Sarah Cottrell: 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'm so thrilled to have Tiffany Rogers joining me on the podcast this week. Tiffany is not a former lawyer, but she is a therapist. She's a therapist who used to work in corporate and she's a therapist who specializes in working with women who are in corporate, and in particular, Black women who are in corporate.

If you follow me on Instagram on the Former Lawyer account, you know that I reshare most of the things that Tiffany posts on her account. I love her approach to therapy. I think there are so many ways in which our approaches align and I'm so thrilled to share this conversation with Tiffany Rogers with you.

Hi, Tiffany, welcome to The Former Lawyer Podcast.

Tiffany Rogers: Hi, thanks for having me. I am extremely excited that you are here. For anyone who follows me on the Former Lawyer account on LinkedIn, you've probably seen things that I've shared from Tiffany's account because I share almost everything that she shares.

But Tiffany, you are actually not a former lawyer, which is a little bit rare for people I interview on the podcast. But I had you on because I think you have so many important things that the people who listen to this podcast should hear. Can you start by introducing yourself to the listeners?

Tiffany Rogers: Sure. I'm Tiffany Rogers. I am a former corporate girl turned licensed therapist. I own my own private practice now called Reclaiming Her Psychotherapy & Wellness. I work primarily with corporate women who are working to transform their relationship to work, but also really examine their relationship with themselves and do lots of work to heal and become the best version of themselves.

Sarah Cottrell: You're based in Chicago, is that right?

Tiffany Rogers: I am, correct.

Sarah Cottrell: Which I mentioned only because for people who are listening who are like, “Oh, I need a therapist because Sarah talks about it literally every week,” Tiffany is based in Chicago.

Tiffany Rogers: Yes.

Sarah Cottrell: Okay. I don't remember how I found your account originally, but everyone who listens to the podcast knows that I talk about how important therapy is, and how important I think it is for any lawyer who's thinking about doing something else. One of the things that you share on your account is your move out of corporate into becoming a therapist.

I think that there are a ton of parallels with the people who are either listening to the podcast or the lawyers who I work with. Can you talk a little bit about your decision to leave corporate life behind and become a therapist and what drove that?

Tiffany Rogers: Yeah. It's impossible to share this without sharing a bit of my personal story and I'm totally happy to do that. I'll say that I, one, think it's really difficult to choose a career at 18, 19, 20, 21 years old that you feel really confident about for life. So, kudos to the folks who get it right on the first shot. I think it's tough, and I don't think we're always set up so well to make that decision.

For me, I had experienced just some turbulence in my personal life. In high school, my parents had gotten divorced, I had made a cross-country move, and I think when you go through traumatic things, there is a period of recovery that you go through. Sometimes that means just trying to find homeostasis again.

For me, I was less focused on making a big, bold career choice, and even a big, bold college choice. I was just trying to stabilize myself and make a safe choice. So, that's what I did. I knew that I was gifted in writing and I felt like journalism was a safe choice. Then I switched it up a little bit and did PR because I felt like I would make a little bit more money doing PR in the business space.

So I did PR and I knew, even before I graduated, Sarah, I knew that it was not the thing for me, but I was like, “I'm going to make some money and then I'm going to figure it out.” Then what happened was my career just started rolling, things just started moving and I got comfortable in a sense that I was able to build my life, build a lifestyle, make money, started making friends at work.

Notice I am not saying I was having a good time at work. I wasn’t enjoying my career but I was able to build my lifestyle. I was making friends and work was just supporting those things for me.

Work, on the other hand, was miserable. I was miserable in the corporate space for lots of reasons. One, it was not values aligned for me. I did not feel like the work that I was doing was meaningful. I did not feel connected to it. For me, it has always felt really important to feel like the work that I do matters.

I felt like if I'm going to work super long hours and give so much of my energy and so much of my time, I want to walk away feeling like I did something that mattered, I did something that made an impact for somebody and I feel proud of that but I was just working these crazy long hours, and to me, it didn't really mean anything.

I was doing PR for lots of different organizations and it all kind of felt meaningless. So I let it go, and let it go, and let it go and busy myself with other things on the side. I think it was maybe five or six years in that I really started to say, “Okay, I cannot keep doing this.”

