00:02 [Music]
00:14 hey everybody thanks for tuning in to another episode of the Auto Accident Attorneys Podcast i'm your host Attorney
00:20 Ali brought to you by the Auto Accident Attorneys Group we take care of you
00:27 today I've got my sister attorney Holly on the show with me so we can
00:33 discuss mental health both as it relates to us personally professionally and and
00:41 also post accident victims our clients that's right i think uh it's a really
00:47 important topic it's something that hits home it's something that hit home this week um I think as
00:55 attorneys we tend to work ourselves hard i mean I know I'm
01:01 not currently practicing law um at the firm necessarily but I've been through it um in even
01:09 outside of law i experience it a lot where I get I suffer from anxiety generalized anxiety i have definitely
01:15 had depressive episodes um and I think it's important to talk about and I like
01:20 that we have a relationship where we can openly talk to each other about it i think that's a huge benefit of getting
01:26 to work together is that you're not just you know a random partner that I
01:32 work for i can I can tell you if I'm feeling down you can tell me if you're feeling down yeah i do my best to to not
01:39 share i know i know you have to maintain a certain sense of strength but but
01:45 you're you're absolutely right i not that it's necessarily unique to the legal profession no solely but I do
01:52 think that there is a disproportionate uh number of attorneys that suffer from
02:00 mental health issues uh stress anxiety it all I remember one of the biggest
02:06 things that I was surprised about was when going to law school when I first started law school i don't know if you
02:11 had the same experience but it became readily apparent mental health wasn't
02:16 something that I had even really heard about prior to law school but during law
02:21 school before anything is going on there are people the professors the counselors people that had gone ahead of time there
02:28 were programs set up did you have similar experiences in law school i don't remember them having programs set
02:34 up but I remember them talking about how you are going to
02:39 face a lot of stress and how alcoholism is prevalent um trigger warning to
02:47 anybody um out there who's listening suicide rates are are high amongst the
02:53 profession um addiction issues substance abuse so they warned us but uh in law
03:02 school I wouldn't say there was any sort of support group but I do know that once you actually become a licensed attorney
03:08 I think you have at least in Georgia um access to um a program through the
03:15 Georgia Bar that helps with mental health and substance abuse issues yeah it could be that obviously you know I
03:21 went to Pepperdine out in Malibu and it could be that they're just progre the school itself is pretty conservative but
03:27 Southern California is very progressive and I think that it's something that they were acutely aware of in terms of
03:34 the stressors and I became very close to um a law school a 1L classmate 1l is
03:42 first year of law school you're called 1L i I became very close friends with uh a guy in my 1L year when we went to
03:49 London we did study abroad upper University has uh a
03:55 campus in Chelsea and that summer uh we spent a lot of time together and we come
04:01 back for second year and before even like the first month of the first
04:08 semester uh he he committed suicide jesus and
04:15 uh ever since I became an attorney post bar
04:21 exam whether it's direct friend or direct uh contact or
04:29 two people removed three people removed over a dozen attorneys that I know of
04:36 have committed suicide in the last decade and those are just the people I know wow a lot of it you know uh I don't
04:43 know if it's the stress of the of the work or if it's just life in general but I do think that there is something to be
04:49 said for the kind of work that attorneys do unlike a baker that you go and see to
04:56 celebrate something you're going to your attorney uh with a problem right people come to
05:03 us at their worst and it is difficult sometimes to not absorb their pain or
05:11 whatever their stress is or alternatively not even at the fault of the client or the person that's seeking
05:17 legal counsel but you sort of become their punching bag isn't the word I'm
05:22 looking for but no that's almost it's not exactly the right word but also kind of because that's exactly what I was
05:28 thinking people you almost are dehumanized in a way because people feel like they can just yell at you and take
05:36 everything out on you and maybe it has nothing to do with you it's just they
05:41 need somebody to release you know release those feelings on and I
05:48 guess as the attorney as you're taking on a lot of like the stress that they're
05:54 dealing with in that moment they feel like you're the right person to take that out on i don't Yeah and I don't I
