Stress is rarely addressed until problematic

With the proliferation of talking therapies for anxiety and depression, it is strange that many people fail to take time out for self-review and personal therapy. Many, however, seek independent professional help for their personal development, or that of their business, wherein the pressures of their work becomes very apparent.

This is true of solicitors. Most solicitors' firms are quite small, and in common with all small businesses, the inherent stresses of employing staff, maintaining cash flows, satisfying clients' needs, and presenting cutting-edge legal services can be a fierce mix. Larger firms also have the accompanying stresses of complex operations with many players in competitive forces nationally, transnationally, and yes, internally.

Stress in many firms is rarely addressed until problematic.
The very qualities that enhance solicitors' professional performance often involve the suppression of personal feelings while attending to client need. During periods of excessive stress, this mindset can often lead to feelings of overload, panic, loss of control, worry, sleeplessness, and more.

Sometimes stress-avoiding behaviours, such as procrastination, indecision,
or failure to delegate, simply compound matters. At its worst, people can find themselves dealing with stress through the misuse of alcohol, gambling, distractions, and relationships.

For many, stress remains a difficult admission. This is especially true in a profession that still has considerable standing in the community.

Under pressure

People often seek coaching as an alternative to counselling and therapeutic support. Indeed, the two disciplines can overlap as personal and professional issues merge into one another. Limiting beliefs, laid down in one's growth and development, can often impact on one's workplace performance and difficulties within the workplace can push buttons that reactivate past difficulties.

Then there is the convergence of contemporary forces: business, personal, financial, and others, perhaps coalescing at a time when one is at a low ebb.
In such situations, people often find something they could normally take in their stride becomes a mountain to climb. People can become tired, restless, self-doubting, less efficient, and less objective.

Many of the reflective processes that can be provided through work with someone in an impartial consultant/adviser role can develop the individual at all levels, including providing insights into the lifelong repeat processes that may be limiting their effectiveness in the workplace, as well as help to devise strategies to address the 'here and now' pressures.

An effective strategy to address stress-based issues is to work with people to develop greater emotional resilience. Emotional resilience is quite different to being in denial of one's feelings, or being emotionally 'armoured'. Emotional resilience does not mean denying one's feelings or the reality of one's external pressures; it is developing the ability to 'bend like a reed', a poetic, and effective, metaphor.

The ability to acknowledge one's feelings, to legitimise and accept them, and to have a balanced perception of the reality of one's current situation and the stresses within it are critical to developing emotional robustness. Equally critical is challenging unhelpful negative beliefs that have been maintained almost without question, over an extended period. Emotional resilience allows one to take control of one's personal circumstances, rather than simply flounder as
a victim.

New mindsets

Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) has significantly contributed to our views on handling stress and how to effectively address it. It advocates the maintenance of resourceful states. Emotional robustness comes from taking positive, sometimes 'massive', action to regain a state of personal resourcefulness.
This involves acquiring new skills and mindsets and maintaining our overall self in a healthy, productive, and positive set of disciplines. What we think and do becomes who we are, and vice versa.

Whatever the approach, it is a self-evident truth that we need to recognise stress as a key factor within the legal industry. Stress is often hidden, out of a fear of lost credibility and feelings of shame and inadequacy in 'not coping', but the worst thing one can do in these situations is nothing. Talking to friends, close colleagues, or a professional can be extremely important.

One of the most fundamental processes behind coping with stress is actually to externalise that stress, to offer those feelings expression, and to develop one's thinking and reframe perceptions in ways that regain control and shrink down the perceived pressures.

It can all start with the simple phrase, 'I need to talk.' SJ

David Cliff is managing director of Gedanken and chairman of the Institute of Directors’ Northern Sector Group

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