My career was advancing, I was changing jobs, and getting promoted. I kept trying to switch the type of PR I was doing to see if that was going to make a difference. I was trying to make it work however I could. But nothing really made that big of a difference.

The last corporate job that I had made me so sick. Literally, I was breaking out in hives every day. I was just having random autoimmune issues. I kept going to the doctors, but they couldn't figure it out. My body was just breaking down.

I think everything in me was saying like, “This is not the right space for you. The price that you're paying, it's becoming too much.” I felt forced into making a different choice. I had been doing some inner work at that time to figure out what I really wanted to do. What was going to be that work that felt more meaningful and satisfying for me?

I actually had initially studied psychology in college. So I figured, “Okay, I can try to take this a little bit further and see what I want to do with that.” I decided to apply for my master's program. I actually put in my resignation before I even knew if I got into my master's program because I was like, “Whether or not this works, I can't do this. It is breaking my body down. It has broken my spirit down, and it's just not working.”

So I took a leap of faith, and I ended up getting into my master's program and ultimately obviously made a shift to becoming a therapist and this work feels much more aligned, satisfying, and meaningful. I'm really grateful I made the switch because corporate is tough if it is values-aligned but brutal, especially if it's not.

Sarah Cottrell: Yeah. I just want to amplify a couple of things that you said because there are so many parallels with so many people who've been on the podcast before, listeners who I hear from, and people who I've worked with, lawyers who I've worked with.

One is basically knowing from very early on this isn't really a fit but then just getting on the career trajectory and going. I think in particular, people struggle when they are objectively doing well on some metrics and they're getting this external feedback that you're on the right path and yet they're feeling so miserable.

Also, everything that you talked about in terms of your body breaking down and autoimmune and these sorts of things, one of the things that I talk about a lot on the podcast, as people who are listening will know, is that as lawyers, you tend to be trained into thinking that you're just a giant brain floating around, and your body has so much to tell you about whether what you're doing is actually a good thing for you.

I say this as a person who very much was all brain all the time. Then I got into therapy about 10 years ago and many things changed. But one of those things was learning about and recognizing that you actually have multiple types of intelligence, not just head intelligence. One of those things is instinct or gut intelligence.

When I tell you the number of people who I talk to who have left law and can look back and say, “Oh, I now see that my nervous system was just like, ‘This is bad, get out,’” I literally couldn't count the number of people.

Tiffany Rogers: It's so real. On top of that, I think that corporate environments teach us and reward us for abandoning ourselves, right?

Sarah Cottrell: Yes, a million percent.

Tiffany Rogers: I talked about in one of my posts how common it was for me to literally not get up and go to the bathroom until I'd finished a slide deck. That was like, “Why is that something I would take pride in?” It's so silly. What pride in there is holding your bladder? Get up and go to the bathroom, or get up and eat lunch. It's almost like we pride ourselves on ignoring our bodies, and then we glory in this self-abandonment and we have to figure out how to come back to ourselves. There's this glorification reward in ignoring our bodies.

Sarah Cottrell: I know now you focus particularly on working with corporate women. I'm wondering if that's something that has evolved as you started working as a therapist, or if that was the trajectory that you thought you would be on as you went into grad school.

Tiffany Rogers: No, no, it definitely evolved. I think a big part of it was especially that I felt really connected to corporate women as I came across them in my work because of my own experience. But another thing that I noticed and was really heartbreaking for me is I think that corporate women are really underserved in therapy because it's a unique experience.

I think that sometimes we as therapists can over-simplify solutions for really complex and layered experiences. If you have not worked in corporate environments or high-demand, high-pressure careers, it's easy to say, “Just work less. Just tell your boss X, Y, Z. Just do this or that.”

I've had a lot of clients say things like, “I went to therapy and I told them I was struggling and basically they told me I was functioning well enough, and I was good to go.”

Sarah Cottrell: Yes. Well, okay, Tiffany, this is part of I am so glad that you're on the podcast because this is one of the things that I talk about all the time and it drives me absolutely bananas when people are like, “Well, you just have to have boundaries.” I'm like, “I love boundaries. Boundaries are great.” Big fan of boundaries, team boundaries all the way.

