I got a new job. That wasn’t going to be enough.

Stacy P.  |  Government Attorney  | 20 years of practice 

I came looking for a career coach. I got something I didn’t know I needed.

I was in a dysfunctional work environment and I thought: get out, find something better, problem solved. So I went looking for a career coach who could help me identify what kind of environment would fit me and then actually land a new job.

When I got in touch with Heather and heard about her burnout program, what she described spoke to what I was actually feeling. I realized it wasn’t just about the current job. The question was: how do I continue being a lawyer and find satisfaction in whatever workplace I might end up in?

What I didn’t understand yet was that I would have gone into a new job and brought all my own baggage with me anyway.

Before we started: what it actually looked like

I was incredibly stressed out. I would vacillate between being angry and being depressed. And that was bleeding outside my workday into my interactions with my family. I have teenagers, and I just had zero patience. There were a lot of fights, a lot of me snapping. At work I was trying to be professional, but I was also being slightly snappish during meetings. Not acting in the way that I would ordinarily feel good about.

I was having a really hard time sleeping, waking up during the night, waking up early and unable to get back to sleep. The tiredness made everything harder.

I labeled it stress and anxiety. I didn’t call it burnout. I just knew something had to change.

What I didn’t realize: this was about more than the job

I am a perfectionist. I am, as I would put it, a catastrophic thinking kind of person. When I got a performance review I didn’t like, my brain immediately went to: this means I’m not a good lawyer, future employers will find out, I’ll never get hired anywhere better.

The only objective fact in that story was that I received a review. Everything else was just how I had learned to think about it.

The first part of the work was about how those thoughts work, that that’s not necessarily an objective truth, it’s just a story I’d been telling myself. That was a revelation. But the second part is what made it stick.

The visualization process was less about thinking and more about experiencing. It was about tracing where my patterns came from, the things I had been through that shaped how I approach situations, and gaining a real awareness of that. Not to assign blame, but to understand: is this the way I want to keep thinking? Is this who I want to be going forward? And because the thoughts and the emotions are so closely tied together, I needed to be able to let go of the emotion first to create space for a new way of thinking.

“I had to experience the emotion, feel it in my body, put words to it, and then move through a process to let it go. That’s what made space for something different.”

Here’s what that actually looks like

Last week, my new boss emailed late on a Friday to say she wanted to call with an update, but I needed to head out of town for the weekend. The old version of me would have spiraled: "she’ll think I’m not committed, this reflects badly on me, what if she’s upset."

Instead, I caught the thought pattern. I recognized it as the story I don’t want to keep telling. I replied that I was heading out of town and we’d connect Monday. Then I shut my laptop and enjoyed my weekend. Not in the back of my mind at all.

That’s not something I could have done before.

What actually changed

I ended up getting a new job during this process. The timing was good. But here’s what I know: if I had just gotten the new job without doing this work, I would have brought all the same patterns with me. The perfectionism, the catastrophic thinking, the things I’d carried for years. I would have had a lot of anxiety learning everything in a new place.

I’m seven weeks into the new job. There’s a lot coming at me. My boss has even said she’s sorry this pressure cooker situation landed right as I was joining. And I genuinely feel like if I hadn’t done this work, if I wasn’t starting in a better place and with tools to think differently, I would be a pile right now.

Instead: I’m sleeping through the night. The anger is completely gone. I’m patient with my family, even my teenagers. I can leave work at work at the end of the day. And I have a kind of confidence I didn’t have before. When I catch myself not knowing something, I can say: just because I don’t know how to do this yet, I’m still a good lawyer.

In my work, my family, my sense of myself, it’s just been hugely positive. I like myself better now.

If you’re skeptical

I was scared to do this. Scared to be that introspective. Scared of what might come up in the visualizations. What I was worried about uncovering, and how I’d feel about it.

But as someone who has practiced law for 20 years, in state AG offices, the Department of Justice, and in-house at federal agencies, I can tell you that the traits that make you a good lawyer are the same traits that, when they’re super heightened, can make this career incredibly hard. No matter what environment you work in.

Switching jobs wasn’t going to fix that. This work did. And it was so worth it.

Government Attorney  |  20 years of practice

What I didn’t expect: this got to the underpinnings

I assumed coaching would be a lighter, more practical version of what I was already doing. I was wrong about what that would mean.

What surprised me was how much of the work involved going back to past versions of myself, to early experiences I hadn’t expected to be relevant to my job performance. But that's what made it different from what I'd already tried. What I got out of it was a framework that I didn't have before for dealing with these really messy feelings.

It got to the underpinnings of why I was in this situation. Not just the immediate problem, but why I kept ending up there. It helped me address what was happening now, but also address it moving forward.

What was also invaluable was talking to someone who understood the legal environment. Otherwise, my work circumstances would take 45 minutes to explain before we even got to the actual problem. Having someone who already understood the legal context meant we could jump in and do the work.

A concrete example: the memo

Toward the end of the program, I received critical feedback on a memo. Before coaching, that would have triggered what I now recognize as a shame shutdown loop: I should have known better. I should have done this better. Why aren’t you working harder?

After? I was in a bad mood. I’m not going to pretend I loved it. But the thought was: Working on this is going to take more time. I didn’t want to revisit this. That’s all it was. No self-blame. I slept normally that night. Before coaching, I would have replayed it for hours. I knew I’d done the work, and the feedback was just a thing that happened. Not a verdict on me.

"I genuinely didn’t think I was capable of that response."

What actually changed

My definition of what a good attorney is completely shifted. Before, I believed a good attorney is someone who’s sharp, doesn’t get tripped up, and produces strong work without visible effort. That belief was exhausting to live up to. Now I think a good attorney is someone who’s thorough, thinks things through, and cares about the work. You don’t always have to be right. That doesn’t sound dramatic, but it changed how I talk to myself every day. I’m kinder and much more compassionate with myself.

I’m not hustling for my worth anymore. I’m not running the shame shutdown loop about whether I’m trying hard enough. I ask for help now. I communicate when I’m overwhelmed instead of telling myself I should just be better at getting everything done. I have more relaxing weekends. I doubt myself less. And I’m becoming a braver version of myself, someone who can sit with discomfort knowing it’s temporary.

If you’re skeptical

I'd been working on similar things in therapy for years. The concepts weren't new. But something different happened here. And it turns out the discomfort I was avoiding before gets me to where I’m trying to go.

Government & Transactional Attorney  | 10 years of practice