05:60 don't think that they from their perspective I don't think that they're seeing it as taking it out on the attorney right i see it that exactly
06:07 what you said they they don't have any other sounding board so they're frustrated and they're feeling pain and
06:13 they need to get that out 99% of the time it's really their attorney whoever is representing them that's their
06:20 advocate that's the person that's going to listen that's who they have access to m so it could be with just whoever did
06:27 the wrongdoing and they're pissed off about that and they're still angry about
06:33 it but they can't they don't have an audience in front of that person but they have an audience in front of you so
06:41 that's who they share it with but they're not even directing it towards you but if you get that you know side
06:49 note uh you know I did comedy during law school yeah right and one of the reasons
06:54 I loved doing standup so much was because of the logistics of being the one lone person facing the crowd so you
07:02 you're the only person facing out everyone in the room is facing towards you and it's all of their laughter and
07:09 positive energy so it's like this wave of high notes of happiness of laughter
07:17 and there's there's a true high that comes along with that when you hit a joke and it resonates with that crowd
07:22 and that crowd everyone facing you that's coming towards the energy is coming towards you there's a similarity
07:28 there with your clients even though it's not like all of your clients are in the same room at the same time but you have
07:35 attorneys don't have one client we wouldn't have a practice yeah so we've got several hundreds of clients at any
07:41 given time and it's all of those individual clients problems every day
07:47 instead of laughter it's like tears exactly yeah or frustration 100% and
07:53 it's I know you're obviously coming from the perspective of being a personal injury attorney but as I've mentioned
07:59 before I I was previously in commercial real estate we're doing multi-million dollar real estate deals and those
08:05 people obviously they're not coming from the perspective of I was hurt in some way but they're also very much stressed
08:12 because there's a lot of money on the table these are billionaires who are dealing with huge you know asset
08:20 purchases sales so something goes wrong that's a lot of money for them and money
08:26 is everything to them um so you know the tiniest hiccup or even if it's not a
08:32 hiccup if you're not responding fast enough it's like they freak out and that's it's it's
08:38 a lot it's a high pressure career that's really what it comes down to and I wanted to go back to you know you're talking about students in your class who
08:45 didn't make it through and I think just that starting from law school that environment breeds a very competitive a
08:51 very high pressure environment and you think about the type of person who goes to law school they're already a high
08:57 achiever and then you put them in an environment where people are pushing them to work harder to be better than
09:03 the person next to them be to be better than everybody in the class and that doesn't go away once you're in the field
09:11 you know and I think as attorneys you are regarded very highly um it's a
09:17 coveted career um but with that comes this sense of like you have to be the
09:22 best at everything that you do and I you know I'm not saying that other professions don't have that i'm certain
09:28 that they do but for us that pressure can be it can wear you down well in
09:35 other professions like I'm thinking of a couple of buddies of mine that are surgeons and obviously when you're
09:41 dealing with someone's life it's that's high stress i'm not taking anything away from that but if you're a surgeon your
09:47 colleagues are rooting for you your colleagues are working with you other
09:52 surgeons are going to help you get to a result and then when your job is complete you're you've done something
09:58 very meaningful and everyone's everyone that's involved when you have success
10:03 everyone that's involved is happy conversely our colleagues are our enemies to a certain
10:13 extent not not necessarily the the people we work with but rather the
10:18 opposing side is attorney i see what you're saying rush's attorney yeah so you are actively fighting against your
10:25 colleagues sure and when you have a win it is almost a zero sum game not
10:32 everyone involved is happy there are I know that there are times where you know
10:38 we'll leave depositions and we're like we we did a great job for our client but
10:44 that other person the defendant that we deposed they probably hate us yeah we
10:52 didn't put them in that situation we have to advocate for our clients it's technically I'm going to get on my soap
10:57 box here and say it's the insurance company their own insurance company's fault that they're in that position
