Once Again About Burnout (by The Example Of The Legal Profession)

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

Burnout in the legal profession: can you handle it yourself?

Stress itself is a natural part of our life and almost every profession. If you analyze the physiology of stress, it turns out that it can also be a way to keep yourself in shape, be productive, and focus on the important and urgent. It is hardly possible to recall a completely stress-free profession, and under normal conditions the main question is how successfully a person copes with stress or even manages it.

It would seem that if a lawyer organizes his work himself, he can dose the load - change the work schedule, delegate some tasks to junior employees, refuse some client orders, if their execution entails an overload, “pump” self-confidence for professional development account, etc.

However, “legal” stress has one peculiarity: our work is almost always working with the negative, the readiness that something will go wrong. Research has supplemented the list of factors with responsibility for other people's lives and money; the gap between idealistic expectations and the realities of the profession; the obligation to be in touch around the clock; the rapidity of changes that need to be made due to changes in legislation and judicial practice.

A 1990 study by John Hopkins University (USA) showed that lawyers; And one of the most voluminous studies, the Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation in conjunction with the American Bar Association, found that lawyers are at greatest risk for suicide, alcohol and drug abuse.

Burnout, or professional burnout, is more common than commonly believed.

ALARM BELLS

Excessive activity, rejection of personal needs, limitation of social contacts - many specialists, especially young ones, are distinguished by such a preoccupation with new work. The constant feeling of fatigue, absent-mindedness (“drove past my stop”, “forgot my phone”, “did not notice the car leaving the yard”) is also a familiar phenomenon to many. If one follows the other, then this is worth paying attention to: you may be at risk.

Have your once lovely colleagues become annoying? Have you become more cynical, indifferent and less responsive? Unwillingness to fulfill their duties, being late, the desire to leave work ahead of time - for many, these early signs of burnout serve as a signal to change the situation. But not everyone is ready to part with work only for these reasons and are alerted when depression overtakes.

Lawyer Z., a young and ambitious professional in a large company, has earned a reputation as an agreeable and responsible employee. Constant overwork and an intensive schedule of business trips to the branches did not frighten the young man, who set himself the goal of becoming the head of the department. Unused vacation days were accumulating. However, there was no rapid professional growth, and then Z. completely lost some of the respect of colleagues and management. The reason was outbursts of anger, conflict and lack of tolerance. D. turned to a psychotherapist three years after starting work in the company. The main complaints were low self-esteem, mood lability, and a sense of the meaninglessness of life. By this time Z. had a strong dependence on nicotine, caffeine, almost every night he “relaxed” with the help of alcohol.

WHO IS IN THE RISK GROUP?

Studies of foreign and domestic scientists, in particular, G. Freidenberg (1974), A. Garden (1996), V. E. Orla (2005), concerning personal qualities - "catalysts" of burnout, have shown that idealists and empathic people, "fiery", addicted, easily solidarized.

Professional situations in which joint efforts are not coordinated, there is no integration of actions, there is competition, while a successful result depends on well-coordinated actions, also contribute to professional burnout. This issue is especially acute when command values are declared, but in fact the leadership neglects them.

The risk group also includes employees of organizations with an unfavorable psychological atmosphere. It can be both a tyrant boss and general instability of the organization.

Lack of resources - human, organizational, financial - when tasks are solved at the expense of employees' personal resources also dramatically increases the level of burnout in the organization.

ETHICAL CONFLICT AND PERSONAL CORROSION

The most important factor in the emotional burnout of lawyers is their regular stay in the field of ethical conflict.

Perhaps the most striking example is criminal lawyers, whose professional duty is to defend criminals. If a lawyer is forced to defend a person who has committed a heinous crime, then as a professional he must disregard his emotions and reconcile sympathy for the victims of the offender and a sense of duty.

Family lawyers are not only constantly confronted with human passions, but also sometimes find themselves in difficult questions from the point of view of personal ethics. For example, the father tries to deprive the mother of parental rights and to obtain a ban on meeting with the children. Being an indirect participant in this conflict, the family lawyer lives to a certain extent in the family drama of his client, and sometimes, in order to protect the client, he has to make a deal with his ethical principles.