However, I feel like the idea of boundaries—this is my opinion based on, at this point, a lot of experience, both as a lawyer, talking with other lawyers, working with lawyers, etc—the idea of boundaries is weaponized so that individuals are made to be 100% responsible for their own burnout or mistreatment.

There's no recognition of the very complex systems that coerce people to behave in certain ways because there is almost this—and we've talked about this in the podcast before—this narcissistic sense of, basically if I push back, the options are do what I've “agreed” to do or lose my job.

Again, I am not saying, “Therefore, who cares about boundaries or that you don't need to have boundaries?” But I think there are so many lawyers who are told,

“Well, you just need to have better boundaries. You just need to tell someone no.” On the fringes, I think that is accurate. But at the core, that is not the solution.

In fact, there's going to be an episode coming out between the time we record this podcast and it releases, a conversation that I had with my friend, Annie, where we talked about some different approaches to therapy, including CBT and DBT in particular, how sometimes an over application of CBT to lawyers' experiences can be very invalidating because it tends to be this like, “Well, you think this person is going to see you this way or this thing might happen, but you just need to change how you perceive it.”

The reality is like, if you're in a toxic system and you perceive there should be toxic dynamics, that's not in your mind. That's actually what is happening.

Tiffany Rogers: Right, yeah. I am not a proponent of those kinds of therapies, to be quite honest, and many of them are not very trauma-informed. The reality is a lot of these systems that we're speaking of are very traumatic to work in and experience.

I think that's so true. I think we internalize our experiences so, we also believe that the systemic issues are our individual issues. That's not true. But when you're so engrossed in it, it can feel like, "Gosh, what am I doing wrong? How am I failing?" it's like, "No, you're not failing. The systems are failing us. The systems are failing you."

Sarah Cottrell: Yes. I also think that this is particularly true for anyone who does not fit the “norm,” the normative model in the law firm situation that the law firm was built on. Basically, by that I mean anyone who's a woman, anyone who's a historically excluded minority, you are put in this position where there’s even greater pressure to not show any impacts from being in a toxic system, which itself makes the impacts of the system even more devastating on you.

Tiffany Rogers: Absolutely. Yeah. I think it's amplified for those with less social capital. It's funny, I'm reflecting on my corporate experiences and that last corporate job that I had before I said, “Oh, I can't do this or I might literally fall apart.”

I was one of maybe two Black faces in this—the business was divided. There was a corporate office and there were several other segments of the business that were non-corporate in nature—I was one of two in this corporate space and my white female boss kept saying, “When do you learn how to handle stress? When do you learn how to handle stress?” I internalized that and I kept thinking, “What is wrong with me? What is wrong with me?”

Literally, it wasn't until I was so far out of that experience that I realized I handle stress just fine, but what she was not recognizing is the layers of my stress were so much more than she could have acknowledged. Because it's not just the stress of the work, it's the stress of the environment, it's the stress of not being received the same way as all my other colleagues are.

It's the stress of, “I know that I am tokenized here and you all expect something specific from me that I have to come in and perform and be a certain way or else…” But I internalize that. Every time she would say that, I would say to myself, “What am I doing wrong?”

Sarah Cottrell: Yeah. I know we talked about this some before we started recording, but I have worked with a lot of lawyers at this point, tons of different backgrounds. By far, in my opinion, the worst psychological torment that I have seen in terms of people imposing it on someone is my clients who are Black women.

The thing that makes me so mad is what you are describing, that sense of being made to feel “There must be something wrong with me,” that is the reaction of someone who is working really hard and wanting to do the thing. It just really makes me extremely angry, to be honest.

Tiffany Rogers: Yeah. I think it's no coincidence that Black women are the fastest-growing demographic of entrepreneurs. It is not just because of the lack of opportunity in the traditional workforce, but it's because of the lack of psychological safety in the traditional workforce.

When you endure so much harm, job after job, workplace after workplace, manager after manager, colleague after colleague, it literally doesn't end. I think that we do so much to think, and I talk to my clients about this all the time, it's like we do everything we can to minimize impact. We have to do our due diligence, we have to ask all the questions, we have to scope out the environment. We do all these things, to be informed and to make the best choices we can, but we can only know so much going in.