11:02 we're not trying to put them in that position they paid a premium so that that insurance company would pay for the
11:08 damages they caused insurance company puts their own profits ahead of protecting their insured they wind up in
11:13 that situation but it's definitely a lot different game in medicine and and law
11:21 yeah that's an interesting point it is no matter what type of law you practice
11:27 I would say I'm trying to think i'm running through all the different industries but there's always going to
11:33 be somebody on the other side whether it's defense or opposing council in in
11:39 whatever way i I don't like to use opposing council because it's not necessarily always opposition sometimes you're working towards the same end but
11:45 yeah there's always going to be a give and take and at some point somebody loses something there's two different
11:51 two different objectives to try to be met yes and that was something that I personally struggled with practicing as
11:57 an attorney because everything felt first of all I'm like I'm not a combative person i like peace and
12:05 harmony i like to laugh on a daily basis i don't know if Brian and I would necessarily agree with that
12:12 [Laughter] i mean outside of the family you know and and I realized you
12:20 know seven years in that wow this doesn't I don't jive with this
12:26 profession um and I think when you're constantly working upstream against something that doesn't flow with your
12:33 natural abilities you're bound to burn out which is exactly how you know what happened with me and even if you if it
12:40 does drive with you because I think you were born and bred to be an attorney but even then to your point on a daily basis
12:47 when you're getting all this negative energy thrown at you at some point you can only take so much i don't know how
12:53 therapists do it as I'm saying this I'm like how do you how do you separate because that's a
13:00 lot i imagine uh therapists are just people that love gossip that they want
13:07 all the tea save so yeah it's definitely a high pressure
13:15 uh job there is a lot to be aware of on on in terms of mental health be nice to
13:21 your attorneys this isn't a this isn't necessarily propaganda uh for people to
13:27 to be nice to us but I think it is important to say remember that attorneys
13:33 believe it or not they are people too they have feelings they bleed just the
13:40 same my blood may be a little bit thicker than anyone else's but I'm still bleeding i think that's just because you don't drink water that's absolutely
13:46 correct yeah but I also want to tie this to the clients themselves um not just
13:52 mental health in the legal profession mental health in general and especially as it pertains to accident victims you
13:58 know I know that for a lot of these people even if you're not severely injured I've been in an accident before
14:05 i know the toll that that can take on you mentally you're scared to get back in a car you know you're like "Well what if I get another accident what if it's
14:10 worse this time?" You might have nightmares from it and I think it's just really important um I wish that mental
14:17 health was taken into account more as insurance companies consider settlements and compensation because that's one of
14:24 those things that's so hard to document and I know that we've gone through this before it's like one of the hardest
14:30 things to prove um and certainly you can have a psychiatrist do an evaluation and
14:36 things like that but it will change you it will change you whether it's long-term or short term um and I think
14:42 it's really important for clients or anybody out there to take time every
14:48 single day to take care of yourself um whatever that requires i wholly agree i
14:54 need to take that advice myself on a daily basis but when it comes to the clients after an auto
14:60 accident the unfortunate part is that the insurance companies will look at
15:05 they're treated just like if it it's a mechanical issue it's a a broken bone or
15:11 a sprain neck it's like okay well how much did that cost to repair so they look at the therapist's bills and they
15:18 try and evaluate it based on how much the bills came out to in order to reimburse the cost of getting treatment
15:25 right but you're talking about your mental state i know I'm just like you
15:31 after an auto accident I have literally the next day I got behind the wheel of the car and to a certain extent I was
15:38 trembling i'm just you're just unsure of yourself you're like "Oh man I I" Because when an accident happens you're
15:44 it it comes out of nowhere obviously it's not Nobody's doing it on purpose so
15:50 when that happens your brain is jarred into thinking I here I was thinking I
15:55 knew everything i I felt safe i felt secure and this happened when your brain experiences that it's it sort of goes
16:02 through like a reset and some people takes longer for them to reset than others and you cannot
