THE

COURAGE TO

BE

HAPPY:

ADDRESSING L

AWYE

RS’

ANXIETY

WI L

LI A

M S

. BO

ST

I I I

FE

BR

UA

RY

11

, 20

12

PRELIMINARY NOTES

Title of presentation and much of the material comes from The Courage to Be, by Paul Tillich, a 20th century theologian

Also draws from The Sickness Unto Death by Soren Kierkegaard, a 19th century thinker

“Existential” in this sense means “of existence; related to existence”. Also, a synonym for “ontology”, the “study of what it means to be”.Existentialism is a school of thought that began in earnest in the early 1800s and burned out in the mid-20th century. Not exactly what we are talking about here.I am not a psychiatrist or counselor. I am an anxiety sufferer who has found some relief. Most of these comments are based on my own experience

Why Anxiety?

Why Anxiety?

Anxiety is a cause of and exacerbates depression

85% of depression sufferers suffer from anxiety

Anxiolytics are the most commonly prescribed drugs in America

Anxiety disorders affect 18% -- 40 million – of American adults

QUESTIONS ABOUT ANXIETY

What if modern medical views of anxiety are wrong and we cannot rid ourselves of anxiety?

Does our answer to this question have special application to lawyers?

MEDICAL/PSYCHOLOGICAL APPROACH TO ANXIETY

Results from conflict, for example:

Drives v. norms (e.g., sexuality)

Desires v. limits (e.g., parenthood and work)

Between imaginary worlds and experience in the real world;

Fantasy/”should be” v. reality

Perfection and grandiosity v. smallness and imperfection

Desire to be accepted v. rejection

Lifestyle v. burdens

MEDICAL/PSYCHOLOGICAL APPROACH TO ANXIETY

Medical approach picks one or two conflicts to “treat” – focuses on the “cause” of anxiety

Can be effective but only to a point

Fails to focus on “existential anxiety” – anxiety that exists in human beings solely because they existExistential anxiety is not a “chemical imbalance” and cannot be treated or eliminated by medication or “scientific” therapy

MEDICAL/PSYCHOLOGICAL APPROACH

Attractive to professionals because it offers a “quick fix”

Not entirely effective because it fails to acknowledge and identify that some of our anxiety is natural and normal and cannot be eliminated

Thus, anxiety remains and condition can worsen until addressed

EXISTENTIAL ANXIETY– WHAT IS IT?

Existential anxiety is anxiety that we experience as part of being human

It is not the result of an imbalance or conflict

It is not avoidable

Often described as “fear of nothingness” or “a fear of nonbeing” or “a fear of fear itself”

EXISTENTIAL ANXIETY – WHAT IS IT?

EXISTENTIAL ANXIETY - CHARACTERISTICS

Awareness of the inability to preserve one’s own being.

Anxiety, unlike fear, has no object. Fear can be faced with courage; anxiety generally cannot.

We feel helpless, with no direction, inadequate and lack intentionality

As human beings, we strive to move anxiety to fear, which can be overcome by courage

SOURCES OF EXISTENTIAL ANXIETY

Fate and death

Guilt and condemnation

Emptiness and meaninglessness

FATE AND DEATH

Absolute threat and a relative threat

FATE

DEATH

FATE AND DEATH

Relative threat is only there because of its relationship to the absolute threat.

Anxiety of fate and death is basic

Death is an absolute threat to our being

Anxiety about death comes from the absolute uncertainty of what becomes of us when our self disappears.

FATE AND DEATH

Fate is an intermediate threat

“Fate” means unpredictable, contingent, unexplainable nature of the events which occur in our lives and in the world.

If we were not concerned about death, we would worry none about what happened to us

FATE AND DEATH

Fate has special relevance to lawyers

What becomes of us?

Anxiety about consequences to clients

Uncertain nature of the justice system and lack of control

GUILT AND CONDEMNATION

We are responsible for our actions

What have I made of myself? What have I done?

Judge and judged simultaneously

When answered negatively, there is a conflict which we experience as guilt.

When answered with permanent rejection, we feel condemnation

Basis for most of our moral action and thought.

EMPTINESS AND MEANINGLESSNESS

Human beings have a need to affirm themselves frequently

Absence of such self-affirmation results in depression and suicide.

Threat to self-affirmation produces anxiety

EMPTINESS AND MEANINGLESSNESS

Self-affirmation occurs whenever we live creatively in our world

“Creative” does not mean “original creativity” as performed by an artist

“Creative” means participating meaningfully in the contents of one’s life

EMPTINESS AND MEANINGLESSNESS

Participation is “creative” in that it changes the nature of the things in which one participates

Creativity means creating a positive difference; thus, self-affirmation requires a feeling that we make a difference

EMPTINESS AND MEANINGLESSNESS

Our ability to affirm ourselves is threatened

relatively by emptiness and absolutely by

meaninglessness.

The anxiety of emptiness results when our ability, or our desire, to be creative is

threatened:

we are cut off from society for some reason

we are frustrated about something which we passionately affirmed

we are driven from one object of devotion to

another

EMPTINESS AND MEANINGLESSNESS

Meaning vanishes and desire to participate is replaced with indifference

In order to avoid emptiness, we try to hang on to those things in which we can continue to believe.

