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.

Let's talk about something that people often worry about, or I guess maybe the better way to say it is that lawyers often make themselves feel bad about, which, let's be real, is a lot of things. But today I want to talk about a specific one, which is the fact that many lawyers will say that one of the things that's hardest for them about their jobs is that they feel like they can never turn their brain off. I'm sure for a lot of you when I say that, you know what I mean immediately. But I want to talk briefly about what I mean just so we're all on the same page.

So it is very common for someone who's working as a lawyer to feel like even when they're not working, even when they don't have something specific that they need to be working on, they feel like they're always on alert. They feel like they're always waiting for the other shoe to drop. They feel like they're always waiting for something to show up in their inbox or to get a phone call and for there to be a whole thing. Whether it's a new matter, something that's happening on a matter or deal that you're already on, or something internal, like the person you work for being the way that they are. If they are difficult, which let's be real, for most of you, they probably are.

People often feel guilty that they cannot turn off this sense of hypervigilance, this sense of awareness. They'll sometimes beat themselves up and be like, "Why can’t I just be cool when I don’t actually have work and let myself chill?" I have a couple of things to say about that. So first of all, most of the time, people are expecting something unrealistic from themselves. Part of the challenge of that sense of being always on is that you have experiences in your working life as a lawyer that tell you that you do actually need to be always on.

It’s not irrational. It’s not irrational to be aware that at any moment something could blow up your work life—slash ultimately your life life—because it takes over everything else. There is a degree to which I feel like people almost, it’s like they feel like they’re doing a bad job of gaslighting themselves. They basically feel like they should be able to convince themselves that it’s fine and nothing random is going to come up. If it does, “I’ll deal with it,” which is true.

In a lot of cases, it’s somewhat unlikely that something might come up. It’s true that if something does come up, you’ll deal with it because you’re a professional and that’s what you do. But that’s all thinking thoughts, right? That’s all the things that you’re thinking in your brain. Your nervous system, as I talked about on a recent episode—and we’ve talked about a lot on the podcast—your nervous system is not governed by how you think about things. It can be affected by it. There are things that you can do that are more and less supportive for your nervous system.

But ultimately, if you are in an environment where hypervigilance and awareness is not just helpful but sometimes necessary, the reality is that your nervous system gets trained to put you in a state that allows you to respond to that environment. So it’s not just, oh, I just can’t chill out, I just can’t be calm in my brain, or whatever. It’s that your nervous system is like, “You don’t have to get ready if you stay ready.” That is the experience of being a lawyer, especially if you work in a law firm.

That’s the first thing. You can tell yourself, "I need to stop thinking like this, I need to chill out," whatever. But your nervous system may be stuck in hypervigilance, and this is part of why there’s also the reality of turning off or getting away does not necessarily help you as much as you think it might in these environments.

So what do I mean by that? We all know if we’re in an environment where you have billable hours, like a law firm, you can take a vacation, right? Technically, a lot of places are like, "You can take as much vacation as you want." But here’s the thing. Unlike people who have vacation days where they take off and, yes, they have a lot of work on the front end to leave potentially, then they have a bunch of work to catch up on the back end—they’re not having to make up hours.

Having to make up billable hours because you were out on vacation feels like when you go on vacation, you’re basically hurting yourself. You’re creating more stress for yourself. The whole point of going on vacation is supposed to be to disconnect. Often, if we’re talking about a law firm, you don’t really fully disconnect. Because even if you do mostly disconnect, you still have that sense of, “But someone could email or someone could call. There could be a crisis and blah, blah, blah.”

Even if you are in a situation where you have a lot of coverage and you’re like, "I don’t think I’m going to hear from anyone unless something really goes awry," it is still your nervous system. Your nervous system does not turn off just because you’ve stepped away for a week. This is what I was talking about in the previous episode about burnout. Even when you leave an environment that is burning you out, it takes time for you to recover.

A week can give you some relief, and relief is good, to be clear. I’m not saying, "Don’t take vacation because it’s not going to help you." It will help you because it does provide some relief to your nervous system. However, that relief is not the same as rewiring your nervous system. Ultimately, your sense that you’re always on is tied to the degree that your nervous system is activated by your environment.

So if you’re someone who feels like, "I’m always on, I cannot chill out about work, there’s something wrong with me because I should be able to, because this person over there seems to be able to, and I can’t," well, first of all, you don’t actually know that that other person does. Second of all, you don’t know what that person is doing to calm their nervous system.

We know there are lots of unhealthy coping mechanisms that exist in the law for people to calm their nervous system. The reality is that fundamentally, if you feel like you’re always on, if you feel like your job doesn’t allow you to turn off, you’re not crazy. You’re not weak. There isn’t something wrong with you because you can’t do what it seems like other people can. It’s literally your nervous system. You literally are always on.

