Eating the Elephant: Tips for Navigating Project-Induced Anxiety and Intimidation

• Date: 01 April 2024

Published i n Litigation New s Volume 49, Numbe r 3, Spring 2024 . © 2024 by the Ameri can Bar Asso ciation. Rep roduced with pe rmission. A ll rights rese rved. This inf ormation or any p ortion there of

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MENTAL HEALTH & WELLNESS

By James M. Truss, Lit igation Section Me ntal Health & Wellnes s Cochair, Gues t Contributor

Eating the Elephant: Tips for

Navigating Project-Induced Anxiety

and Intimidation

ave you ever encountered a project that was so

large, or so complicated, or so ultra-sensitive

that the anxiety induced by just thinking about

the problem froze you in your tracks? At the

exact moment you need to be able to kick

into high gear, you nd yourself frustratingly less productive

because you feel dwarfed and intimidated by the immensity or

complexity of the project. If you’ve been in that mental space

at various times in your career, you’re in good company. After

27 years of practice, I can’t say I know a lawyer who hasn’t

been frozen with fear and uncertainty from time to time. I felt

it often as a young lawyer and I encounter it to this day. And

if you’re one of us, then you also know that the anxiety and

intimidation take on a life of their own and seem to grow in

intensity, exacerbating the project paralysis, until you’ve found

a way through.

The phenomenon of being frozen in a state of inaction is

well known to those who, like me, suffer from attention-def-

icit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), but it isn’t uncommon in

people without diagnosed ADHD. Anyone can nd themselves

in this state—often called “task paralysis,” “couch lock,” or

“overwhelm freeze,”—when they are confronting an especially

daunting task or an overwhelming number of discrete tasks

and cannot seem to gure out where or how to begin. Task

Kseniya Ovchin nikova/Moment vi a Getty Images

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