So, it's such a blow when you do all of that, you do all your research, ask all your questions, and again, you find yourself in an environment where you're not safe. Not only are you not safe, but you're harmed to the point of mental and physical illness.

When that is your ongoing experience, entrepreneurship doesn't seem so daunting. It's like, “I can build a business. I can take a risk and bet on myself.” Because the harm is so damaging it never stops.

Sarah Cottrell: Yeah. I think one of the things that is a really unfortunate side effect, especially of working in a very toxic system, as many/most law firms are, is that often there is this sense of like, “Well, everyone is being treated terribly.” The words that lawyers will use is like, “Why can't I hack it the way everyone else can?”

They're literally talking about why the misery of this feels so crushing. The perception is that other people don't feel that way. Now, the reality in a lot of cases, everyone does feel that way. It's just not something that's really discussed. But I also think there is, for high achieving corporate types, which include lawyers, there is this sense of like, “Well, if this feels like too much, it's because there's something wrong with me.”

Just for listeners, this is one of the many reasons why I say if you're a lawyer who's thinking about doing something else, I cannot recommend therapy, particularly trauma-informed therapy that involves EMDR, ideally, some internal family systems work, I cannot recommend it highly enough because the reality is there's a reason you chose the path that you're on, there's a reason you've stayed on the path that you're on, and there's a reason that you think it's your fault or failing that a toxic system is having the predictable effects that one would expect from a toxic system.

Tiffany Rogers: Yeah, for sure. There's a lot of inner work to be done. I think that it's important for folks to recognize that there are other possibilities. I think that one of the things that was a breakthrough moment for me, and I don't know about you, but I feel like I had to get to the point where I could imagine something different for myself.

Sarah Cottrell: Yes, 100%.

Tiffany Rogers: Took a long time to get there.

Sarah Cottrell: Yeah, absolutely. I mean I tell people my two main goals with the podcast, one, is to help people develop an imagination for what's possible because when you're in that lawyer bubble, it feels like there aren't any other options. If you leave, you're a failure, which is not true.

But it can be very hard to even see what other options might look like. And then the other goal is to help people not feel so alone because inevitably, every lawyer who feels this way thinks that they're the only one, and that is not true at all, but it is so easy to feel that way when you're in that environment and just trying to get through the grind.

Tiffany Rogers: Yeah, for sure.

Sarah Cottrell: Tiffany, I'd love to hear from you. Well first, if you'd like to share anything about your practice now specifically, but then I'd also love to hear a little bit about the type of work that you think people who are thinking about changing careers in this kind of context, what is the type of work that they need to be doing?

Tiffany Rogers: Oh, yeah, it's deep work. I sigh because it's deep work and I think that people often want a five-step process. Just hit me with the one, two, three and I'll be on my way, but I think it's really deep work that you described, where it's like understanding how you came to make the choice that you did, why it felt important.

One of the things that we were chatting about before is how our relationship with work is a reflection of our relationship with ourselves because we bring all of our patterns, all of our beliefs, and all of our behaviors to work.

Sometimes those things help us and sometimes those things get in our way. I think our work is to figure out what's working for us, what we can carry forward, what's working against us, what we need to disrupt, and how we identify an empowered path forward.

But a lot of times that's digging into family roles and dynamics. Sometimes it's inner healing work. Sometimes it's understanding childhood trauma. Sometimes it's thinking about unaddressed core wounds and things that we would call, “That's just my personality,” and it’s like, “Hmm. What's the root of that?”

I think that when you are trying to make a shift in your relationship to work, you would be best served by being open to whatever inner work that's needed. I think it's helpful to allow yourself to be with a therapist that you can really trust to guide you in some deep inner work.

That's not just career work, but it's work that's going to liberate you and allow you to make some really solid shifts to build a more sustainable life for yourself where perhaps your career doesn't have to be the center, but you can feel much better in the life that you're building.

