Every time you try to slow down, that little voice shows up: You should be doing something. And honestly, that didn’t start with law. A lot of us grew up in families where being busy or helpful was the expectation. Law just turned it into a full identity.

Welcome to The Lawyer Burnout Solution, the podcast for women attorneys who want a sustainable, fulfilling career without losing themselves in the process. I'm Heather Mills, and every week I share tools and mindset shifts that help you feel more grounded, more confident, and more like the version of you who exists beneath the exhaustion.

In Episode 10, we talked about the guilt that rises the moment you rest and how legal culture and gender conditioning train your brain to see slowing down as risky. That’s the first layer. Today we’re going deeper, into the layer beneath guilt — the identity layer. Because for many women lawyers, rest doesn’t just interrupt your schedule. It interrupts who you believe you need to be in order to belong. And that disruption shows up first in moments that should feel like relief but don’t.

Maybe it’s Friday at 5pm and everything is actually done. No fires, no urgent emails, no reason you can’t close your laptop. You sit down, and instead of relief you feel this buzzing in your chest, the pull to check your email, your mind racing with unfinished tasks, a wave of heaviness, or that sense that you must be forgetting something important.

Most women interpret that as being bad at resting or not knowing how to unwind. But this discomfort is meaningful. It’s your system alerting you that rest is touching a part of you that hasn’t had room to exist.

I remember this so clearly from my own lawyer years. At one point I tried meditation because everyone said it would help with stress. I’d sit down, close my eyes, and instantly think of five emails I hadn’t answered, two things I should have drafted, and a partner who definitely did not appreciate waiting. It felt like sitting on a cushion made of fire ants. Seven seconds in, and I wanted to leap off the floor.

I remember thinking, if this is what rest feels like, no wonder I avoid it. It took months to realize I wasn’t failing at meditation. I was experiencing what happens when the Always On identity finally meets stillness. The discomfort wasn’t the problem. It was information. My body wasn’t resisting meditation — it was resisting stillness. And stillness meant stepping out of the role I’d been trained to play my entire life.

To understand that role, we have to look at where it came from.

Identity is just the story you carry about who you are, the thoughts you have about yourself that feel true. Long before you entered law, you were praised for being responsible, capable, mature for your age, the one who held everything together. If you were perceptive — the kid who noticed what others needed — that praise landed even deeper.

Then law school came along and formalized the identity. Suddenly your worth was measured in hours, stamina, responsiveness, composure, self-sacrifice. Legal culture didn’t just reward your identity. It made it feel like the only version of you that was acceptable. Over time, productivity stopped being something you did and became something you were. And when productivity becomes personality, rest doesn’t feel neutral. It feels destabilizing.

Which leads into a deeper tension that so many women lawyers feel but rarely name.

If your identity has been built around being the high-functioning one, the reliable one, the emotional anchor, the person who never drops balls, then rest isn’t a break. Rest asks you to step out of the role that has made you feel safe, valued, and needed. And your system immediately asks: Who am I if I’m not producing? Who am I when I stop anticipating everything? Who am I without this role?

This is why rest can feel empty or unsettling. Not because you’re bad at resting, but because resting challenges a role you’ve been rewarded for your entire life. And this tension isn’t random — it’s shaped by the environments you’ve lived in for decades.

So you try to rest, and what comes up is this strange emptiness. A drop in your chest. Sometimes a drift. Sometimes sudden sadness. That space where productivity used to be. It doesn’t mean you’re doing it wrong. It’s actually the beginning of reconnection.

When you’ve lived in performance mode for years, the moment you stop, other parts of you finally have a chance to surface. The reflective part. The intuitive part. The creative part. The part of you that isn’t measuring worth through output.

That’s what I was actually feeling during those meditation attempts. It wasn’t restlessness or failure. It was the part of me that observes and reflects and exists without performing, finally getting a little room. I didn’t know how to recognize her yet, but she was there. Those parts aren’t gone. They just haven’t had much space. And when they rise, it can feel unfamiliar, even uncomfortable.

If rest makes you restless or emotional or suddenly sad, it doesn’t mean you’re doing it wrong. It means you’re reconnecting to parts of yourself that existed long before you became the Responsible One.

And if we zoom out, we see this isn’t personal. It’s cultural and systemic.

Women lawyers don’t just carry workload. They carry roles everywhere they go. An in-house attorney once told me she couldn’t even watch TV without her laptop open “just in case.” Not because anyone said she needed to, but because she’d internalized the belief that her job was to be the one who catches what everyone else might miss. One Saturday she closed her laptop for two hours and felt, in her words, like she’d abandoned her post. She wasn’t resting. She was committing treason against her own identity. I know that sounds dramatic, but that’s actually how the Responsible One experiences rest.

Public interest attorneys describe rest as abandoning the communities they serve because capacity never matches need. Government lawyers say rest feels irresponsible because the work keeps coming whether they’re exhausted or not.

Then add the layer of gender conditioning so many women absorbed early in life. Anticipate needs. Absorb emotions. Smooth conflict. Be the helper. Be agreeable. Rest disrupts every layer of that conditioning. It temporarily pulls you out of the role you’ve learned to play flawlessly. No wonder it can feel like an identity rupture.

And here’s the shift that helps rest feel a little safer. Not instantly, not perfectly, but with practice. The Responsible One inside you is real. She’s competent and devoted and she helped you survive demanding environments long before you stepped into a courtroom or a conference room. But she isn’t the whole story.

There are other parts of you that didn’t disappear. The reflective part. The observant part. The curious part. The creative part. The part that doesn’t measure your worth by constant doing. Rest becomes possible when the belief shifts from “This role is who I am” to “This role is one way I’ve survived — not the only way I exist.”

You don’t have to silence the Responsible One. You don’t have to get rid of her. You don’t even have to rest correctly. You’re simply letting your identity expand enough to include the rest of you. And that expansion — subtle, uneven, human — is what makes rest feel less like a threat and more like a return.

The Responsible One inside you isn’t wrong. She’s just not the whole story. Rest is where you remember that. And if rest feels uncomfortable, it’s not because you’re failing. It’s because you’re meeting parts of yourself that haven’t had room in a long time. That discomfort is a reunion.

If you’re noticing that the Responsible One inside you is tired and you want support expanding into the rest of who you are, you can book a Confidential Stress Reset Call. It’s a private, supportive space where we look at the identity patterns driving your burnout and explore what would help you feel grounded again. You can schedule your call at heathermillscoaching.com/call.

Thanks for listening. I’ll see you next time.