“Greetings from your friendly neighborhood counselor” has become my tag line here at Vermont Law School when I send out my twice monthly all campus email. I am Nancy Stone, M.S., LPC, and I provide mental health services here at VLS. The intent of this tag line is to make the notion of mental health services feel a bit less scary, a bit less stigmatizing, and certainly more accessible to students. When I came to VLS’s new student orientation, Dean Jefferson asked me to say a few words about myself and my services. Here’s the most important take away from my 5-minute presentation on mental health services in general and specifically at this law school:

“What is therapy anyway? Therapy is a resource when you realize your present life isn’t working well and you want to find a way to make your present and future life better or different.” That’s it. It’s that simple. There is no shame, there is no embarrassment, there is no weakness in seeking out ways to make our present life different or better!

"What is therapy anyway? Therapy is a resource when you realize your present life isn’t working well and you want to find a way to make your present and future life better or different." Nancy Stone, M.S., LPC

It is also my aim, as I work with students, to help them recognize struggle is not weakness or failure; it is real life and all its demands colliding with one’s current capacity. I help students reframe “struggle and fear of failure” as part of the human condition. What we do with it is where the opportunity for growth and skill development can happen. The psychotherapy term for this mental shift is “cognitive reframing” i.e., taking a thought, feeling, behavior or belief and labeling it in our brains in such a way that we can harness the hardworking gray matter of our cerebral cortexes and thereby make it easier to rise to the challenge before us instead of being immobilized by it.

Here at VLS, it is my goal to help students integrate these newly-acquired skills into their current lives so that as they go forward into the world of law, they can use them to build a healthier way of living long-term. It comes as no surprise (though not spoken openly about) that lawyers also struggle with managing stress, demands, unrealistic expectations, and lots of other job-related challenges.

Recently I came upon this article: Lawyers Reveal True Causes of Mental Health Struggles Beyond COVID-19 | JDJournal which identifies the intersection of the law, the COVID-19 pandemic, and its impact on their mental health. This pandemic is exacerbating the already-identified mental health concern in the field of law. It is worth reading and provides me with the additional task of reaching VLS students, staff, and faculty to assist them in building wellbeing into their daily lives. Building mental wellness skills is a task all of us, lawyers included, can and do benefit from, because don’t we all want “to make our present and future life better?”