Terra Cognita

Disintegration takes various forms, some of them more pernicious than others. In my experience, those that plague lawyers generally fall into seven categories and are expressed as follows:

Separation from oneself: Having been acculturated to a profession in which adversarial tactics have proliferated beyond litigation into areas that used to be free from such rancor, lawyers lose touch with the more subtle expressions and yearnings of their hearts and minds and come to feel fragmented and often unhealthy. This sense of separation is often measured in the distance they have come from who they once were: sensitive, caring, creative people. Feeling lost, many look to money to create at least a semblance of integration (the surface integration of a cohesive lifestyle), but ultimately a feeling of wholeness is elusive. "It's so strange. I look successful. I'm told I'm successful. People envy me. And yet I go to bed every night feeling like something is missing, like I haven't done some basic thing that I need to do. I feel incomplete."
Separation from clients: Too often, lawyers sense that there are roles to play that preclude real human-to-human contact with clients. (This can be particularly uncomfortable when clients are suffering, as they so often are when they seek a lawyer's help.) Lawyers who feel unintegrated--almost like a collection of thoughts and feelings searching for coherence--have trouble seeing clients as whole people. This is one reason why clients often complain of not feeling heard, seen, or respected by their attorneys. "Even when they seem happy with the outcome in their cases, I feel like I haven't really connected with them. It makes me sad."
Separation from the law firmERROR MSG: No longer particularly cohesive, law firms are more bottom-line oriented than ever. They tend to support disintegration by failing to emphasize the importance of personal growth and career development for partners, associates, and staff, and by rewarding people only for that which can be measured in dollars and cents. "I feel like a Hollywood actor who is considered only as good as his last movie. It's like that around here. There's a part of you they like, even love, the part they can take to the bank. But there's no place here for the rest of you."
Separation from friends and family: The stresses of law practice create a great deal of inner turmoil. An inability to express what is going on internally causes a painful sense of separation from the people you care most about. "We live in separate worlds, my wife and kids and me. I don't want my work life to infect my home life, but there's no way to avoid it. Along with all the battles I've got to endure at work, I've got this internal war going over how best to divide my energy between work and family."
Separation from life as people live it: Disintegration is also reflected in a sense of being different, of living apart from "normal" people. Besieged by public antipathy toward their profession, many lawyers feel misunderstood, bewildered, scorned. "People just don't realize what a double whammy it is to be a lawyer. The public hates you, and meanwhile you're having a hell of a time finding much to like about what you do for a living. Sometimes I just want out, back into a regular job, to no longer be society's whipping boy."
Separation from the law as an expression of self in the world: This is a sense of being separated from the very purpose of your life. While it might have once seemed as if the law was the ideal vehicle for achieving that purpose (to help people, to advance the cause of justice, to foster economic development, or whatever), many lawyers have resigned themselves to disappointment in the face of a professional reality that doesn't seem to support their personal goals. "I didn't go to law school to do this!"
Separation from the larger profession: This final form is a sense of disenfranchisement, of feeling alienated from a profession that has gone astray and does little to help assuage, or even to acknowledge, lawyers' feelings of separation or promote more balanced lives. "I'm on my own. I don't really think that, on the organizational level, anyone's got a clue what's wrong."

Add up these seven types of separation, and what do you get? Legal work that is sterile and inhospitable to the life of the spirit. A legal profession cut off from the larger society. A public that sees the profession as being out of touch with its needs. And lawyers whose isolation and sense of alienation put them at risk for all sorts of physical and emotional problems.

If isolation--or disintegration--is dangerous, there is plentiful evidence that an integrative orientation to life is good for your health and well-being. This is perhaps most clear in the area of human relationships, where abundant evidence shows that love and intimacy are the most powerful determinants of health and illness--more than diet, the amount of exercise you get, or whether or not you smoke. Your connectedness with other people, the pioneering cardiologist Dean Ornish has pointed out, affects not only your sense of well-being but also your chances of living a long and healthy life. The flip side of this, Ornish says, is that isolation (that is, "separation") kills.

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Albergo MejoresIntegration can be cultivated. People have done it for millennia, using a wide variety of practices, many of which can be tailored to the life of a busy lawyer. The bottom line is this: You can have a vibrant inner life, one that nourishes your professional life so that what you do becomes more of an expression of who you are. It can be a kind of homecoming, a return to a place that feels familiar yet utterly new. It can bring excitement back to your law practice.

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