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