Recently, after a difficult, multi-hour negotiation session with an adversary who brought 5 County officials and an attorney to the session, my client asked me, “How do you do it?” I jokingly responded, “That’s why I have so much gray hair and take 4 high blood pressure medicines.” But when she pressed the matter further because her own anxiety level was so high, I reminded her that although I do take my client’s cases very personally, nevertheless, the outcome of the cases falls on my clients, not me, so their stress is understandably higher. I also let her know that among the reasons that clients hire lawyers is so that the lawyers can absorb their clients’ stress.
But that is not really the end of the story. I have now been a civil rights attorney practicing in high stress environments for just under 37 years. Early in my career, I suffered my first major depression grappling with the understanding of the limits of my abilities to make the changes in the world that I sought through my advocacy.
Not long after, my mental health suffered again when my agency hired an attorney to fill my position so I could move on to more challenging work within the agency. Unfortunately, the Executive Director hired an attorney I advised against hiring, and he turned out to be a dysfunctional alcoholic. Although my agency generously offered him paid time off to enter rehab, he ultimately committed suicide leaving behind a wife and young children. I had to return to a job I was eager to leave. Ultimately, I chose to leave that agency.
My next position should have been great. I had successfully lobbied Congress to require states to provide legal support for the long-term care ombudsman programs required under the Older Americans Act, and I became Wisconsin’s first legal counsel to the Board on Aging and Long Term Care. Unfortunately, I soon discovered that the Director of that agency was a chronically lying alcoholic. Although I successfully got him into rehab, and probably saved his life, before he entered rehab, he fired me.a
This launched me into my first attempt at private practice, which I was ill prepared for. I mistook busy-ness for business and lost a lot of money, which led to another major depression.
Fortunately, after a few years of a stumbling private practice, I secured a special education attorney position at the Wisconsin Coalition for Advocacy (which later became Disability Rights Wisconsin). My 17 years there brought me great success on a statewide and national level, but my style of advocacy, which includes all the tools I have available, including grassroots organizing, lobbying, individual and class action litigation, consumer and professional publications and publications, as well as managing DRW’s Schools & Civil Rights team, caused a great deal of stress, leading to chronic migraines. Worse yet, after the long-term director retired, the agency hired a toxic director who fired me within about 6 months of his ill-fated tenure because he did not like my attitude. He left 3 months later, and the agency has never fully recovered, running through at least 3 other directors since that time.
At that point, my reputation was solid enough and the improved capacity of the internet and cell phone service allowed me to start Systems Change Consulting and succeed for the past nearly 10 years.
But this brief professional/mental health biography does not really answer the question, “how do I do it?” For that, I need to return to my struggle with chronic migraines.
Initially, I sought medical help and my neurologist scanned my brain to make sure I did not have an anatomical problem, which fortunately, I did not. She then prescribed various medicines, which provided limited relief. Then, she suggested that I see a therapist, acknowledging that I lived a high stress professional lifestyle, which may be the predominate reason why I suffered from migraines. I chuckled, as although I been in therapy previously for depression, I was not depressed, and for some reason, I had simply categorized therapy as something I did for depression, but nothing else. But, since I liked the therapist I had previously seen, I agreed to make an appointment to see him again.
I will be forever grateful to my therapist who quickly suggested that I try meditation. This had been suggested before, but since patience is not one of my virtues, and sitting still is very hard for me, I had always thought I simply could not do it. When I told my therapist this, he suggested that I read, Full Catastrophe Living, which gives a step by step approach to mindfulness meditation. I agreed to give it a try.
Reading that book taught me that meditation is like exercise. Just like it would be foolish for someone who does not run regularly to go on a 5 mile run for their first run, trying to meditate for half and hour the first time one meditates would be equally unsuccessful. The book provided step by step exercises to slowly build up from a quick 5 minute meditation to an optimal 30 minute mindfulness meditation.
While my migraines did not disappear, I soon realized that they got worse when I stopped meditating. My son was also young at the time, and like most children, he often tried my admittedly weak patience. I also began to understand that daily meditation was allowing me to be more patient with my son, my wife, and others around me, and perhaps most importantly, with myself. Seeing these concrete results has convinced me to become a daily 30 minute meditator, something I am sure I will engage in for the rest of my life.
But, as I said, my migraines did not completely disappear, and in the last year or so, my medical team has realized that managing my high blood pressure better was important and that has resulted in greatly reduced migraines.
Of course, given that I am still engaged in the highly stressful practice of law, even with a reduction in my migraines, daily meditation and better management of my high blood pressure, I still have days that send me reeling. Fortunately, I have other self-care tools available.
I like to consider myself a problem solver, both personally and professionally. When clients approach me with a problem, my goal is not to “win” a case, my goal is to “solve their problem.” The same is true when I confront inter-personal issues with friends and family. I have no interest in “winning” by convincing my friend or family member that I am right and they are wrong. Rather, I hope to “solve the problem” by finding a mutually satisfactory solution.
Yet, there are times both personally and professionally when I am unable to solve the problem presented to me. Sometimes, as in our nation’s sick obsession with guns, although I have tried many tactics, I recognize that I am unable to solve our nation’s gun violence problem (though due to the gravity of the problem, I will keep trying). Other times, I cannot solve a problem because I am dealing with someone who needs to change their behavior, but simply refuses to do so.
Yesterday was one of those days, so I sought refuge in nature. I am fortunate to live on Goose Lake, so I hopped in my canoe and paddled around the lake. Although it was a cloudy, gray day, the peace and solace an hour or so on the water brought me was tremendous. I brought my camera, and captured the miraculous architecture of a Redwing Blackbird nest, and spring’s first blooming wild irises.
After I returned from my paddle on the lake, I felt much better, and posted my stress relieving activity and the photos on Facebook. A kind friend suggested that I was doing as the great poet and environmentalist Wendell Berry advised, and he shared his poem, The Peace of Wild Things.
When despair in the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and what my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting for their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free
Whether or not my story and methods of coping with stress are ones that will help you is highly individual, but whether my methods or other methods of healthy self-care are the ones you choose, I hope that when each of us takes good care of ourselves, we will all be able to cope with our stressful world better and become better problem solvers.
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For more information on how I can help you accomplish progressive, effective systems change, contact me, Jeff Spitzer-Resnick, by visiting my website: Systems Change Consulting.