Managing Your Emotions So They Don't Manage You

• Author: Joseph P. Beckman

MENTAL HEALTH & WELLNESS

By Joseph P. Beckman, Liti gation News Asso ciate Editor

Managing Your Emotions So They

Don’t Manage You

s lawyers, we are exp erts at analyzing problems. We

pride ourselves in our abi lity to be supremely objec-

tive, yet able to construc t arguments that elicit

from a judge or jury both t he intellectu al and

emotional response to s et up a client to “win.”

Despite your brill iant setup, your client “digs i n.”

Discarding you r hard work and unassailable logic, your cl i-

ent continues to argue w ith you over one or more of the

unchangeable (and foundat ional) pieces of evidence i n the

case. You patiently attempt several log ical ways to redirect.

You are measured. You assiduously avoid injecting any emo-

tion, clearing out of t he way the d istracting (and pot entially

dangerous) otsam your cl ient is strewing i n front of the boat

you share.

Biting your tongue is s apping more and more of your pre-

cious mental energ y. As your client continues to push point s

you know from experience a re almost certain to lead to a

litany of self-in icted wounds at trial, you nd it harder a nd

harder to keep from shar ing your honest assessment of your

client’s preferred strateg y. This sc enario does not suggest that

the client’s thoughts on tr ial strategy are never right. Rat her,

it illustrates a lost oppor tunity to manage your emotions so

that they don’t manage you and, by ex tension, the situation.

The Unavoidable Amygdala Hijack?

The above scenario a nd reaction should not be surprising. You

are human, as is you r client. Both of your responses are shap ed

by the mass of cells atop your spi nal cord. Your ba sal ganglia.

Your limbic system. Your prefrontal cort ex. Your fronta l cortex.

Brain studie s show that wh at we mig ht call “negative

emotions,” whether anger, fr ustration, or fea r, are often

accompanied by a releas e of the stress hormone cor tisol. The

release originat es in the amygdal a, the small al mond-shaped

structu re at base of the limbic system.

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Published in Litigation News Volume 46, Number 3, Spring 20 21. © 2021 by the American Bar A ssociation. Repr oduced with permissi on. All rights reser ved. This informati on or any portion the reof may not be copie d or disseminated in any

form or by any means or sto red in an electronic da tabase or retrieval sy stem without the ex press writt en consent of the Amer ican Bar Associatio n.