Daniel Siegel has illustrated the process of the anxiety response with the example of the hand [1]. It goes something like this: Hold your open hand in front of you, looking at the palm. (No! Don't just visualise it. Do it!) Fold your thumb across the palm of your hand and then fold the four fingers over the thumb. Your wrist and palm represent the brainstem, responsible for survival instincts
Joseph LeDoux, Professor of Science at New York University, has written extensively on the phenomena of emotion and its function in the brain. He summarises the complex neural interactions that we experience in anxiety: Information about external stimuli reaches the amygdala by way of direct pathways from the thalamus (the low road) as well as by way of pathways from the thalamus to the cortex and then to the amygdala
"A man's body and his mind, with the utmost reverence to both I speak it, are exactly like a jerkin, and a jerkin's lining; rumple the one, you rumple the other" (Laurence Sterne). When we experience intolerable anxiety our minds and bodies react in a variety of ways. We may feel overwhelmed, like we're losing control, become easily angered, irritable and frustrated. We might begin to feel bad about
VIPs The Menninger Clinic in Houston runs a Professionals in Crisis Program (PIC) designed to “minimise the dysfunctional impact of the patient's position, power, prestige, wealth, or knowledge on the treatment process” [1]. Treating high achieving, well-educated individuals described as ‘very important persons’ (VIPs) presents clinicians with unique challenges. The clinic treats lawyers, physicians and mental health professionals, business executives and entrepreneurs, professional athletes, artists, priests, rabbis and ministers amongst
Assume nothing, Believe no one, Check everything. Anon Uriah Heep, Lionel Hutz, Atticus Finch – what do they have in common? Four syllables each and, in ascending order of reliability, fictional lawyers. Although we have learned recently that Finch was a casual racist … Lawyers are a disparate group. We legislate for and advise most of humanity. Justice is universal. Lawyers come from every background imaginable and practice in
This is where the idea of reverse therapy comes in. Reverse therapy applies the psychological theories which inform rehabilitation, but at the prehabilitation stage. The stresses that we experience as lawyers (or whatever) are not simply physical, or caused by excessive workloads or long hours. They are also intrapersonal and interpersonal. The way that we cope with stresses is significantly determined by the meaning that we attribute to them and