16:09 evaluate the dollar value of what that is worth to somebody's mental health
16:15 based on the bills that they have incurred and one of the most difficult things I think is when a child is
16:22 involved in an accident and they have anxiety because of it and they have
16:28 panic attacks i think that is the single most difficult thing to really truly
16:33 evaluate for compensation if there's an attorney out there this podcast isn't made for attorneys but if there is an
16:40 attorney that's listening to this and you have made a really good argument for
16:45 mental health on behalf of a minor I would love if you'd reach out i'd love to have just a discussion we'll have you
16:51 on the podcast let's talk about it but I think that the reason it's so difficult
16:56 to evaluate it because we're adults now i'm sure you're comfortable with me
17:02 sharing that you see a therapist mhm i have seen a therapist it's amazing what
17:09 comes up as an adult from childhood that is so minuscule so you don't realize how
17:16 that snowballs out of control when you're older so now you take that maybe
17:22 this child is going to have this trajectory in life but because of this violent collision when they were in the
17:28 safety of their mother's vehicle where they thought they were untouchable everything is fine this thing happens
17:34 and it it could shock them to their core who knows what's gonna happen 30 years
17:39 from now yeah that's a very interesting perspective because I immediately was just thinking that a child's going to
17:45 have a hard time expressing the things that they're feeling because they haven't quite identified those things yet but yeah even just long-term
17:52 trajectory how do you quantify that yeah it's tough what about solutions
17:59 ah you know I'm not a solutionsoriented person no I'm just kidding no I love it um as far as for me I mean obviously
18:06 every situation differs people have various resources access to
18:12 resources if you have access to a therapist i'm glad that you brought up that I see a therapist because I think
18:18 everybody should see a therapist psychiatrist whatever you feel um is necessary for you because even if you
18:26 like I think you're a very self-aware person and you not self diagnose but
18:31 you're you understand kind of why you are the way you are why certain bother you but I think that in of itself just
18:39 being able to talk to somebody about it one verbalizing it and then depending on
18:44 your relationship ship with your therapist and the type of therapist they are but sometimes just that them
18:49 validating that feeling or maybe even finding a nugget of information that you
18:55 are missing that might be the missing puzzle piece that you didn't realize but I'm going off on a tangent about therapy
19:00 but I think therapy is a huge one um I think getting outside helps a lot
19:06 yesterday we were a little bit stressed out we went and sat outside on the grass in the sun um I love Mel Robbins mel
19:14 Robbins talks about several ways to get yourself out of a negative mindset and one of them is going for a walk which is
19:20 so simple but truly can help clear the mind make you feel better taking just 10 15 minutes
19:28 out of your day to sit in silence you breathe going outside
19:33 yesterday actually I was surprised as to how quickly it worked just switching the
19:38 environment leaving we literally just went from inside of the office it was Hannah uh Hannah that was a brilliant
19:44 idea thank you for that she went and grabbed some blankets uh got everyone
19:50 set up outside on the lawn we all sat there we brought our laptops we the Wi-Fi still reaches outside so we were
19:56 able to discuss we didn't stop working but having a different environment with
20:01 getting vitamin D from the sun I think was really helpful i could feel the sun sort of like soaking into my body yeah
20:09 and it was just energizing me um I do think that there are some physiological
20:16 aspects of not the mental health aspect of it but like anxiety and panic attacks
20:22 i think there are some physiological things that will lead to uh losing
20:27 control and I think that rest rest sleep and water or sleep
20:33 and water huge breathing the only way I realize I'm going through uh a bit of
20:40 anxiety is when I'm trying to work on something or I'm trying to make a decision and I find that I can't it's uh
20:48 my mind kind of spins and like all these other things come up and it's not it doesn't feel like ADHD ADHD it feels
20:55 like I am I'm out of control almost and if I pause in those moments if I'm aware
21:01 enough to take a moment I realize I have very shallow breaths so I'll immediately
21:07 stop and the first thing I do is is drink water and then I just start holding my breath from that it actually
21:14 led to uh something that I was taught about the Navy Seals uh for them to calm
