Powerful Strategies to Reduce Worry and Manage Stress for Attorneys

As a trial and appellate attorney for over a decade, I have experienced my share of stress. I have also learned to become an expert worrier.

As attorneys, one of the most important skills that we must develop is predicting all of the potential outcomes in our cases. Most of the time (if not all of the time) we must predict scenarios that entail negative outcomes. We must inform our clients of the potential risks, harms, and pitfalls of taking certain courses of action. In doing this for our clients, we must be highly attuned to thinking of as many worst-case-scenarios as possible.

When we do this, we end up in what I call “negativelandia,” a place where we are unable to turn off our important negative-scenario spotting skill. Remaining in negativelandia for too long will magnify our worries and cause stress. As a profession, we are incredibly sleep-deprived and sleep-deprivation is closely correlated with stress. We abuse alcohol at rates that are 3-5 times higher than the general population and 28% of attorneys report struggling with some level of depression. Additionally, between 40-70% of disciplinary proceedings involve substance abuse and depression.

Many of these issues stem from being unable to manage our worries and stress and instead we choose to repress them with alcohol or drugs. Below are some strategies and resources that will assist you in reducing worry and managing stress.

Reducing Worry: If there is one common thread amongst attorneys is that we worry. We worry about the outcome of our cases. We worry about the growth of our law firms. We worry about our finances. We worry about our family. We worry about our health. We worry about our future. We worry about our past.

Continuous worrying is not good for our health and can lead to anxiety, stress, depression, premature aging, fatigue, and if it is very serious, even suicide.

One of the first strategies that I learned to reduce worry came from Dale Carnegie’s How to Stop Worrying and Start Living. Carnegie goes over a 4-step process that if you learn to repeat over and over can be very effective. I highly recommend his book, but if you do not have time to read it, here are the 4 key questions that you ask to reduce worry:

Question #1: What is the problem that I am worrying about? Every worry stems from a problem that we are concerned about. It is very important that you learn to identify the problem with specificity. Fear and self-doubt may come up as you clearly identify and put words to the ugly monster of a problem, but the clearer you are in this process, the better off you will be when it comes to identifying the causes and solutions of the problem.

Question #2: What is the cause of the problem that I am worrying about? Next, it is important that you identify the cause of the problem. What is creating the problem, what are the circumstances and/or people that are creating the problem that is worrying you?

Question #3: What are all the possible solutions to the problem that I am worrying about? This next question is more of a brainstorming session where you identify all of the possible solutions. You already know how to identify potential negative scenarios, this requires that you identify solutions that will yield to a positive result.

Question #4: What specific solution am I selecting in order to resolve the problem? This last task requires that you pick one of the solutions that you identified from Question #3 and that you implement that strategy to resolve the problem that you are worrying about.

This 4-step process is very powerful and can help you better manage your concerns and worries. It takes several tries to get it down right, but it is very beneficial once you get the hang of it. This is definitely a tool that I use often with my high-performance coaching attorney clients.

Managing Stress: Stress limits both our ability and willingness to learn. When we are stressed our attention allocation shifts, and our mind and body wants to reduce the stress and as a result we lose focus. Also, if we do not yet know how to channel the stress in a healthy way, we can lose motivation when experiencing high levels of stress.

In the life of a typical busy attorney, stress shows up consistently and can lead to a variety of health problems if it is persistent.

In terms of physical tools to manage stress, progressive muscle relaxation and breathing techniques are highly effective and readily available. Stress causes muscle tension and progressive muscle relaxation involves that you sit or lay down, and starting with your hands, tense them, hold for 6-8 seconds and release. Then, you progressively work on tensing the muscles in the rest of your body, including arms, shoulders, neck, head, back, legs, feet, and toes.

Deep breathing is incredibly powerful in activating the relaxation response (which is the opposite of the stress response). While there are a lot of deep breathing techniques, a helpful one is the 4-4-4-4 breathing technique. In 4, hold 4, out 4, hold 4 - REPEAT. Do it for 5-6 minutes while sitting or lying down and this technique will allow more oxygen into your brain, reduce tension, and automatically start providing you with a different perspective.

As additional resources, it is important to develop mindset tools to manage stress. The tool that I work on most consistently on with my attorney clients is developing self-awareness. Awareness involves a variety of skills, but two key books that I highly recommend to strengthen self-awareness are Emotional Intelligence 2.0 and The Power of Now.
Best of luck as you implement these tools to reduce worry and manage stress and do not hesitate to reach out for support!

Fernando Flores is an attorney and a high-performance coach. As the founder of iMATER NOW he works closely with attorneys and law firms to develop professional and personal skills that allow them to reach high levels of performance by reducing stress and enhancing emotional intelligence.