The Real Reason

You have your shit together—that’s what you tell yourself. Some days you may even believe it for a few minutes.

Most attorneys manage to at least give others the appearance that they have their act together. But internally many feel like they are holding on by a thread. And in a profession where vulnerability is often treated as unacceptable, it can feel very lonely.

I practiced law from 1997 up until a few years ago, and most of that time I felt like something was wrong.

The truth was that I felt out of control internally—frustrated, confused, like something was fundamentally wrong with me, and for the life of me I couldn’t figure out what it was. On paper, my life looked pretty great. Internally, I felt like I was behind. Like everyone else had their shit together, knew something I didn’t, or had something invisible I didn’t have.

So I tried to fix things. I read the books, did therapy, took the courses, did the business coaching programs. The pattern was always the same: I would do the things, get excited, and make a bit of progress, but it never stuck. Then I would feel worse. I had tried the things that worked for others, but they didn’t work for me. So clearly there had to be something fundamentally wrong with me. I was also numbing my feelings with food, wine, and staying busy. Not helpful, but all gave relief in the moment.

It wasn’t until I hit a breaking point that I was ready to admit that my way wasn’t working. When I stopped trying to “figure it out” and think my way out of my issues, the real solution landed in my lap. And that was deep personal development work through energy work, deep personal reflection coaching, trauma therapy, and Internal Family Systems Therapy. And I felt the internal shifts immediately.

I can look back on a nearly 30-year career as an attorney and remember the times when I hit reply when I shouldn’t have. When I took things personally. When I didn’t set or keep a healthy boundary with a client or opposing counsel. When I felt behind and not good enough. I now understand why. Nothing was wrong with me. I just had old hurts that needed attention.

The impact was so incredible that even at the beginning I knew I had to share it with others. And I have since helped hundreds of other attorneys get to the other side of it as well.

For instance, there’s the example of a highly functioning and highly successful attorney who never felt like it was “enough.” She kept moving the goalposts without even pausing to acknowledge what she had just accomplished. She felt compelled to keep pushing and working more, more, more.

Until she had the courage to go back and examine what was going on and why. To acknowledge that there was never an “enough” that would make her feel safe. She did the deep work so she could feel safe regardless of how much money she had or how much she worked. Then and only then did she feel like she had done enough, had enough, and was enough.

Even when doing something as seemingly simple as coaching other attorneys on how to use flat fees instead of hourly billing, this opened avenues to explore deeply personal motivations. They began to see the real reasons why, for example, they had guilt over charging for their work, kept saying yes when they wanted to say no, or felt uncomfortable setting boundaries with clients, staff, or family.

My clients said this work leveled up their practice and changed their life. They were able to set their life on a new trajectory, and improve relationships with their clients, their kids, their spouses, and themselves.

What I wish I would have known years ago, was that the issues are often not intellectual; they are emotional. As attorneys, we are highly intelligent, hardworking people. If this was something to figure out or something you could just work harder to fix, you would have done so by now.

And it is impossible to address an emotional issue with an intellectual solution. That is why past “fixes” haven’t worked; or if they worked temporarily, they didn’t stick.

We have all been hurt, embarrassed, injured, and many of us traumatized. The vast majority of us have never dealt with those hurts, processed them, or healed them. They are still there, and they affect our thinking, our behaviors, and our outcomes each and every day. Our past absolutely controls our present, until we truly heal it.

This work, true honest introspection and cleaning up the past injuries, is the key. Healing the relationship with yourself, the relationship from which everything else in life stems. It will not only help you personally; it will absolutely make you a better attorney, employer, counselor, civic leader, spouse, parent, and friend. You will understand people better as you understand yourself better. You will have more compassion for people and firmer, healthier boundaries at the same time.

The cost of not doing this self-examination and healing is your life. It is not showing up as yourself every day. Not being truly connected with those you love. Not living with honesty. Continuing to live with irritants or actual harms every day when you don’t need to. Settling for being less than you could be and having a life that is less than what it could be. What higher price could there be?

For those who recognize themselves in my story, what I want is for you to care enough about yourself to have the courage to examine what you are resisting examining. I promise, it is not half as scary as you are making it out to be. And when you do you will finally feel like yourself and feel like enough.