How To Stop Catastrophizing

In some ways law school is really three years of reprogramming your brain to work in a specific way.

If you’ve been to law school, you know that the first thing you learn isn’t really torts, or contracts, or criminal law. It’s how to think like a lawyer. In some ways law school is really three years of reprogramming your brain to work in a specific way. And that way is, not to put too fine a point on it…kind of depressing.

Law school teaches you to always imagine the worst-case scenario. It teaches you to always look for evidence of how things might go wrong. And it teaches you to be constantly afraid you’ll fuck up in some irrevocable way. Miss a case in your Westlaw search? Could be malpractice! Mix up your client funds? You could get disbarred! Lose your case? You could be sued for ineffective assistance of counsel!

Not to mention, when do people bring lawsuits? When shit has gone wrong. Every case you read is a litany of disasters. Law school is really just a three-year crash course in all the things that can go terribly wrong in human life.

So put that all together and what do you have? Your brain is constantly on high alert for anything that could possibly go wrong. This is what I call catastrophizing.

Simply put, catastrophizing is when nothing has actually gone wrong yet, but you have the thought that something might, and you start to imagine catastrophes. To be clear, that doesn’t mean you’re always imagining landslides or tsunamis. They don’t have to be natural disasters. It’s just the worst possible outcome for however the thing you’re worrying about could go wrong.

Let’s say the partner you work with most often asks you to come to her office at 4 p.m., but she doesn’t tell you why and when you respond to her email asking if you should be preparing anything in particular, she doesn’t answer.

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Someone who doesn’t have lawyer brain at work would just mark the appointment in their calendar and move on. But someone whose lawyer brain is trained to catastrophize will start spinning out.

What could this be about? Is it the Lawrence case? I know we missed a footnote but I told her that it was actually co-counsel’s turn to cite check. Maybe he blames me. Am I in trouble? Am I going to get fired? What if she’s calling me in to tell me that I don’t have a future at the firm and I need to make other plans? That’s probably why she doesn’t want to tell me what it’s about, because she’s avoiding me because she knows it will be awkward. And we just bought the new house, our expenses are going to skyrocket next month when we move in, how are we going to survive if I can’t find another job? We’re going to end up in foreclosure!

Thirty seconds after receiving the email you’re in full blown anxiety mode. Your mind is racing and your heart is pounding. Your chest is tight and your palms are sweaty, and you’re trying to log into your money market account because you’re already thinking about what stocks you might have to sell to cover your mortgage.

But actually nothing has happened. You have zero idea what the meeting is about, and no actual reason to think you’re going to be fired. That’s what catastrophizing is: Your brain has immediately started imagining the worst possible outcome. And once your brain gets going, then your body starts to believe it’s happening. Your body only knows what’s going on because of what your brain tells it. If your brain starts imagining that you’re in danger, your body will react accordingly. It can’t tell the difference between real and make-believe: To your body, if your brain is shouting danger, then it’s about 30 seconds from being eaten by a lion and it’s time to get into fight or flight mode FAST.

The good news is that you can use that lawyer brain and it’s critical abilities to actually reverse your anxiety and feel better fast. The first step is write down exactly what is causing you anxiety – whether you’re afraid a partner doesn’t like you, worried you screwed up on a case, or stressed out about how much work keeps you away from your kids. Don’t hold back or censor yourself – you need to write down your honest thoughts even if they seem silly or extreme.

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Next, go back through what you’ve written down, and use that lawyer brain and its skeptical abilities to come up with an alternative narrative that you can believe. Look at the story you’ve written and see what other interpretations of the evidence there could be. Pretend you’re reading opposing counsel’s brief. You wouldn’t just believe all of the adjectives and interpretation and conjecture that opposing counsel puts on paper, right? No, you’d read through it, you’d identify the actual incontrovertible facts, and then you’d try to construct an opposite narrative that explains the same facts but is better for your client. You can do the same thing with your thoughts.

Note that you don’t have to believe the alternative story is absolutely true right now. We can’t know the future. But that also means you can’t know that your anxiety is 100% correct either. The goal here is to get your brain thinking about other possible explanations of what is going on. Both so you feel better now, and to keep it from making those anxiety loops in your brain even deeper.

If you’d like to download a worksheet that will walk you through this process, click here!

Kara Loewentheil, J.D., C.M.C., is a former litigator and academic who now runs a boutique life coaching practice, with a focus on high-achieving feminist women who struggle with anxiety and insecurity. As a former lawyer and Certified Master Coach, Kara is intimately acquainted with the unique challenges women lawyers face in their professional careers and personal lives. Kara teaches her clients cognitive-based techniques for dealing with stress, anxiety, and lawyer brain so that they can create confidence to build the lives and careers they want. She is also the host of the only podcast that teaches lawyers and other high-achieving women how to actually rewire their brains so that they can feel confident and get what they want in life. The UnF*ck Your Brain Podcast is available on iTunes or wherever else you get your podcasts. To download a free guide to creating more confidence and believing in your own abilities, go to www.unfckyourbrain.com/guide.