Each May is recognized as Mental Health Month, a national movement to raise awareness about mental health.

Anxiety robs you of the present moment and places you in the future, where you have no control. Anxiety often is in response to some vague distant danger (often imagined). Eventually, with anxiety, your focus becomes more internal than external — you start to check for physical anxiety symptoms — which, of course, leads to more anxiety. In contrast, fear is in response to a concrete external object or situation that is in the range of possibility and the focus is more external – what out there is scaring you.

Are you tired of being compassionate? Do you find yourself doing too much for your clients? Are you spacing out during meetings? Then you might be compassion fatigued.

Struggling with maintaining physical fitness during the COVID-19 pandemic? Have you tried a workout through your favorite streaming service?

Forty-two percent of the survey respondents indicated they felt they needed mental health intervention, but 45% would not seek help, believing it would threaten their ability to be admitted to the bar. At the same time, 63% of respondents reported that the potential threat to bar admissions was a factor discouraging them from seeking services for substance use.

The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP) has posted encouraging words to help manage the uncertainty and anxiety surrounding COVID-19 (coronavirus). The AFSP reminds us that "we can always choose our response" to stressful situations.

The "and practice" is a new one that I look forward to integrating with my mindfulness practice in 2020…and beyond.

I am proud to be employed full-time as the digital marketing manager at Husch Blackwell, a law firm that values and cares about the well-being of all its personnel. Whether you are an attorney, a legal secretary, a marketing professional, or in IT, recruiting, records or other departments, employee health and mental well-being is a priority.

CW: Anxiety, Depression, Suicide, Addiction

Are you a lawyer who privately struggles with stress, anxiety, depression, addiction and do not know where to turn? Do you know a fellow lawyer or anyone else who struggles with fear and various mental health issues and do not know how to help relieve their suffering? Here is a short list of techniques that lawyers can use to help manage their depression and fears and get their life back on track.

"The only class of people less grateful than lawyers are teenagers." This alarming statement was made by psychology professor and lecturer Robert Emmons, who speaks to people from all walks of life, one of them being lawyers.