21:21 their nerves they do the the rectangle method so in your mind's eye you envision a rectangle so you start at the
21:29 top left corner and you're going at the top of the rectangle you're breathing in for 7 seconds till you get to this
21:36 corner and as you come down the side of the rectangle you're holding your breath and then when you come across again
21:43 you're exhaling when you're coming down it's you hold your breath for 5 seconds when you come across the bottom of the
21:48 rectangle you exhale for seven 7 seconds then you're going to go back up again
21:54 but when you're going back up you're holding you're not breathing in you're holding that exhale for 5 seconds when
21:60 you're at that starting point again you breathe in for 7 seconds i think that's really helpful because that sort of
22:07 breathing helps you to regulate your blood pressure and and bring your heart rate down but having the rectangle helps
22:14 to visualize it's almost like a a mini instant meditation because you're not
22:19 since you have to focus on your breathing you're not thinking about anything outside you're not looking at that you're in your mind's eye you're
22:24 thinking about that rectangle yeah that's a good tip interestingly I also learned this past week that if you don't
22:30 regularly take deep breaths your ribs can actually start to kind of compress on your lungs reducing the space that
22:38 you have to breathe in there's a medical term for it that I don't know i'll try to figure that out for next time but
22:43 it's to to that point it's also just generally important to take deep breaths on a daily basis apparently they teach
22:49 that to older people um so we don't necessarily hear it when we're younger but I think that's really important to
22:54 know but I just wanted to recap that walking getting some sun um therapy if
23:02 you can afford it um breathing exercises if you're having a panic attack and
23:08 you're like totally disassociating my therapist has taught me like point out five things in the room cuz sometimes
23:13 you don't even feel like you're a lot like real so it kind of helps make
23:18 things tangible in front of you um if you're at a point that like you're spinning out of control ice really helps
23:25 cold water it helps slow down the heart rate if your body gets really cold I
23:31 like to hop into the ice cold shower um or put like some ice on the back of your
23:36 neck yeah you've done that for me before when you see me Yeah spiral you you've given me a a ice cold bottle of water to
23:42 put on the back of my neck yeah and it's it it's wild how quickly it works that's the physiological thing that Yeah and
23:49 that's you know that's very specific to attacks um if you I've figured that if
23:55 you maintain regularly doing things like on a daily basis that make you feel good
23:60 you'll run into that less i'm not saying it'll go away but I found personally and obviously there are very serious medical
24:07 or mental health conditions that absolutely simple walking and sun aren't going to fix but these are just I have
24:13 found things that I do on a daily basis that have made a difference in my life um and I think it's important to make
24:20 time for those things and make time for the things that you love and the people that you love and making time for
24:26 yourself take a break i'm telling you this take a break because you're not a machine and life is about more than just
24:34 the we deal with on a daily basis you know this this is probably contrary to the
24:42 entire reason for this podcast but I've always thought of life as a video game
24:49 and the reason you play video games is to overcome the obstacles so without the
24:56 obstacles without the problems it's almost like I think of Super Mario Brothers without any of the the turtles
25:03 or those little uh pizza slice looking guys or maybe they're turds i'm not sure what they are you know the the brown
25:09 triangles or the fire the flowers with the fireballs if you don't have that you're just or having to jump over
25:15 anything you're just running from the left side of the screen to the right side of the screen it's an interesting perspective yeah so I've I'd rather not
25:22 have obstacles i feel like I just said obstacles when you look at it that way it certainly makes hardships feel more
25:29 purposeful well I think the reason I have that perspective is
25:35 because I know well now I know I learned years ago that you're not going to not
25:43 have problems problems exist that's part of life pain exists
25:49 the worst pain is knowing that everyone that you know and love
25:55 you're going to lose i mean that's a hard burden to the
25:60 that if there's anything if I can make a wish uh I would make a I would wish to
26:05 not have that knowledge that would be the the thing that I want most out of life just a surprise each time
26:13 what as you point that out I think that just further solidifies the fact that