Lawyers are particularly susceptible to this type of emptiness Prevailing emptiness drives us to the despair of meaninglessness

DESPAIR

Existential anxiety leads to despair, which means literally “without hope”

Cannot be eliminated with medication

Medication makes them tolerable, but at some point the meds stop working and we are left with inadequate coping mechanisms

APPROACH TO EXISTENTIAL ANXIETY

When we discuss threats to our “being”, what does that mean?

Human beings desire to experience themselves as a centered, balanced self interacting with the world

“A self is a relationship of a self to itself”

Thus, each human being desires a balanced and positive relationship with himself; anxiety results from a threat to a person’s relationship to himself

POLARITIES

Three polarities that define ourselves:

•Individuality and participation•Freedom and necessity•Dynamics and form

POLARITIES

Balance between these polarities makes man essentially what he is

Necessity Freedom

Form

Dynamics

Individuality

Participation

Center

Man

POLARITIES

As polarities, one is not meaningful without the other; a threat to one or the other is a threat to being.

ManFreedom Necessity

POLARITIES

When we have an appropriate tension, or balance, between the polarities, the threat to our being is minimized

POLARITIES

Emphasis on one at the expense of the others affects our centeredness and causes anxiety

INDIVIDUALITY AND PARTICIPATION

Every human being exists as an individual self, for itself, and at the same time belongs to the outside world

Individuality manifests itself in man as “personality”

Participation is reflected in our belonging to a community of other people

We cannot experience our individuality alone, without others; we cannot participate meaningfully and uniquely in a group without individuality.

INDIVIDUALITY AND PARTICIPATION

•Excessive emphasis on individuality and self-relatedness produces the threat of loneliness in which our feeling of contribution to our community are lost•Excessive emphasis on participation and communion on the other hand produces the threat of complete collectivization and the loss of individuality and subjectivity where the individual is transformed into a part of the whole.

Imbalance

INDIVIDUALITY AND PARTICIPATION

Lawyers focus on our own goals and aspirations to the exclusion of the goals and aspirations of others (like

our children, families, cities, towns, churches) and the

goals of mankind generally

Others of us tie our identity to a group and lose our individuality; young lawyers in large law firms may fit this

description.

FREEDOM AND NECESSITY

“Freedom”, is “free will” coupled with the infinite possibilities for our actions

As human beings, we can at any time take an unlimited number of actions.

A full exercise of freedom in this context requires imagination.

FREEDOM AND NECESSITY

“Necessity” is the limitation on our actions that is imposed by our lives up until the present, often called our “destiny”.

“Necessity” is “what is”, and freedom is “what is possible”.

FREEDOM AND NECESSITY

May seek to salvage freedom by arbitrarily denying his destiny

Extreme focus on infinite possibility without regard to our limitations results in disconnection from reality.

No person can healthily live in a fantasy world.

FREEDOM AND NECESSITY

Man may fear that exercise of his freedom may

jeopardize his connection with his past, or his

destiny, and he may give up his freedom to preserve

his destiny

When he gives up his freedom entirely, and stops imagining possibilities, he loses himself and becomes

a number, just one man more, a continuation of hopeless sameness.

Others become nameless and unimportant.

Desperate narrow-mindedness and

mean-spiritedness result.

Lawyers particularly

susceptible to this

DYNAMICS AND FORM

Dynamics are the result of man’s vitality

Form is the result of man’s intentionality

DYNAMICS AND FORM

“Vitality” is man’s special desire to stay alive and at the same time live beyond basic biological existence.

“Intentionality” means man’s desire to relate to meaningful structures, to live in universals and to grasp and shape reality.

DYNAMICS AND FORM

“Dynamics” is man’s drive for progress and, inherent in this concept, the persistence of change.

“Form”, on the other hand, is the result of man’s desire for structure in which to live; cultural norms, government, and accepted scientific principles are examples of this type of structure.

DYNAMICS AND FORM

Balance is threatened when dynamics is lost to the rigidity of existing structures

Continued insistence on “progress” for the sake of progress puts at risk structured patterns and institutions resulting in chaos which threatens the very change insisted upon.

DYNAMICS AND FORM

Lawyers can be resistant to change, insisting on old ways and old ideas; this resistance limits our vitality and creates anxiety

Others desire change for change sake; this puts at risk the structures that provide us security we desire.

NEW LOOK AT BALANCE

Medical treatment of anxiety and accompanying depression often is not sufficient to address the issues that cause discomfort.

A new view of ourselves and our lives is necessary to deal with these issues more completely.

NEW LOOK AT BALANCE

Why do work and life have to be separate? What happens if work is part of life instead of an alternative to life?

How do we know if we are successful?

More balanced in this way can start with a simple change in our thinking

identify those elements of our being that are “out of balance” and take steps to balance them

Happiness is the goal! Other goals get in the way

NEW LOOK AT BALANCE

Courage to give up our own goals for the goals of a group or community; to leave behind old ideas and structures to try new ones; and to imagine and to act to change our place in the world.

It works, pretty quickly

NEW LOOK AT BALANCE

What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul? Mark 8:36