If you’ve ever caught yourself thinking, “Why bother? It won’t make a difference,” you’re not alone. In this episode, we’ll talk about what happens when caring starts to hurt and how to rebuild a sense of power, even when the system still feels broken.

Welcome to The Lawyer Burnout Solution, the podcast for women attorneys who want to move from survival mode to a sustainable, fulfilling lawyer life. I’m Heather Mills, and this is Part Two of our series When the System Feels Broken. Last week, we named the heartbreak of moral injury, the pain of realizing that the system you work in no longer reflects the values that brought you to law in the first place.

Today we’re going to explore what happens next: how that heartbreak morphs into learned helplessness, why your brain does that to keep you safe, and how to slowly rebuild a sense of agency even when nothing around you has changed yet.

When I say agency, I don’t mean control over everything. I mean the ability to make small, intentional choices to influence what you can, even when the system around you still feels broken.

If you haven’t listened to Episode 24 yet, start there first. We talked about how moral injury isn’t exhaustion; it’s the wound that forms when your values collide with impossible systems. You care deeply, but caring keeps hurting. So your brain does what brains do: it tries to protect you. This week is about that protection mechanism, the part of you that says, “Stop hoping; it only hurts.”

The term learned helplessness comes from psychologist Martin Seligman’s research in the 1970s. In those early studies, dogs were given mild shocks they couldn’t escape. We wouldn’t do studies like that now, of course, but the research taught us something important about how the brain responds to powerlessness.

Eventually, even when a door opened and they could have gotten out, they stopped trying. Their brains had learned: nothing I do changes the outcome, so why bother? Humans do the same thing, especially lawyers. When you’ve argued, written, negotiated, and cared with every fiber of your being and the result still feels unjust, a quiet voice starts to form inside you that says: effort doesn’t matter, the system will do what it wants, hope just sets me up for heartbreak.

That’s learned helplessness. In law, it rarely looks like falling apart. It often looks like holding it all together but feeling drained and disconnected. You still meet deadlines, but you’ve stopped believing it makes a difference. You still show up for clients, but with more distance, and maybe less compassion than before. You hear yourself think, “I don’t even know why I care anymore,” and it scares you, because caring has always been part of who you are.

So we’ve named the pattern, when moral injury turns into learned helplessness. Next, let’s talk about why your brain chooses hopelessness, and what it’s trying to protect you from.

When your body stays in threat mode too long, flooded with cortisol, constantly scanning for the next blow, it eventually hits energy-saving mode. Your brain concludes, “Since fighting isn’t working, conserving is safer.” That’s why hopelessness often shows up as exhaustion that sleep doesn’t fix. Your nervous system has shut down the motivation centers that run on possibility. It’s not weakness; it’s physiology.

So the question becomes: how do you convince a body that’s lost faith in safety that small movement is worth it again? That’s the work of rebuilding small acts of agency, proving to yourself that motion, however tiny, still matters.

A client of mine, an immigration lawyer, once said, “I realized I wasn’t burned out from overwork; I was burned out from powerlessness.” That thought really stuck with me. Before you can rebuild agency, you have to name where you actually have none. Pretending you’re fine keeps the brain stuck in the same loop.

Start by asking: where do I truly have influence right now, and where don’t I? That question might sound small, but it’s revolutionary. Because the moment you name a limit, your brain stops wasting energy fighting reality and starts freeing energy to move where it can. Agency isn’t about control; it’s about discernment.

Once you’ve named what’s outside your control, you can begin to notice the small places where your power still lives. Let’s talk about those micro-shifts, the ones that rebuild agency cell by cell.

You reverse learned helplessness through micro-proof, tiny experiences that show your system something new. Here are a few examples.

A government lawyer began every morning by standing at her window and naming three things changing outside — the light, the leaves, the sky. It reminded her body, “Change exists. Movement exists.”

An immigration attorney decided her daily “win” wasn’t whether a case was approved; it was whether she treated every client interaction as a moment of dignity.

One attorney noticed her “nothing matters” thoughts hit hardest at the end of long days. She started keeping a short list called “Proof I Still Care.” Every evening, she’d jot down one or two small things that reflected her values — like taking an extra five minutes to explain something to a client who was scared, pushing back on an unfair comment in a meeting, or finally closing her laptop when she said she would.

These small actions aren’t symbolic; they’re neurochemical. They re-teach your brain that action yields outcome, however tiny. And that’s how small acts of agency begin to return.

Helplessness thrives in isolation. Moral injury is healed in connection. When soldiers first came home from combat, researchers discovered something: the ones who healed fastest weren’t those who got over it; they were the ones who told the truth to others who understood.

Lawyers need that same kind of community. Not commiseration, witnessing. Whether you’re in a public-interest nonprofit, a corporate firm, or a small-town solo practice, you can build micro-community: a text chain with trusted colleagues, a walking call with a classmate, a monthly coffee with another lawyer where venting is allowed but cynicism isn’t the final word. Every bit of honest connection pushes back against helplessness.

Once your system begins to thaw, the next layer of repair is meaning-making. A public defender told me, “I can’t fix the caseload crisis, but I can teach the interns how to stay humane while they try.” A corporate partner began mentoring women and associates with marginalized identities because she realized, “If I can’t change the structure overnight, I can at least change the experience for the next person coming up.”

Agency doesn’t start when the system gets better. It starts when you decide your actions will no longer be dictated by despair.

Take ten seconds right now to close your eyes and notice the part of you that hasn’t shut down, the part that still cares, still questions, or still wants things to get better. That part means you haven’t lost yourself. It’s the start of possibility coming back online.

If you’re thinking, “I’ve tried all of this, and nothing changes,” please know that’s common. Hopelessness is sticky. It doesn’t release on command. When you feel that, go back to safety first: sleep, water, sunlight, human eyes. You can’t rebuild agency in a body that still believes it’s in danger. Your nervous system is the soil. Tend the soil, and capacity for change grows again.

In this 2025 landscape, where laws feel uncertain and the work can feel endless, agency might look smaller than it used to. It might be choosing one issue to stay engaged with instead of ten. It might be saying no to another case so you can say yes to your health. It might be deciding to stay in government precisely because your integrity still matters there.

Small doesn’t mean insignificant. It means you can keep going. When enough lawyers take one sustainable action instead of collapsing under impossible ones, the collective culture begins to shift. That’s small acts of agency becoming collective repair.

Hopelessness isn’t the end of the story. It’s the pause before repair and healing. Each time you choose to speak up, set a boundary, or stay honest instead of going numb, you remind your brain that effort still matters. That’s how your sense of agency begins to rebuild, one decision at a time.

Before you close this episode, take ten seconds to ask yourself: where in my week can I test one small act of agency, even inside a system that seems broken? If you found this helpful, follow the show and pass it along to another lawyer who could use a reminder that small movements still matter. And if you’re ready for personalized help reclaiming your own agency, you can book a free Reset Call with me at heathermillscoaching.com/call.

Thanks for listening. Be gentle with yourself this week. Remember, small movement still matters. I’ll see you next time.