That is why stressful environments like most law firms and many other legal workplaces are not good for your physical, emotional, and mental health. Because ultimately, if you exist in an activated fight-or-flight state for long periods of time, your body’s like, “Ah, something’s really wrong.” I’m here to tell you that if you are a lawyer and you feel like you can’t turn your brain off, that you’re always on high alert, always waiting for the other shoe to drop, there’s nothing wrong with you. You’re normal.

You’re normal, and you should feel that way in an environment where being that way is rewarded, which it is in the legal profession. So then the question becomes, because you’re like, “Okay, Sarah, great. So this is normal, but it’s not great. This experience is not great. What do I do?” Well, there’s a different answer for everyone, but ultimately, you need to think about finding a place to work that doesn’t constantly activate your nervous system.

By the way, this is also why I talk about therapy all the time on the podcast, because there are ways that our nervous system can be activated that are different for each person. Each of us has a different window of tolerance.

So window of tolerance being the window in which you are able to experience things and not become activated and go into fight or flight. Your window of tolerance—this is basic polyvagal theory, by the way, and we can link the book Anchored by Deb Dana in the show notes if you're interested in learning more about this—but your window of tolerance gets bigger or smaller based on all sorts of things. For example, if you're neurodiverse, you probably have a smaller window of tolerance just because of your neurotype.

If you've experienced trauma in your past of any type—childhood, workplace, other—that probably means you have a smaller window of tolerance. If you're not getting as much sleep as normal, you probably have a smaller window of tolerance. If you're in a stressful situation, that decreases your window of tolerance. So all of those things make it more likely that a given stimuli will push you outside of your window of tolerance, which means that you'll go into fight or flight.

The good news about that is that there are things that you can do that help you to widen your window of tolerance. A lot of those things are things that you can do in therapy. For example, we've talked on the podcast before about processing trauma, EMDR therapy with an internal family systems approach, other trauma-informed therapy methods, even things like CBT to the extent that you are holding on to ideas that aren't actually true that are then creating additional anxiety.

There are lots of different ways to process trauma and other things that decrease your window of tolerance to give you a wider window of tolerance. In order to do that, you need to be psychologically safe. For many of us in the positions that we're in in the legal profession, those jobs are not psychologically safe. And so part of what you can be doing in therapy is creating a space for yourself that is psychologically safe so that you can do some of this processing.

I don’t mean "Do this processing to have a wider window of tolerance so you can tolerate more garbage from your terrible job." I mean more like "I think it is helpful to know that your window of tolerance is not set, because it’s a real thing. It’s a nervous system thing. It has real effects." And just because you have a small window of tolerance at any given point doesn’t mean that’s your window of tolerance forever. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t things that you can do to expand that window over time.

I think it’s helpful to know this because a lot of this sense of being always on can be tied to your window of tolerance. Again, everyone’s window of tolerance is different. You can do things to expand your window of tolerance or contract it. Some of those things are inside of your control and some of them aren’t.

So if you look at someone else and you’re like, "Why can that person just be so chill in ways that I can’t?" on the one hand, maybe they’re coping in unhealthy ways. On the other hand, maybe they have a larger window of tolerance. That’s not a value judgment or a moral judgment, like, “Oh, you win. You win polyvagal theory because your window of tolerance is bigger.” No. But it is helpful to understand that you can be having a legitimate experience that does not have any morality attached to it.

You’re not worse. They're not better. But also your fight or flight response might be more easily activated due to all kinds of factors. That isn’t something that you need to feel bad about. It’s just something to be aware of so that you’re not judging yourself. Because ultimately, most people in these jobs feel like they’re always on.

So that sense that “I’m always on” is not wrong or bad or unjustified or a sign of weakness. It just is what it is, basically. If you relate to that sense, then I think it’s definitely worth spending some time thinking about, “What would an environment that didn’t push me outside my window of tolerance look like? How can I think about finding a place like that?”

Which, of course, if you are a lawyer, which most of you are, and you’re thinking about leaving the legal profession, which many of you are, and you’d like some support with that, you are always welcome to join my entry-level program, which is The Former Lawyer Collaborative, which you can join at any time.

Once you join, there is a framework for you to follow to help you figure out what it is that you want to do that is a better fit for you in all ways, including with your nervous system. So you can go to formerlawyer.com/collab if you need information about that. Otherwise, thank you so much for listening. I hope that this has made you feel more normal because I guarantee you the experience that you’re having in your legal workplace is the experience that many other people are having as well. Thanks so much for listening. I'll talk to you next week.

Thanks so much for listening. I absolutely love getting to share this podcast with you. If you haven't yet, I invite you to download my free guide: First Steps to Leaving the Law at formerlawyer.com/first. Until next time, have a great week.