In corporate practice, there are also cases related to human destinies and capable of causing internal conflict. For example, mass layoffs of personnel, dismissal of unwanted workers, violation of working conditions by the employer or unwillingness to pay compensation to victims in the workplace. How would a lawyer who represents a company in a fired single mother's trial feel? The company does not take feelings into account, the experts themselves often deny them. Lawyer Y., well aware of the existence of sweatshops at the company's enterprises, was preparing the basis for the dismissal of union leaders. After a year of such work, her emotional state was so depressed that she left the company.

In addition, in-house lawyers are more likely to work within rigid frameworks and cannot plan their schedule, they have less opportunity to influence their remuneration, they find themselves in the area of business conflicts almost every day, between shareholders and other employees, and without much recognition (“thank you From the consumer in an ordinary dispute about ZOPP sounds, perhaps, more often than from the sales department when closing a multimillion-dollar deal).

Bypassing the law as a legal phenomenon is also an area of high uncertainty and psychological stress, and if the employer regularly sets a corporate lawyer with the task of “doing the impossible”, then this threatens the accumulation of stress and ethical contradictions.

Fulfilling the task set by the employer and following the letter of the law, the corporate lawyer is a professional, but remains a person. No matter how hard the employee tries to distance himself from the situation and present himself as only a tool or mediator, his psyche experiences a certain impact.

Such ethical conflicts often remain behind the scenes and are experienced very secretly and deeply, but this does not mean that they do not have an impact on the personality and psychological well-being of a lawyer. Accumulating negative emotions from ethical conflict undermine psychological health and affect the overall emotional state.

One of the sad consequences is the professional deformation of the personality. Long-term experience of ethical conflict in the performance of their work, especially intensified by other unfavorable factors, leads to the fact that the personality changes. In other words, one person comes into the profession, and another comes out - with different qualities, principles, value orientations, methods of communication.

Professional deformation is a kind of protection that the psyche chooses, in the form of complete or partial exclusion of emotions in response to traumatic influences. It is easier for an indifferent person to cope with their professional duties where they have to deal with their own and other people's negative feelings. Dehumanization can be episodic or persistent, refer only to the work sphere, or extend to all relationships with people and behavior.

HOW TO NOT BECOME A VICTIM OF BURNOUT

As we have already noted, there are a lot of factors that predetermine burnout, and it is unrealistic to be able to withstand all of them. The traditional recommendation is to maintain a balance between work and private life, but in the modern labor market, where these boundaries are blurring, and it is already difficult to say whether I meet with friends and colleagues to relax, or is it part of a development plan, the recommendation becomes very theoretical …

It seems to us that honest setting of personal goals and adherence to them throughout the career path can, if not prevent such burnout, then at least determine its symptoms in time.

For example, in consulting, you can rely on a fairly transparent career plan - from paralegal to partners. But for in-houses, this plan often depends on the integrity of the management and the consistency of the company's strategies, and it is especially important for them to remember exactly what they want to achieve and at what stage of their career. And if at some stage my employer ceases to comply with these plans, change the employer. Such a plan, however, requires a lot of responsibility and significant investments: most likely, at a certain stage, for a qualitative transition, you will have to invest in your education, which expands the competence, confidence, uniqueness of a specialist, allowing you to concentrate on your favorite business, use the creative components of work.

ARE YOU AT WHAT STAGE?

Burnout or burnout is a dynamic and progressive process.

At the first stage (it is called «honeymoon ») burnout, the employee's initial enthusiasm is replaced by a loss of interest and energy.

In the second stage (the so-called stage «lack of fuel ») fatigue, apathy appear, sleep problems may arise, productivity decreases, and there is a need for additional motivation to work. Violations of labor discipline and dismissal from professional duties are possible. In the case of high personal motivation, the employee can continue to burn, seeking internal resources, but to the detriment of his health. This pattern can be observed with most employees in various organizations.

At the third stage (the so-called "stage of chronic symptoms", chronic symptoms already appear - susceptibility to somatic diseases, a feeling of exhaustion, chronic irritability, heightened anger or feelings of depression, "cornered", a constant feeling of lack of time. used to working excessively and without rest.

If you do not help yourself at this moment, then the fourth stage begins, "crisis", at which chronic diseases can develop, as a result of which a person partially or completely loses his ability to work, and feelings of dissatisfaction with his own efficiency and quality of life intensify.

And, finally, the most severe stage of burnout ("breaking through the wall") is dangerous because physical and psychological problems turn into an acute form and can provoke the development of dangerous diseases that threaten human life. The employee has so many problems that his career is in jeopardy.

