Vermont Bar Journal, Vol. 40, No. 2 Vermont Bar Journal, Summer 2019 | Page 30

by Samara Anderson, Esq.
BE WELL
Stressed Much?
How does this stress affect your body
and how can being mindful reduce these
negative effects? Read below to find out...
The alarm goes off in the morning and
despite feeling sheer exhaustion, you rise
to quickly start your day so you can fit in
a cardio workout before the rest of the
house awakes and it is a flurry of break-
fast-eating-preparing-lunches-commuting-
to-school/work. Of course, there was con-
struction, which delayed your trip to work
and caused you to be late for your first
morning meeting with a demanding cli-
ent, who is now even more upset and anx-
ious about the status of their case with the
late start to your meeting. This seemingly
minor delay has now caused a waterfall of
morning problems: this meeting runs late
and now you are late for a status interview
with a judge that has not been favorable to
your cases and is a stickler for timeliness.
Opposing counsel will use this to their ad-
vantage and you will continue to dig your-
self out of the judicial hole that has been
dug even deeper. All of this “stress” and
you are only 3 hours into your day. Does
any part of this schedule resonate for you
as an attorney? If so, the negative effects
of chronic stress may be occurring in your
body and life…
I believe there is “Good Stress” and
“Bad Stress”
• “Good Stress” is part of our funda-
mental survival system and is an auto-
matic biological stress response that
can save our lives. Your fight/flight/
freeze responses are for “acute” or
“short-term” stress and last minutes to
hours until you return to a resting or
relaxed state. So, the norepinephrine,
adrenalin and cortisol stress hormone
levels rise and then disappear.
• “Bad Stress” occurs when there is
chronic or ongoing situations in your
life that do not provide you with time
to return to a resting or relaxing state.
This chronic stress can be activated for
days, weeks, months and even years.
In this case, the norepinephrine and
adrenalin levels may lower, but the lev-
els of cortisol may remain in the body
and start to wreak havoc, as outlined
further below.
Both “Good Stress” and “Bad Stress”
start with a stressful trigger (traffic, late for
a meeting, upset client, deadlines, heavy
workload, challenging judge or opposing
counsel) and your body reacts as though
you are being chased by a saber-toothed
tiger, which means you need to activate
your survival system and marshal the im-
mediate support of your stress hormones
within seconds: adrenaline (heartbeat in-
creases, breath rate increases, surge of en-
ergy, start sweating, focuses your atten-
tion) and norepinephrine (backup to adren-
alin, more awake and focused, shifts blood
flow from non-crucial areas - skin and brain
– to essential areas - muscles - so you can
run or fight with superhuman skills and can
last). Then in a few minutes cortisol hor-
mones are released to sustain the stress re-
sponse into the indefinite future, as long as
the stressor is present (maintains fluid bal-
ance and blood pressure, regulates non-
crucial body functions, suppresses the im-
mune system, increases blood pressure, in-
creases blood sugar levels, decreases libi-
do, increases acne and decreases metab-
olism).
And for many of us as lawyers, the stress-
or never ends, it just takes a different form.
It has been reported that chronic stress is
the #1 cause of disease in Americans.
“Bad Stress” or “Chronic Stress” affects
us in varied ways, including:
• Physical Effects on our Body:
• Negatively affects all of your phys-
ical systems, especially your “weak
health spots;”
• Increased respiration and breath-
lessness;
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THE VERMONT BAR JOURNAL • SUMMER 2019
www.vtbar.org