I Can't Hear You.

A week ago, I was sitting with a client, and listening to her story.  It was a sad story, full of despair.  Her husband had a severe mental illness and a substance abuse problem.  He left her and their son.  He was trying to get well, with not a lot of success.  She was holding everything else together - parenting their son, maintaining the home, and paying all of their bills.  She was committed to helping him beat his addiction and mental illness.  The only problem was that she was so overwhelmed by fear of financial ruin that she couldn't concentrate on his issues.  He was focused only on his problems and didn't care about the money.  He accused her about caring only about the money.  It wasn't true, but the fear that he wouldn't keep depositing his checks in the joint account so she couldn't keep a roof over their heads drowned out everything else.  I advised her to talk to him and tell him the truth - that she was committed to their marriage and to helping him, but until they addressed her issue about the money, she couldn't focus on what mattered.  Hopefully, he is well enough to understand, because if he can and address the simple issue by reassuring his wife, he'll probably save his marriage and regain a powerful ally in his battle.

Today, I was sitting with my fellow law school professors to prepare our class for the upcoming week.  The ideas were flying out onto the paper.  All I could think about was how much time each piece would take.  I worried about whether we would have enough time to do all the things we wanted.  When should we put the breaks?  Should we rearrange matters so the time flowed better?  Everyone else wanted to get the ideas fleshed out.  All I could think about was time.  Did I mention all I could think about was time?  My other professors wanted to deal with that last and wouldn't discuss it.  Until I figured out the time, I couldn't hear any of their ideas.  I was too stressed about the schedule.  So, what did I do?  While they talked, I figured out the basic time table for our class.  I put it down on paper.  It took me less than 5 minutes.  Once I was done, I could concentrate again and focus on the substance of the class.

Like my client, once the housekeeping was taken care of, I could focus on the real issues.  How often does something like this happen in the Trenches?  All too often, unfortunately.  One spouse wants to settle all the issues together, and won't agree to any one part until they're all agreed.  The other spouse doesn't know how they're going to pay the mortgage next month, and until that one question is answered, can't focus on anything else.   What are the odds the case will settle if the mortgage issue isn't resolved first? Not good, that's for sure, because the spouse who's worried about the mortgage can't focus on anything else.  That's very different from a spouse who wants to settle each issue separately as opposed to together, not because they can't focus, but because that's how they want to do it.  There are a lot of examples like that here in the Trenches.  Part of our job is to determine which issues are like my client's budget and my timetable and which are just different approaches to reaching a global solution.  There's a huge difference between the two and determines whether we settle the case or just spin our wheels.   Here in the Trenches.