26:19 those are the thing like take care take time with those people you know or absolutely take time in doing the things
26:25 that make you happy i learned that you're not going to not have problems
26:31 and for the majority of my young adult life problems felt like they weren't
26:38 just a nuisance it was almost like what's wrong with me why does why do
26:43 these things keep happening to me but then you have that perspective because you're young and and you don't see
26:49 everyone's life and you don't realize everyone has problems i just saw
26:54 something yesterday that said your problems do not make you unique yeah they don't everyone Everyone's got
27:00 problems and and the more people you meet the you realize everyone's problems are worse than the last person that you
27:06 met yeah so if you realize that life is nothing but problems you get a different
27:12 perspective you're no longer victimized by the things that happen to you you expect them and you're like "Oh okay
27:18 this is this is the thing that I need to overcome so that I am am strengthened by
27:24 it." And that's truly what happened when I had that mindset shift that's what happened to me when problems would come
27:30 up I'm like "Okay this is something I've got to overcome." And from whatever that was I would either learn to not do
27:37 whatever the precursor was that led to that problem arising in my life or I
27:42 know that okay you can't help this thing from happening but the next time it happens because you experienced it you
27:50 have a little bit more uh you know what to expect from it you you've got you're
27:55 developing calluses almost so that you can handle that problem better this
28:00 philosophy tells me a lot about the type of person you are you're such a
28:08 dad i just got off the phone with dad and he was telling me that problems happen and you have to change
28:15 your response has to change because the problems aren't going to change they don't i don't want to go too over time
28:21 so to kind of wrap up I would say problems happen deal with it no I'm
28:27 joking always happen and that's you know we're all human so um we're all going to
28:32 have different responses to it mental health is very real in every profession in every scenario make sure that you
28:40 take time to take care of yourself um be nice to the people around you not just your attorneys you never know what
28:46 somebody's going through like you said this person's problems worse than the last one mhm um every time I go to like
28:53 a Starbucks or you know wherever and somebody's being a little rude I'm like I don't take it personally cuz I think
28:60 they probably had something shitty happen today or they're just a shitty person i don't know that's the one place
29:06 my philosophy doesn't work i have very low tolerance for shitty people well you just don't know what people are going
29:12 through so be nice be kind be kind to yourself be kind to others um yeah and on that note I was saying about just in
29:19 terms of suicide um and I do think obviously I'm subjective uh I'm a guy
29:26 but it everyone of the attorneys that I know are they've been men and I do feel
29:32 like men tend to have um especially attorneys and even fathers they tend to
29:41 have this idea that if they share their
29:46 weakness that it's going to destroy the family but the solution that these men
29:52 have taken is the worst possible solution like
29:57 they've crushed their families especially the ones with children um
30:02 I've seen without getting into too much detail I' I've seen firsthand what it does to the the children that lose the
30:09 patriarch so it's a roundabout way of saying uh whether you're a colleague or
30:15 you're somebody that I don't know and you're going through this you could find me attorney Ali DM me on social media um
30:25 we host an informal happy hour at our office every Friday uh it's super casual
30:32 it's a space for you to come hang out sometimes you may not you may feel like you don't have anyone else to talk to
30:38 you don't necessarily need to come and talk about your problems but just come be around people we'll be sitting
30:44 outside in the sun uh it's it's important to realize that you're not
30:50 alone and there are solutions if you're ever in a dark space please I urge you
30:56 to reach out you can reach out to me i love that that's so supportive and it
31:01 reminds me that community is very very important wherever you find that people
31:07 need human connection well I didn't think uh that sort of emotion would come
31:13 out during today's episode but I hope you guys got something out of it and subscribe like Mom i love you thank you
31:21 for always listening she's my number one fan number one i don't know if she listens because of me or you but I I
31:28 like to think it's me don't forget to subscribe leave a comment share this podcast with somebody that you think
31:33 might need to hear it and we'll see you next week take care see you