Sarah Cottrell: Yeah, I think that's so important. For example, are you just an overachiever because that's just who you are? Or, did you learn that achieving was a way to get your needs met as a child? Are you just a perfectionist? I 100% could characterize myself as a perfectionist, but are you just a perfectionist or was not being perfect not an emotionally safe thing for you at some point in your life?

It's so easy to see some of these things that in many cases, people see as fueling the things that they have achieved, but also, if for example, you are in a situation where you knew that it wasn't a fit for you from the start and you're still lawyering years later, there are questions to be answered about why.

There's a lot about logistics and logistics are real things. I'm never going to be someone who's like, “Just quit your job,” because you're in the real world. We all have bills, but there are reasons. There are reasons to go beyond the tactical.

I will say, I'm sure I've talked about this in the podcast before, but because I talk about going to therapy on the podcast all the time, I have had multiple people who are in the Collab, which is my group program who have told me or have shared, “Yeah, at first, I started this process and I wasn't in therapy and Sarah kept talking about it, how good it was, and how important it was and I was like, ‘I don't know,’ then I decided to go and oh, my goodness, things make so much more sense and it sped up the process so much.”

I didn't actually think I had anything to talk about, but turns out I actually did. I mean, if you are someone who identifies as an overachiever, high achiever, perfectionist, any of those things, and you're not in therapy, people pleaser, yes, please go to therapy, please. Because, yes, everything that Tiffany is saying is just deeply accurate.

Tiffany Rogers: Yeah, and I think the thing that I want people to know in hearing this is you may feel really bound to those behaviors and it's important to recognize there is more to you than that. What if you allowed your identity to expand beyond those things? What would you discover about yourself?

Sarah Cottrell: Yeah. I actually just released a solo episode. One of the things I talked about was you are more than just a person who achieves things.

Tiffany Rogers: Yes, oh, my gosh, yeah.

Sarah Cottrell: Believe me, I understand feeling like if I'm not a person who achieves things, who am I? Because I’ve been there but I think these are the questions that you have to be able to answer if you're trying to make a change to a career that is actually going to be a better fit for you because otherwise, these dynamics will drive your decision making.

I tell people, “I'm not worried about you being able to revise your resume and cure it towards a non-legal job. Yes, there's stuff in my program about that, and I work with clients on that, and I'm not saying it's not important, but it is relatively so much easier and so much more straightforward than what is actually going to be the right fit for me.”

I know you mentioned values earlier on. Do you want to talk a little bit more about that? Because I know you and I think very similarly about the importance of values in that process.

Tiffany Rogers: Oh, my gosh. Yeah. I think values are so important when it comes to making solid career choices because I think values alignment are the things that are going to make sure that you really feel deeply satisfied in your career.

I think for me, it had to be aligned with my values, had to make sense in terms of my personal priorities and my sense of purpose. I think those are the things that I ask people to think about.

It's like when you think about your work, what really matters to you? What are you reaching for? What do you want to feel connected to and driven by? I think if you can clarify your values, you have a really good sense of what direction you want to move in.

Without that, it's hard to know what direction to move in. It still is, in a sense, just throwing spaghetti at a wall. I think that values are really helpful in making sure that you are really connected with yourself and being authentic and true to what feels right for you.

Sarah Cottrell: Yeah, I know anyone who I've worked with whether in the Collab or one-on-one if they're listening, they're nodding their heads because one of the first things that people do whether they're in the Collab and going through the framework curriculum or we're just working one-on-one one, of the first things they do is I offer two different values exercises for them to do because I think that it's so true, you can have alignment on a lot of other things and if there isn’t alignment with your values, you're going to have a mismatch.

On the therapy front, I think, for example, a lot of people might identify security as a value that is very important to them. Just for people who are listening, who are like, "Okay, Sarah, you constantly talk about therapy, but what would that look like? What would I talk about?" people have definitely asked me that before, if you're someone who, as an example, security is a high value for you, well, one, different people are going to define security differently.

So getting a sense of what you mean, what you really mean when you talk about security is extremely important, but also the things that we value or the things that are important to us are also often connected with the things that we’ve experienced.

So understanding why does security feels so important to me, why does the idea of, for example, walking away from this job cause immediate panic in my nervous system even though it’s breaking down my mental and physical health in many situations, those are things that are things that are invaluable to understand because it helps you to actually get where you want to go. I'm curious, Tiffany, about your thoughts on that.