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AVOID, COVER, SURVIVAL - NECESSARY UNDERLINE

Taking care of ourselves and our comfort in our society is not just given very little attention; often “it is indecent, unprofessional to be sensitive”. Therefore, we often do not understand that there is already a problem. It is important to diagnose it on time.

First, it’s not easy to discover and admit, because burnout, being a kind of psychological defense, is always denied. Secondly, rarely anyone can independently collect symptoms into a single picture, but many easily break them: tired, sick, insomnia tortured something, the team was out of luck.

Meanwhile, the clinical picture of professional burnout is similar to the clinical picture of post-traumatic stress disorder: an attempt to avoid situations that can cause a negative reaction; guilt complex; sleep dysfunction and symptoms of increased excitability - anger, fear of vulnerability; exhaustion of the nervous system, which is expressed in the inability to concentrate, forgetfulness, absent-mindedness, constant alertness, decreased physical and mental abilities; somatic disorders - headaches, disorders of the digestive system, exacerbation of heart disease, spine, disorders in the sexual sphere; psychopathological disorders - poorly controlled aggression, social phobia, a tendency to addictions, usually alcohol, food or drugs.

Unfortunately, this is already a serious stage of professional burnout, at which the question arises of both professional suitability, and the need to get out of a traumatic situation as soon as possible in order to preserve one's own physical and mental health, and the need to recover with the help of a specialist psychotherapist.

It happens that as a result of burnout, specialists leave companies and take a time-out to recuperate. Recovery usually requires a rather long period, and if it lasts more than 2-3 months, the temporarily unemployed specialist will also have to cope with the frustration caused by uncertainty and the fear of accumulating months of inactivity, which will then have to be explained to the new employer.

Unfortunately, in Russia sabbatical is not practiced - a long vacation with the preservation of a job, position, and in some professions and wages and all privileges, which an employee can use either for vacation and travel, or for training. Although such a break will be an excellent form of burnout prevention, it is not for nothing that in most cases the Sabbatical is provided to employees who have worked in the company for 5, 10 or more years.

Not so long ago in our country, a popular method of getting out of a protracted pathological situation at work was the so-called downshifting. Hundreds of highly qualified professionals left the profession and capital cities to enjoy the simple pleasures of the ocean. Of course, this method allows you to escape from problems, get rid of accumulated stress, restore physical and emotional strength.

A burnt-out professional can leave the field of his usual activity and go to those areas where the tension, at first glance, is lower. There are many known cases when the tops retrained as yoga instructors, psychologists, writers or coaches.

But there are also less successful ways to deal with stress at the initial stage of professional burnout: the director of the branch A. lived her work, Saturday was always her working day, and the team became almost a family. Several years of work in a tough emergency schedule and the pursuit of indicators affected both the emotional state of the young woman and her physical health. A. drew certain conclusions and decided to "distract" from work. Now the place of the evening and Saturday hours in the office was taken by painting courses, ballroom dancing classes and individual vocal lessons. A. again did not have a single free minute. Did A. manage to diversify his life? Unambiguously. Did you manage to relieve accumulated stress? It is doubtful, because life did not acquire a calmer schedule, but required even greater movement and physical and emotional strength.

How do you get off the trail of lossless burnout and radical solutions?

The most accessible prevention, of course, is the minimization of situations of high tension, emergency situations and situations of ethical conflict. If this is not possible, as well as those representatives of the profession who closely interact with people and come into contact with human destinies - lawyers of criminal, family, housing law - are shown to regularly or constantly undergo a course of psychotherapy. This is a kind of bath for the soul »allowing you to dump your accumulated negative baggage. Unfortunately, a real bath, libation, exhausting yourself with physical exercises or extreme sports do not have such an effect, although they can bring temporary relief. It is in the course of psychotherapy that a person learns to build and protect personal boundaries, which qualitatively changes the quality of his communication with others, reduces the risk of conflicts and abuse.

For absolutely everyone, it will be useful to observe the work and rest regime, regular full-fledged vacations, travel and change of impressions, the presence of a hobby or favorite activity, which is devoted to several hours a week, well-established and harmonious family relationships or relationships in a couple.

In the later stages of professional burnout, some processes become irreversible, therefore, the sooner the problem is recognized, and the sooner a person receives the necessary help, the more preserved his mental and physical health.