Judges & Attorneys

The roles of attorney and judge are probably among the most stress-filled of all professions. And that stress begins early in law school, as every law student knows, and, for many, it only gets worse.

As you probably know, the National Task Force on Lawyer Well-Being was created in August 2016, and was initiated by the ABA Commission on Lawyer Assistance Programs (CoLAP) and several other legal associations. CoLAP was a co-author of the 2016 study with Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation of mental health and substance use disorders among lawyers, and of the 2016 Survey of Law Student Well-Being. One of the more obvious conclusions from those studies says, ”To be a good lawyer, one has to be a healthy lawyer.” Less obvious conclusions reveal that too many lawyers and law students experience chronic stress and high rates of depression and substance use. This means that, if you are one among this very large group of people, you are being deprived of some of the most fundamental prerequisites for happiness and fulfillment, for thriving and for being all you can be. In that deprivation your own experience of loss is certainly the most intense, but that loss also ripples out to all of those whose lives you touch, both personally and professionally.

I understand your world, not only intellectually, but experientially. For over twenty years I worked in a variety of court settings. In both state and federal courts, I worked as a mediator and as a probation officer. I worked closely with attorneys and judges, particularly with federal judges. That work gave me a thorough understanding of the constraints, the stress, the considerations, and the inherent contentiousness, competitiveness and antagonism so characteristic of that culture. As a result of that experience, my perspective is intimate and unique.

Bringing together much training over many years in a wide variety of psychotherapeutic modalities, I help you cope with those stressors. I have many tools, some of which can be immediately transformative, but all are powerful. You CAN reclaim your control, your freedom, your INNER power, and your peace, perhaps for the very first time.

THIS IS COUNSELING, HOWEVER, NOT PSYCHOTHERAPY. There is no diagnosis, no label and, regardless of what you call it, no stigma for being human, for needing and accepting a different kind of counsel that you were most likely not trained in, and even if you were, that is impossible to provide for yourself.