Colorado Supreme Court
Office of Attorney Regulation Counsel
Promoting Professionalism. Protecting the Public.
Feeling anxious, worried, or even fearful lately? Find
out why and what to do about it.
Your Colorado Lawyer
Assistance Program has suggestions to improve your life, both personally and
professionally.
“I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.” ~ Nelson Mandela
Fear, worry, and anxiety are prevalent in today’s society. In the practice of law, these experiences can be an occupational hazard due to our focus on the past, and attempts to control or mitigate the future for our clients. The good news is with some awareness about what fear, worrying, and anxiety really are, we can avoid their negative consequences. Your Colorado Lawyer Assistance Program (COLAP) has suggestions for how to handle fear, worry, and anxiety in ways that will improve your life, both personally and professionally.
By SARAH MYERS, JD, LMFT, LAC
Clinical Director, Colorado Lawyer Assistance Program
What do stress, worry, anxiety, and even panic
attacks have in common? They are all
evidence of an overloaded nervous system.
Our nervous systems, in part, help us face potential danger. The system, however, was designed to guide us
through immediate, life threatening danger.
It still does; the response your nervous system has to a life
threatening emergency could save your life.
Chemicals and hormones like adrenaline, cortisol, norepinephrine, and
oxytocin are released in order to get our hearts pumping faster, tense our
muscles, sharpen our focus, shut down non-essential systems in the moment
(immune, digestion, and reproduction) to conserve energy, and motivate us to
find resources and support.
The problem is that this system is being activated
for long-term, chronic stressors (like a case that’s going to trial, the care
of our elderly parents or our children, daily exposure to inflammatory news or
media, or a stressful election) or consistent daily hassles (grocery list,
rush-hour traffic, paying bills). The
stressors we are dealing with are mostly psychological or cognitive in nature
as we try to “figure out” how to manage and prioritize all of the tasks we have
in a day and all of the unexpected glitches that happen along the way.
What was meant to be a solution to a short term
problem is now being used to handle long term issues like a perpetually full
email inbox. This taxes our reserves of
energy and, at the same time, makes us addicted to the stress spiral. We become so used to being stressed that we
can’t calm down. When we have been
chronically stressed for weeks, months or even years, we often do not know what
to do with ourselves if there isn’t some “fire to put out.” Drama (ours or someone else’s) becomes
appealing when the body has so much adrenaline and cortisol to burn off that
the brain looks around to find something to become upset about.
The cognitive and emotional results of an
overactive nervous system include responses governed by different parts of the
brain. Fear is the emotional response to
an emergency, or life threatening event.
Anxiety, which is different than fear, is not a response to actual
danger but rather a response to something that hasn’t happened and might never
happen. Anxiety is worrying about uncertainty.
When people say they are afraid about something, or fear something, they
are usually speaking about anxiety because fear is an emotion related to a physical
danger rather than psychologically responding to what could happen and projecting
bad outcomes. Ironically, however,
chronic anxiety signals “threat” to brain, meaning that we can worry ourselves
into a fearful state that mirrors actual danger.
For example, there is a difference in the parts of
the brain that activate when our car slips on ice and we are moments away from
a car accident (immediate physical danger) and the parts that activate when we
are clutching the steering wheel and being hypervigilant while we drive because
we are worried that we might slip on the ice (imagining or worry about
potential danger). Over time, our body
responds the same to both immediate danger and the psychological worry about
danger, while the parts of the brain responsible for thinking and memory shrink
and the parts of the brain responsible for our “fight or flight” response
grow. These changes in the chemistry of
the body and the brain result in:
1. Altering our personality: make us more agitated, angry, belligerent,
judgmental, hateful, and less compassionate and understanding;
2. Reducing our cognitive skills: diminish our ability to think critically,
logically, and to problem solve;
3. Negatively impacting our memory: both memory loss and creation of “altered”
memories (the memory becomes tainted by anxiety because we see through a lens
of panic, so when we remember something it seems worse than it was);
4. Alter decision making: ability influenced more by emotional response
than to actual facts; and
5. Physical and mental health
implications: the immune, digestive, and
reproductive systems aren’t necessities in an emergency, so stress slows their
functions down, leading to long-term illnesses; chronic stress also leads to
depression and other mental health repercussions.
