Overcoming Overwhelm: One Woman’s Journey

Women lawyers: there is a path out of our collective overwhelm

As a woman lawyer, I struggle with the feeling of overwhelm from time to time. Some of those times go on for days, weeks or even longer, and other times I can recognize it and nip it more quickly. 

I know that I am not unique. We might go to law school (and for many of us, at the ripe old age of 22), with a desire to help others, a love of reading and writing, a quest to be successful and for some, to advance ideals of justice for all. 

For some of us, it was the logical next step after an academic career marked by good grades and hard work. We are high achievers. I am learning - and continue to learn every day - that some of the traits that got me here, won’t get me there. 

Take my perfectionism, for example. I have such a hardwired need to perform at a certain level, and anything less than that, can propel me into an internal chaos. Even though I transitioned early in my career from practicing law to working in real estate development, the business world’s axioms to “not let perfect be the enemy of good” and “good enough is good enough,” I still can struggle to embody these lessons in certain silos of my life. Can anyone relate? 

Realities like professional liability insurance can drive many a lawyer to feel not only justified in their perfectionism, but required to conduct themselves accordingly.  And yet - there’s a line between doing high quality work, and rechecking work or micromanaging to a point where it becomes obsessive and counterproductive. The perfectionism is also rooted in a desire for control, which again was helpful when we were students, but much less effective when we need to manage others, including our teams, families and even ourselves.

Often, a related cause of my overwhelm is that I don’t block off time to do all the preparatory steps required, or if I do block off time, it’s not nearly enough. Especially because of the level of execution I want, as a  high achiever with a perfectionist streak.

Take this blog post, for example. It required time to conceive, dictate, edit and post. That’s at least four touches - and it will need a photo chosen that is “on brand,” and maybe, if I’m really savvy, metadata that is created to optimize the article and the blog’s image for search engines. 

If I delegate any or all of these tasks, I need to ensure that my colleague has both the tools and the training to deliver a work product that meets my expectations - which necessitates blocking off more time to train them on the tools, hand over the tools, to oversee their initial uses of the tools, and then (again, if we are present enough) collaborate to document whatever we did so we can create a system for easier execution next time. Guess what this takes? More time. Patience. Persistence.

Which are all great; but hey, a woman can get tired. It can get - overwhelming.

Another seductive pitfall, at least for me, is to take those feelings of overwhelm, and channel that anxiety into a workaholic’s vain attempt at squeezing productivity out of every minute. It’s shocking to me, honestly, how hard this one is for me to unlearn - and my career transitioned out of billable hours decades ago. 

I’m learning: it’s still in there because it predates my working in a law firm - it goes back to childhood, to what I observed and emulated. 

As an example, even now, I still listen to podcasts during solo walks or in the car, use any free time “for continued learning” of business or personal growth books, and use “found” moments to get “caught up.”  

I am learning, or rather unlearning, these habits, day over day. They feed the overwhelm.

The more I keep my brain in a constant state of motion, the more I live in a perpetual state of overwhelm. Do I write blog posts while I go for a walk, dictating into my phone, or do I *choose to* interrupt that desire, pause and notice the buds on the trees, the chirping of the birds and the neighbor’s smile of greeting, as we pass?  And do I blame myself (#InnerCritic) when I forget to interrupt that pattern, or do I meet it with a loving, patient voice (ex. “Hey, don’t be so hard on yourself. Old habits die hard, Rome wasn’t built in a day. You’re doing the work. You’re learning.”)?

I have not “overcome” overwhelm, but I have a bull’s-eye focus on it, a clear understanding of the solution, and am resolved to staying the course, working that solution. Change happens slowly, like learning an instrument: practicing, day in and day out.

Buddhist teacher Pema Chodron states, "Nothing ever really goes away until it has taught us what we need to know." She’s right: I’m still learning, but I’m doing the work.

xo R

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