Yesterday, I wrote about the challenges of practicing immigration law and the reasons it’s worth it to me.

Since then, Gary and I have been driving pretty much all over North Carolina. While driving, we listened to the audio of Steven Kostler’s book, The Art of Impossible. which I’d read earlier this summer. Yesterday’s reflection and Kostler’s book made me realize there’s another reason - or maybe another way of explaining the same reason - why I’m willing to suffer through the pain of being an immigration lawyer.

In fact, it’s a logic that can apply to almost any type of law practice - provided it kicks your butt on a regular basis.

The study I cited yesterday, the 2020 National Asylum Attorney Burnout and Secondary Traumatic Stress Survey, does just what the name suggests - it asks attorneys whether they are experiencing burnout or secondary stress. It uses that terminology in the survey and asks qustions like “How often do you feel tired?” and “Are you exhausted in the morning at the thought of another day at work?”

Finding unusually high affirmative responses compared to other professionals previously surveyed, the study certainly found something significant going on, something important for the profession to pay attention to.

As someone who is training and encouraging students to consider the profession, I take these indicators seriously. But I’ve never been sure the standard law school programming for this and other types of professional stress - recommending boundaries and self-care - is really the right way of looking at the issue.

Is the Pain the Problem?

Kostler’s book gave me insights into why. There’s no question that practicing asylum law will kick your ass - intellectually, emotionally, spiritually, sometimes even physically. That’s real, and it’s nothing to brush off or take lightly.

But there are two ways of dealing with what is, unavoidably, the pain of representing traumatized people within a broken system. One is to treat this like a disease - something to be treated and managed, like cancer. From this standpoint, it would honestly make a lot more sense just to avoid it altogether.

But there’s another way. Instead of treating the endemic pain of asylum practice (or any stressful law practice) as a disease, what if we instead view it as fuel in a quest for the highest performance - for what Kotler calls “the art of Impossible”?

Looking at it this way does not deny that practicing asylum law is challenging, frustrating, painful. Quite the contrary. In fact, it recognizes and embraces those very qualities - because those qualities are exactly what we need to seek if we want to break through to mastery.

And mastery - the breakthrough to “the Impossible” - is the deepest of human needs. Kotler suggests that we must live this way, or spend our lives paying the psychic price for not doing so: Boredom. Depression. Anxiety. A dull sense that life has lost its promise.

I lived those feelings for years until I committed to doing what scared me most. Since then, I have not known a single day of them.

The Elements of Peak Performance

In his book, Kotler describes the elements necessary to achieve peak performance. Writ large, they are: motivation (which includes passion, goals, grit, and ferocity); learning (both information and skill); creativity; and flow.

While flow is the pleasure state that we’re all hard-wired to seek and the place peak performance seems to spring from, Kotler describes motivation, learning, and creative practices as key elements to getting there. And a certain amount of pain is to be expected in all of these - particularly motivation.

The motivation that leads to peak performance is not, Kotler says, a flash of inspiration that magically sustains us painlessly through all our efforts. Quite the contrary: while there must be a certain inspiration (passion) involved, expect motivation to involve pain. Drudgery. Frustration. Failure. Heartbreak. In Kotler’s case, more than a few bone breaks. More failure.

Asylum Law Practice: A Problem Worth Having

If Kotler is right - if every human being has a choice between seeking peak performance or running from our need for it - then pain is inevitable. More than that - it’s desirable. Avoiding pain is, counterintuitively, the path to more pain than what we were trying to avoid.

Perhaps this is what I’ve always found unsatisfying about the law school conversation about stress and burnout. The terminology itself tells us what our relationship should be to this pain: Pain is Bad. Bad should be avoided, or if not avoided, then limited.

Embracing our human drive for peak peformance says something different about our relationship to this pain, if we choose it. It says pain is tough, agonizing, frustrating, heartbreaking - and exactly what we need if we are, as Brené Brown says, to “dare greatly.” And for those drawn to practice asylum law - or any type of deep service to those in great need - the potential reward of alleviating another’s suffering is as great as any goal could be.

Recovery and Flow

This is not to say that we can go headlong into pain without strategies and without respite. Kotler describes “active recovery” as another essential aspect of achieving peak performance. No one can subject themselves to pain indefinitely and continue to improve.

Yes, we must have good boundaries and practice self-care. But these are elements in a process that has flow and mastery as its goal, not isolated (and ineffective) “cures” to a a “disease.”

Another key is to remember that we have to take measured steps toward mastery. Kotler describes a skill-challenge threshold where we are working at tasks that demand about four percent greater skill than we have. This can be a deep challenge in any asylum practice - the dysfunction in the system combined with the volume of demand means that this balance is incredibly easy to lose. That’s consistent with the survey findings - lawyers who had support staff and moderate caseloads experienced less stress and burnout. This is something to strive for, and to recognize when it’s been lost and to try to reestablish equilibrium. But if balance is lost, we can choose to abandon the entire practice as impossible, or we can work to re-establish it as a necessary ingredient in achieving “Impossible.”

Teaching Immigration Law Practice

These are all concepts I’ll strive to explore, explicitly and consciously, with my clinic students this year. I’ll certainly encourage them to talk to a counselor if that would help - it can be a healthy part of active recovery, like an athlete’s massage or chiropractic. But when those tough moments come, I’ll ask them to look inward and inquire whether the pain they are feeling is a disease to be shunned - or a sign that they’re on the path to achieving the Impossible.