I know a lot of lawyers will think, “Self-compassion? Isn’t that for weaklings?” It is precisely this thinking which makes our profession suffer so much. Thanks to a recent study by the ABA and Hazelden, we now have empirical evidence of how the stress of the legal profession affects us.
Wouldn’t it be great if the act of honing and refining your mental processes through higher education led to being free of the stress caused by our fight or flight ...
Read More →
We all know that our sympathetic nervous system can be triggered if we face a physical threat or danger. Someone shouts at us, we almost get into an accident, we are attacked physically and we go into fight, flight or freeze. This causes our brain to trigger our sympathetic nervous system, release adrenaline and send blood to the major muscle groups and away from the executive functioning part of the brain. Hence, we can run away from the threat.
Having implicit bias means we are not consciously aware of having limiting judgements and pre-conceived opinions about a certain segment of society — whether racial, gender, age or some other defining set of characteristics. Another way to understand implicit (or unconscious) bias is to think of your subconscious automatically, or involuntarily, processing a set of impressions about another person in a way that forms a negative judgement of said person, resulting in unintentional or even unconscious negative attitude.
This “automatic processing” ...
Read More →
I’m one of those people who can be a little smug about how awesome it is to live in the Northwest. We have gorgeous mountains, rivers, lakes, coastline, forests and great food. We place a premium on good relationships, which gives us strong communities. But just like everything has an upside, everything has a downside, too. Our preference for positive relationships can sometimes lead us ...
Read More →