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.

I want to talk about something that causes a lot of trouble for many lawyers when they're thinking about whether or not they should leave law. To be clear, this is a problem that I myself have experienced. Therefore, as I'm talking to you about it, I do not want you to feel like I'm saying, "Oh, I can't believe that anyone would have this problem." Because it might feel a little bit harsh on the front end.

Yeah, so let's just get into it. Let's get into it. Okay, here's the thing. If you are someone who tends to be highly responsible, as I am, as many of my clients are, as many people who have been on the podcast are, if you're someone who's highly responsible and you're someone who is very hard on yourself, you're a perfectionist, often you expect more from yourself than you do from other people.

I think when you are that kind of person, you often see that as you being humble almost. Like, I'm really expecting a lot for myself, and that's, you know, I'm not making too much of myself in my head. But here's the thing. Thinking that you need less than other people, that you are somehow more responsible for things that happen, or that you shouldn't have slack cut for you in the way that other people, it's fine if it's for them, that actually is about your ego. That actually, on some level, is about you thinking that you're better than other people, which is very difficult if you're someone who is this perfectionist type.

Again, literally, it me, as the memes would say, that feels very wrong. Here's why, among other things, you don't think of it as thinking that you're better than other people. Maybe you do, but typically people don't think of it as them thinking that they're better than other people. They see everyone else off in their own sort of, these are the things that I think are true about humanity and humans in general, and everyone makes mistakes, for example.

But then you're in your own separate little vacuum-sealed pod, and "everyone makes mistakes" is true about humanity, but somehow it's not true about you. You know that you're human, but somehow maybe not exactly in the same way that other people are. That is a trap that will keep you stuck in really bad work situations. I'll talk more about that in just a minute.

There are a couple reasons why you may be like this. Again, to be clear, when I say you may be like this, I'm also saying you may be like me in this way. One is just your personality. There are things that feel important to everyone, but they are at different levels. There are some people who just have this very heightened sense of responsibility. It's a personality thing.

It's also often a nurture thing, right? So it's nature and nurture. For example, if you're an eldest child, you might be more likely to be a perfectionist. You might be more likely to have this sense of you need to hold yourself to a higher standard for really basic reasons. If you were the oldest, you were probably expected to be more mature than your siblings. That inculcates certain ideas that can sometimes grow into this kind of idea.

It also very often is a trauma response, right? So often when someone tells me they're a perfectionist, it is very common that those perfectionist tendencies grew out of internalizing something, an idea during their upbringing that not making mistakes was how they would keep themselves safe. I'm not saying that you were necessarily thinking about it in that way in your upbringing, but for most people who are perfectionists, the reason you're a perfectionist in part is because being perfect either meant avoiding attention that you didn't want, or it meant getting praise that you might not otherwise get, or avoiding criticism, or etc., etc. You see what I'm saying?

So in other words, generally speaking, this idea of, "Well, other people can make mistakes, but I can't," that is functionally saying I somehow should be better than other people, is most typically, at least in part, something that grows out of some variety of trauma. Of course, it also can be just a personality thing. Then you can combine the two, nature plus nurture, both perfectionist. It's an extra perfectionist extravaganza, which I'm talking about because many, many people who become lawyers are these people. Many people who are listening to this have this experience.

Often what happens to people who have this perspective is that it becomes very difficult for them to think about leaving the law or even the specific law job that they're in. The reason for that is that they are constantly thinking about some combination of, if I leave, these other people around me will have to take on more or will have to deal with this and such terrible thing, person, case, whatever, feeling like leaving is abandoning people.

There's also this reality of you can be having a horrible experience and you can be so miserable, but if you also think that you should be able to tolerate more than anyone else, you look around, there are other people still working at your law firm, and you're like, "Well, what's wrong with me? Obviously, I need to just get over it. This way that I feel, this abject misery, I must just be somehow weak. I need to not be that way because I'm supposed to be able to handle at least as much as any other person does."

So there are a lot of different ways that this mindset can ultimately make it very hard for you to even acknowledge that you're in a situation that you should think about leaving, to actually think about leaving and doing it. It takes a long time for people with this mentality to get to the point where they can say, okay, this is actually not good for me and it's something I should think about leaving, and then even longer to get to the point of action. Those are all true things.

What does that mean for you, right? If you're hearing me talk about this and you're like, "Oh, I am the person who, in an interpersonal relationship, if someone else makes a mistake or hurts me in some way, I'm like, oh, that's human. But if I do it, I beat myself up and I'm like, I'm the worst person ever because I should never make mistakes." Or you have this idea that you deserve less slack because you are so capable or you're smart, your brain works in a certain way, so therefore you shouldn't make mistakes because you should be able to always foresee the things that could potentially come up.

This perfectionism where you feel like you're required to be exceptional, and I don't mean that in a good job way. I mean somehow that you are the exception to the rule of humanity. It is really something to think about. Is this something that I experience? Not every lawyer does, but so, so many lawyers do, and so many lawyers who are in very miserable situations or for whom practicing law is just not a good fit, right? It's not a moral judgment. It's just like, "My nervous system and this type of job are not aligned."

It is going to be very hard for you if you're someone who's listening to me and you're like, "I am this person. This is how I think about myself." It is very hard for you to actually let yourself think about leaving, even if you are super miserable, because of this way of thinking.

You know, not to be all me about it, but you should consider therapy if you're not in therapy. If you are in therapy, I highly suggest that you go to your therapist and say, "Hey, I've realized that this thinking dynamic is occurring." Often you probably would be saying, "And it feels right," or, "I'm annoyed that Sarah said this because I actually don't think that this is about my ego, like holding myself to a higher standard is me somehow thinking I'm better than other people."

That's fine. You would totally disagree with me. That is completely legitimate. But I still think you should talk to your therapist about it because it still is something that is functioning for you. It's still something that is helpful to address in question mark way if you're someone who's thinking about wanting to maybe do something else.

One of the reasons that this topic came to mind is that regularly we have conversations in the Collab on the group calls. We have a monthly call for the Collab, which I think if you've listened for any length of time, you know. But anyway, that's my group program for people who are trying to figure out what it is that they want to do that is not practicing law.

Something that comes up regularly is people talking about how they didn't let themselves think about leaving until they were basically forced to by life circumstances or extreme physical, mental, emotional effects, like having a nervous breakdown, like reaching the point where their body was so stressed that they were losing hair or that they were having other severe physical symptoms, where basically their body had to override their mind, which was telling them, "It's fine. I'm fine. I don't deserve slack. I need to just keep going."

Their body eventually is like, "Nope." I don't really want that for you. If you're someone who's listening and realizes that this is the person that you are, I would love for you to be able to reach a point of thinking about doing something else without it requiring your nervous system or your physical body to be like, "This is a five-alarm fire."

So think about it. Are you this type of person? And if you are, how strong are your beliefs around whether you deserve the same amount of slack as other people, whether you should be more responsible for things or hold more responsibility than other people? If those things are there, then think about them and also think about them in therapy. Okay. Thanks so much for joining me. 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.