Let's Hear it For the Boys (and Girls)

Most of the best of us in the Trenches are here because we want to help people.  That's our basic motivation and the reason we chose family law over any other type of law.  The problem with being in a helping profession, which is what being a family law attorney is, is that the daily exposure to our clients' pain affects us.  For every client we help overcome the trauma of their divorce, we soak up some of their pain.  It affects us.  Therapists call this "vicarious trauma," and it's normal.  It's a cost of caring.  It causes burn out and depression.
How do we, as professionals, avoid vicarious trauma?  By making sure that we follow the caring cycle through to its conclusion.  Unfortunately, most of us stop after the first two phases and never proceed to the third, most important phase.  Most of us are really good at forming an empathic engagement with our clients - we know their pain, their stress and invest ourselves in their struggle.  After this empathic engagement, we as professionals become actively involved in helping our clients resolve the issues related to their divorce - economic and emotional.  We attach to the client in much the same way a parent attaches to a child , and in fact the longer the relationship, the greater the chance of attachment, ad therein lies the danger.  The greater the attachment, the harder the next phase of the cycle....separation, the process of terminating the professional relationship. We don't deal with separation well because we don't recognize it as a necessary part of the cycle of caring or attach to it the importance to us as professionals of ending the relationship well and meaningfully.
We also need to make sure we take care of ourselves.  Balance in our lives is critical to dealing with our clients' trauma on a daily basis.  Taking care of ourselves is the only way to continue to take care of others.