What struck me when I first began as a trainee was how everyone else seemed to have it all under control – I was surrounded by high achieving and motivated individuals who showed no signs of the stress and anxiety that I had been told to expect as a lawyer.
Naturally, I wanted nothing more than to impress my new colleagues in the hopes I would do well enough to earn a job as an associate after qualifying. Unfortunately, though, the pressure of my new job was not the only pressure I was contending with at the time.
In the months before joining the firm, whilst at law school, my younger brother died unexpectedly at the age of 20. He was only a few years younger than me at the time, and nothing could have prepared me for the shock and trauma that followed losing him.
Whilst I could not have been more supported by my supervisors and my friends from law school who had also joined as trainees, my instinctive response was fight or flight, and so I felt I had no option but to “suck it up and get on with it.”
On reflection this was partly a coping mechanism, but I was also harbouring fear that I would be treated differently out of sympathy or pity. This fear was completely unfounded, but I wanted nothing more than to do well and I thought part of that was not letting what was going on outside the office impact my work.
This approach worked well for years but, over time, it began to take its toll. The final straw came one morning when I couldn’t face going into work as I didn’t have the strength to walk in and put my brave face on. My resilience had worn out, but I just couldn’t shift the mindset that asking for help was a sign of weakness that might not be received well.
Not knowing where to turn, I contacted the firm’s mental health network, and, within minutes, I received a call from a partner who had been involved in establishing it. He spoke to me with such calm but also a sense of warmth and understanding that I will never forget. We discussed what was going on, how he could support me, but crucially, he also touched on his own experiences.
Hearing such a senior individual within the firm talk so openly about their own experiences immediately gave me a sense of relief that, despite what I had first thought, I was not the only one.
After this conversation, I finally had the confidence to be more honest with my colleagues about what was going on in my life, and any concerns I had around how this would be received were quickly dismissed. In fact, some of these conversations led to colleagues opening up about their own issues, and those honest discussions laid the foundation for what has gone on to become friendship.
Clearly my initial assumptions had been wrong. Even if it seemed like everyone had it all under control, I learned not to assume that was the case behind the scenes. I try to remind myself of that whenever I start to feel like the world is against me.
When I reflect on the last six years, I often think about the number of times I was told to “stay strong.” This was always said with the best of intentions, particularly in the early days after losing my brother, where there was not much else to say; but I took this as meaning I needed to bury my grief and pretend everything was OK to the outside world.
It took me a while to realise that being strong for me is also about being open and honest with myself. It is about looking in the mirror and, even if I don’t like what I see, realizing it is better to know what is there and deal with it, rather than pretend it doesn’t exist and leave my future self to suffer the consequences.
