Health / Wellness, Law Schools

A Message For Lawyers & Law Students: Don’t Do Drama

There is never a reason to feed drama. Ever.

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Stressed and sadI know you all will be disappointed that I’m not talking about the ending of comments on Above the Law.  But today, I’m talking about drama.  You see, I have learned something about drama this past week.  It sucks.  Okay, I knew that already.  But there’s a reason that certain types of drama affects us more than others, and there’s a reason we have more trouble letting go of some types of drama.

It’s helpful to categorize drama.  I’ll just put drama into three categories, as that is all my brain can handle.

Category 1: Drama Llama drama.  This is the ugly gossip, back-stabbing, energy-vampire drama.  Or the colleague who is driving you mad with narcissistic behavior.  Or the mean-spirited commentators who moved to your blog from Above the Law.

This drama has a tendency to suck you in, because, hey, it isn’t boring!  If you have no other drama in your life, you might focus on this, letting it suck you dry of any spare time and energy.

Category 2: Medium-level drama.  In law school, you’ve experienced this as studying for finals, finishing your legal writing memo at the last minute, or waiting to hear on which law review you’ll serve (or not serve).  These are highly stressful big deals in the short term, but ones with limited duration and a clear ending.  In the long term, we’ll have other hurdles, such as dealing with clients repeatedly, getting ready for trial, and deciding whether or not to file a complaint.  In life, it might be whether or not to get married, have kids, get divorced, file bankruptcy after the law firm merges with another and lays you off, or even whether or not to kill comments on your blog because there are a lot of Level 1 drama folks there.

Because these types of drama require action and decision, they can be empowering.  Life decisions are stressful, but they seem more in our control because there are actions to undertake.

Category 3: Bad drama.  These usually involve death, the threat of death, or something incredibly psychologically scarring (e.g., cancer, a car crash with a fatality, violent crime, death threats, or the death of a family member).  Surviving these issues isn’t about embracing the drama they cause, but about unpacking the overwhelming feelings they cause.

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I started thinking about this because last week I encountered all three types, in sequence.  It started out with me (wrongly) obsessing about something a student said to a colleague about me.  I thought about how this same student had also gossiped to me about the colleague.  I thought about how petty, immature, and … I was obsessing.  My brain has been trained to respond to drama, rather than to repel it.

That got sidelined when I started working on my taxes.  I know, go ahead and pull up my previous columns and search for the word “procrastination.”  I owe the IRS an arm and a leg.  I immediately thought about how I would have to have a sign outside the freeway saying, “Will tell you about tort law for food.”  The trick here is that there’s a solution, somewhere. I’ll get the money.  No worries.  Back to obsessing about the Drama Llama.

That’s when my trip to the ER happened.  I’m fine, by the way.  But at the time, I wasn’t.  It’s unsettling wondering what you have and whether or not it will kill you.  And then there was the $150 billion dollar copay, the 20% of the total cost deductible, and all the financial things to worry about.  I’m fine, but that wasn’t in my control.  The medical bills will be in my control.  The feeling that I’m mortal?   Hopefully I’ll get over that.

What makes the first type of drama seem like the third is the question of control.  As the Dalai Lama said,  “If a problem is fixable, if a situation is such that you can do something about it, then there is no need to worry. If it’s not fixable, then there is no help in worrying. There is no benefit in worrying whatsoever.”

Lawyers and future lawyers TRY to solve problems. We’ll likely excel at the second category of drama where there are usually clear paths and obstacles to overcome.  The first and third types of drama have no complete solutions within our control.  That’s why our brain focuses so much on the petty B.S. people thrust at us at random times. Because we can’t control it, it feels far worse than it ought to feel.

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Thus, the Dalai Lama is right.  For us lawyer types, the trick is to identify that drama which cannot be fixed and, most importantly, stop obsessing about it.  Otherwise, you’ll get driven crazy, especially by drama llamas, who live for that sort of thing.

My rule of thumb: Ignore everything in the first category of drama, if possible.  At least give it little energy.  If a drama llama is in your face, don’t reciprocate. Just return short, positive, forward-looking statements.  If they have a knife in your back, the trick is not to avoid the knife, but not let the knife hurt.   Life is too short to give petty people power over you.  And that’s all I’m saying about the Above the Law comments decision.

With respect to the second category, usually solutions present themselves, or at least things will sort themselves out.  That means the task is to give less attention to the panic of the situation and more attention to the steps needed to resolve the situation.

Even with category three, there are things you can do.  But then you must let go of the rest.  Within each big drama there is the chance to unpack it.  Steps will need to be taken, much like category two.  Whether the solutions involve things like chemotherapy, therapy, mourning, or dealing with insurance, you have the power to tackle these issues.  The rest is out of your control, and it takes great patience to recognize that.

Regardless, there is never a reason to feed drama.  Ever.

LawProfBlawg is an anonymous professor at a top 100 law school. You can see more of his musings here and on Twitter. Email him at lawprofblawg@gmail.com.

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