the thing. It can be really complicated. Because as I talked about with Ilona on the episode that I mentioned earlier talking about burnout, it's not necessarily a binary. It's not you're either depressed or you're burnt out. Often it's you are depressed and you're burnt out, or you are experiencing burnout and some of the symptoms are overlapping with depressive symptoms.

Again, I find that for us as lawyers, it can be so easy, we want to be able to fix things with our brains because our brains are often the thing that has been the most reliable for us. So we feel like if we can think our way through a problem, even a problem like “Am I depressed or am I burnt out?” that ultimately, we’ll arrive at a solution or a fix, and the reality is that, to be honest, often this question of “Am I depressed versus am I burnt out?” is more of an intellectual exercise than a meaningful question in terms of what you should do.

By that, I mean this: It doesn't matter whether what you're experiencing is burnout versus what you're experiencing is depression. I don't mean it doesn't matter in any way. Obviously, like I said, I'm not a mental health professional, I recommend you see a mental health professional and they will be able to evaluate to what degree what you're experiencing is depression, to what degree what you're experiencing is burnout, and how to best address either or both of those.

But ultimately, when it comes to you, right now, if you feel depressed or you feel burnt out or you feel depressed and burnt out and you're trying to figure out what is going on, ultimately, it doesn't matter in the sense that you deserve care regardless.

Sometimes the reason that lawyers are trying to figure out whether they're depressed versus burnt out is that they feel like depression as a DSM-5 diagnosis, clinical mental health diagnosis is somehow more deserving of care in a particular way than burnout.

But we know now from all of the research that burnout, in all of its many forms, can be just as difficult in many ways as depression. Certainly for you as a lawyer, whether you're suffering depression or you're suffering burnout, either way, one, you deserve to get the help that you need, and two, it matters and is not something that you should just try to sweep to the side.

Sometimes lawyers are trying to figure out whether they're depressed versus burnt out because they feel like if they are burnt out, that’s somehow less bad than being depressed and therefore, doesn't require the same level of concern.

What I want to say to you is that if you're a lawyer in a position where you feel like, “I might be depressed, I might be burnt out, I might be both, what's going on?” and you're finding yourself thinking about this a lot and trying to figure out the specifics of it, you don't have to do that.

I understand the temptation because again, we feel like if we can understand something, then that's how it gives us the ability to control it. It's something that we have been trained to think by our profession and for many of us, it's something that's ingrained in us because of our personality that led us to choose our profession. But you deserve care and support whether you are depressed or burnt out or both.

Burnout is no less significant than depression. Burnout can have just as significant effects on you as a human as clinical depression. That's why I say in the end, it doesn't really matter whether what you're experiencing is depression versus burnout in terms of what you deserve and what your next step should be.

What you deserve is to get care and what your next steps should be are to reach out to a mental health professional, and tell the people close to you that you're struggling. We know that you are not in any way alone in having this experience. This is so common among so many lawyers in our profession.

It's one of the reasons why I talk about mental health on this podcast all the time and talk about my own experiences with generalized anxiety disorder and panic disorder because you are so not alone in experiencing any of these things.

Whether it's depression or burnout or something else or both or some smoothie mix of all of the above, you matter and you deserve care and that's what I want for you. Thanks so much for listening. I'll talk to you next week.

Are you sick of just thinking about it and ready to take action towards leaving the law? Join us in the Former Lawyer Collab. The Collab is my entry-level program for lawyers who are wanting to make a change and leave the law for another career. You can join us at formerlawyer.com/collab. Until next time, have a great week.