Lawyers have a uniquely pessimistic psychological profile that is both helpful and harmful
Unhappiness is an occupational hazard for lawyers. Decades of research consistently rank lawyers as a profession most likely to suffer from depression and substance abuse.
As a former lawyer and a psychotherapist who has worked with lawyers, I have come to learn the unique psychological profile that predisposes lawyers to unhappiness. Although the long hours that lawyers typically work and the gruelling expectation to strive for perfection do not help the situation, I have found personality traits to play the most significant role in determining one’s level of happiness.
I, like many lawyers, have a default pessimistic explanatory style. People with a pessimistic explanatory style believe that when something bad happens, it is permanent (it won’t get better), personal (my fault), and pervasive (this ruins everything). On the other hand, people with an optimistic explanatory style believe the opposite: setbacks are temporary (it will get better), external (I did what I could), and specific (it’s an isolated event).
Not surprisingly, research has found that optimists are happier and tend to be more successful in life, while pessimists are more prone to depression and physical illness. What is surprising, however, is that there is an exception: people with a pessimistic explanatory style are more likely to perform better and be more successful in their legal careers.
When we look closely, this finding makes sense. Lawyers are trained to look for problems to address, even when there is no apparent problem. Lawyers must be sharp and diligent instead of believing things will work themselves out. They must take personal responsibility when essential details get missed and not let it happen again. By immersing themselves in problems and conflicts, lawyers ensure that the rest of society can run smoothly and with minimal confusion and disputes.
Unfortunately, this professional function comes at a cost: sometimes deadly unhappiness. A 2022 study suggests that lawyers are twice as likely to suffer from major depressive disorder, with one in four lawyers having had suicidal thoughts since starting their careers.
Pessimistic thoughts can generate negative feelings, such as anxiety, sadness, hopelessness, and overwhelm, and those feelings, in turn, generate more unhelpful and gloomy thoughts. Being frequently in this cycle can push us into depression and chronic anxiety.
The scary part is that this cycle of pessimism tends to occur in the background of our minds without awareness that we create our distressing thoughts and feelings. Like a thermostat, once our minds are set on a specific emotional temperature, we continue to generate thoughts and feelings to return to the same temperature without our conscious involvement.
The solution to breaking this cycle is awareness. We must become conscious of our thoughts and emotions as they happen moment-by-moment and consciously let them go or change them if necessary. With awareness, we can catch ourselves mired in the same old thinking, feeling, and acting patterns. We can choose to disrupt the cycle and step out of it. We must realize that we have a thermostat, get up, and change the temperature to a desired setting. This is how I escaped the cycle of depression that haunted me for seven years.
Emotions are automatic and unconscious by nature. Unlike a lawyer's well-developed cognitive abilities, which operate in an orderly, methodical, and logical fashion, emotions arrive at lightning speed without calculation or analysis. The problem is that emotions often go unnoticed or ignored when we are caught up in thinking. Strong feelings that are not attended to cause rumination (focusing repetitively on the distress without taking actions for relief), which increases distress.
Emotional awareness helps us detect and tend to negative emotions at the earliest opportunity. Identifying and labelling emotions has been found to help decrease the severity and duration of those emotions. The key is slowing down our thinking enough to recognize the distressing emotion. To do this, we must stop trying to find causes (why do I feel so crappy?), reason it away (I shouldn’t feel this way because XYZ), or dismiss it (it’s not a big deal).
When we create a safe space within us to feel, the energy of emotions can arise and discharge on its own. The best time to analyze an emotional event is not during it but after the feelings dissipate. Otherwise, we get caught up in emotional thinking, referred to as the “emotional refractory state,” in which we are temporarily unable to seek any new information that contradicts the emotion we are experiencing. This is why it is impossible to think our way out of depression. In a depressive mood, we can only think and perceive in ways that fit our depressed emotional state. Happy, optimistic thoughts that don’t fit the mood are kept out.
Emotional awareness is the foundation of empathy and emotional intelligence. When we understand our emotions, we can also better understand other people’s emotions and improve our connections with others. According to an 85-year Harvard study, the greatest source of our happiness is the quality of our relationships.
Every year, many talented, conscientious lawyers permanently leave law due to poor mental health. Instead of attributing their departure to “They couldn’t cut it,” what if we did a better job equipping lawyers to overcome the mental, emotional, and psychological challenges accompanying the profession?
The problem of lawyer unhappiness has been around for decades. This suggests that the onus to learn emotional intelligence is not on the individual lawyer but on the institutions to make it part of the lawyer training process. Early education in emotional intelligence will produce lawyers who are better equipped to handle stress and can also help make the profession more collegial and less stressful as the quality of human interactions improves. Emotional intelligence is the key to enhancing lawyer happiness and mental health.