On the contrary, however, worry, stress, and anxiety damage the pre-frontal
cortex (decision making part of the brain), making us less capable
of handling a crisis in a logical, mature way.
The more we mentally “freak out” with worry and stress, the less able we
are to think clearly or rationally.
People whose nervous systems have been on “hyper-drive” for a long time
develop the compulsion to worry about situations or other people because their
bodies are used to being on high alert for danger, and they have a hard time
prioritizing what is important. When we
are in that sort of mindset, we might take on too many projects, focus on
irrelevant details or get overly invested in other people’s issues or problems,
make mountains out of molehills, etc. Research also points to changes in the brain,
such as the shrinking of the prefrontal cortex and the hippocampus, when we are
under constant states of fear and anxiety even though we aren’t in actual
immediate danger. For attorneys, this
tendency is an occupational hazard because we are often hired to look for
potential pitfalls, question motives, search for agendas, solve other people’s
problems, and try to predict the “worst case scenario.”
The next time you find yourself worrying, remember
not to believe everything you think, or everything you hear or see. Our thoughts can betray us when we are
stressed because our logical brains are not firing at “full capacity.” In addition, we are bombarded by media and
news that research shows increases our levels of anxiety and fear, negatively
impacting our thoughts and our brain chemistry.
Another suggestion is to reframe
your efforts as a problem solving exercise when you are stressed. Rather than allowing “doom and gloom”
thoughts to spin through your mind, ask yourself what the real problem is that
you are addressing. Is it really about
the person you are projecting or attributing negative thoughts to? Are you afraid of an outcome over which you
have no control? Are you metaphorically
“living in the past” and allowing past outcomes to cloud your judgment or
anticipation of this outcome? Most
likely, the real problem has nothing to do with the storyline; when we worry,
the real issue is almost always simpler than we make it out to be. Due to the way our brains work, the “real
issue” is usually that we feel uncertain and lack a sense of direction about
the situation. When that is the case,
the solution is usually recognize or identify the resources we have to problem
solve the situation so that the uncertainly or feeling a “lack of control” can
subside.
Changing a mind that has been chronically stressed
with worry into a calm, peaceful mind might take dedication and discipline, but
it isn’t difficult. One way is to direct
your thoughts and distract yourself on something funny or positive when you
find yourself worrying. This does take
discipline because the brain and the nervous system are supporting the tendency
to complain, gossip, engage in “monkey mind,” rehash something from the past,
etc. when we are stressed. When you feel
better, however, you can decide if what you were thinking about is really worth
the brain damage (literally) or if you need to approach the topic in your mind
from a broader, more integrated perspective.
Brainstorming with people that you respect broadens the narrowly focused
worried brain and you can access parts of your mind that were previously
closed. In addition, working with others
to solve a problem activates the social nervous system, which is an antidote to
the part of the nervous system responsible for the fight-or-flight response.
Whether you reframe your worrying as problem
solving, distract yourself long enough to determine how useful the worrying
actually is, or you engage others in your attempt to solve the puzzle in your
mind, remember to slow down. As anxiety
and worry increases, so do our thoughts, our heartbeat, our blood pressure,
etc. This arousal response clouds our
judgment. When we mindfully slow down
our thoughts, actions, and breathing, we signal to the nervous system that we
are not in a life threatening emergency.
As the nervous system relaxes, our mood improves, and we can see through
a clearer and more rational lens. In
addition, because we are strongly physically and emotionally impacted by those
around us, when your nervous system relaxes, the people around you will feel
safer and it encourages them to calm down as well. The next time you feel anxious or fearful, slow
down, take a “step back,” and breathe; you might be surprised at how easily you
can calm yourself and handle the situation with a level of grace and maturity
that you can be proud of, and that empowers the people around you.
Sarah Myers, JD, LMFT, LAC, is the Clinical
Director for the Colorado Lawyer Assistance Program. Your Colorado Lawyer
Assistance Program provides free and confidential services for judges, lawyers,
and law students. If you need resources for ANY issue that is compromising your
ability to be a productive member of the legal community (including your
personal relationships), or if there is someone you are concerned about,
contact COLAP at (303) 986-3345. For more information about COLAP, please visit
www.coloradolap.org.