Tiffany Rogers: Well, yeah, I mean, you just hit it right on the head. Because I was going to say, sometimes you have to do the work in therapy to heal enough to be able to really connect to your values, because I think to your point, and I'll use myself as an example, I am a risk taker.

But if we look back to what I shared earlier about needing to find homeostasis and feel stabilized before I could make a career choice, I had to heal before I could take any kind of risk. So I think sometimes we are stuck because we're not doing the healing work.

Sarah Cottrell: Yes. Oh, my goodness. Yes, and this is why when I work with people, particularly if I'm working with someone one-on-one, I very strongly urge them to get a therapist if they don't have one.

Because I think that it is so easy to feel stuck and to think that it's a logistics thing, like, “I can't figure out how to figure out what I want to do,” or “I can't figure out how to make something work financially or some other thing,” and again, I'm not saying those are all completely made up, those are all real things, but so often--

Tiffany Rogers: There's another barrier.

Sarah Cottrell: There's another barrier. That other barrier is harder to articulate and it's easier to just point to you like, “Oh, well, you’re X or Y.”

Tiffany Rogers: For sure. Yeah. You need somebody skilled to help you see what's hiding behind that other thing.

Sarah Cottrell: Yes. I am someone who can work with you on a lot of things as a coach, but I am not a therapist and coaching is not therapy. They can be very complementary, but there is work for pretty much everyone to do in therapy and I can certainly say, “Oh, this seems like we're touching on something that would be good to discuss with your therapist,” but the therapist is in a position to help you see some of those things that you might not otherwise be able to see.

Tiffany Rogers: Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. A therapist is going to help you break through those stuck areas. I think that a good therapist is going to help you see where you may be hiding.

Sarah Cottrell: Yes. I think that's so good. Yeah, I could go on a whole other hour-long thing about that, but I'm just going to rein myself in. Okay, so Tiffany, we're getting close to the end of our conversation, is there anything else that you really want the listeners to know either about this process we've talked about, or you, your story, your practice, therapy, anything?

Tiffany Rogers: Gosh, I mean, I think I want to reiterate for folks that the corporate lifestyle was never built for us to thrive and be well. I say that to say that we have to take our wellness back into our own hands. That means you may have to, yes, go to therapy, yes, get a coach, yes, figure out some kind of plan for taking really great care of yourself because if you leave it to the system, you're never going to be well.

I think that a lot of times people think, “Well, this is just what it is. I just have to get my hours and I just have to do this or that.” It's like if you leave it to them to build your lifestyle, you're never going to be well.

Sarah Cottrell: Yeah, one of the things that I say, and this is about Biglaw firms specifically, but I say, “Burnout is a feature, it's not a bug.” So, if you're experiencing burnout or the associated things, you're struggling with your mental health, your physical health, or all of the above in an environment like that, in any sort of toxic environment, it's not because you're just not life-hacking your way to wellness, it's because that is a feature of the system.

Tiffany Rogers: Right, 100%.

Sarah Cottrell: It's not shocking that you're having that experience. That is the product of that system.

Tiffany Rogers: Absolutely, absolutely. I think doing everything you can to be proactive about taking care of yourself is really important.

Sarah Cottrell: I literally could not agree more. I thank you so much for coming on, Tiffany. Where can people find you online, including your Instagram account that I share almost everything from?

Tiffany Rogers: Yes, my Instagram is @bytiffanyrogers, and my website is reclaimingher.org.

Sarah Cottrell: Amazing.

Tiffany Rogers: I am accepting new clients if you're in the Chicago land area.

Sarah Cottrell: I love it. We will put those links in the show notes and in the blog post for the episode so if you're driving or otherwise, can't write something down, just look at those things and you'll get all that information.

Tiffany, thank you so much for coming on today. I knew I was going to love this conversation and I love it even more than I could have expected so I just really appreciate you sharing all of your knowledge and wisdom about this topic and wish you lots of success with your practice.

Tiffany Rogers: Thank you so much. It was so great. Thanks for having me.

Sarah Cottrell: 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.