WELLBEING AND RESILIENCE IN THE LEGAL PROFESSION: A MESSAGE OF HOPE FOR 2022 We can all agree that the COVID pandemic has ushered in a period of suffering, stress, and uncertainty that has lasted much longer and cut more deeply than expected. When the pandemic first hit in 2020, we all anticipated that it would be an event with a predictable end. Since then we have agonized together as the goal line of defeating COVID remains undefined. Simply put, we are still in uncharted territory and the only thing for certain is that it will take years for the fallout of COVID to run its course. No one knows what the “new normal” will finally look like. Health questions rage on: Will surgical masks be a permanent feature in society? How will the controversy over mandating vaccines play out? Will vaccines ultimately prove as effective as we hoped? What medicines and treatments will be developed to better fight COVID? If I catch COVID, will the Urgent Care down the street have the best medicine in stock? Will we ever really know where the virus came from so we can try to prevent something like this from happening again? Logistical questions also persist: Will our supply chains recover? Will folks go back to work at levels prior to the pandemic (e.g., will hotels and restaurants be fully staffed again)? Will we be “doomed to Zoom” forever? The questions go on and on, and at the heart of it is a fear of permanent negative effects. I am a lawyer. I can’t help it that, by nature, I am impatient, controlling, and opinionated. The truth is, I want all the answers about all these issues now. But as individuals we can’t control any of it. I have accepted that answers will come in the fullness of time, but not on my schedule and not all to my liking. What I can do is make sure that I am taking care of myself and “doing the next right thing” every day to bring hope, healing, and resilience to the world in whatever small part I can. Much of the happiness in my life has less to do with what hardship is impacting me at any given time and much more to do with how I choose to frame it and react.
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Luckily for me, I am an alcoholic in recovery. I now have over 39 years of continuous sobriety. My entire legal career (law school at LSU, practicing law in Baton Rouge, and as LAP director in Louisiana and now Tennessee), has been accomplished in sobriety. I have enjoyed a stunningly rewarding and interesting life in recovery, and I would not change a thing. I am very grateful to be in long term remission from a disease that tried its most powerful best to kill me. Being in good recovery has been a tremendous advantage in weathering the COVID pandemic. I have the benefit of additional tools for dealing with life’s challenges and these tools are very effective in situations like this. The program I work in order to stay sober teaches things like living one day at a time, accepting things honestly as they are, not taking myself too seriously, resisting catastrophizing things, and readily understanding the limits of what I can and can’t control. It all adds up to resilience. The issue is: can we all develop the necessary mindset and skills to, like bamboo, bend but not break when a strong and relentless wind challenges us? As for dealing with COVID and helping others professionally at TLAP, when the pandemic first hit, Lawyer’s Assistance Programs across the nation went on high alert, expecting calls for help. In early 2020, and as the isolation and fear of being quarantined ramped up, we all braced ourselves at TLAP for a tsunami of confidential calls for help from lawyers and judges experiencing serious anxiety, depression, or problematic alcohol or substance use due to the stressors of the pandemic. But to our total surprise, the opposite happened. Most LAPs reported a steep decline in calls for help, with some reporting an unprecedented and eerie “radio silence.” We know now that a significant number of folks simply delayed reaching out for help. By the end of 2021 TLAP began seeing many more cases of individuals calling for confidential help with anxiety and depression from the COVID pandemic. TLAP will surely see many more such confidential calls for help in 2022 and beyond. We have real answers
DICTA
December 2021
