Before I was a psychotherapist, I was a patient, and at some point in my time as a patient, I participated in group therapy, and witnessed an unsettling interaction. (Unsettling-interaction-witnessing occurs in groups, where you spend time watching people “work their stuff out” and often “work your stuff out” at the same time.)

A new group member, a twenty-something, showed up for his first session with us, and like new members sometimes do, he presented as quiet and a bit deferential – eager to fit in, and above all, to please.

Eventually, the therapist leading the group went to Newbie directly, and asked how he was doing on his first day. He replied with some variant of “fine” and she probed further, asking if there was anyone in the room he felt drawn to, or perhaps shy to approach (this is typical group technique, designed to make the Newbie conscious of how he’s relating to others in the room.)

Newbie opted for the “drawn to” half of the question, probably aiming to sound upbeat rather than scared, and gestured towards an older guy sitting beside him.

“I guess I’m drawn to Joe. He seems like a father figure to me.”

To which, without a flicker of hesitation, Joe snapped under his breath (loud enough for everyone to hear): “I’m not your damn father.”

Newbie winced, and he wasn’t alone. That was a chilly welcome, coming from a member of your new therapy group.

On the other hand, Joe’s statement was true – he wasn’t Newbie’s damn father. More to the point, he didn’t want to be, to judge from his reaction. That wasn’t Joe’s role. He didn’t sign up to parent Newbie in that therapy group; he was a member like anyone else, trying to make himself a bit less neurotic and maybe happier. It was Joe’s right to be there, in that room, for himself, taking care of himself. And maybe Newbie wasn’t the only one there longing for a father figure – maybe Joe could have used a father figure, too.

I realized at that moment that I’d been like Newbie in my first group, too – searching for a father (for reasons I won’t bore you with), and drawing close to folks I might have been better off shying away from.

There were larger implications: I’d done the same thing at workplaces, including at my law firm, with disastrous results.

A lot of lawyers make that mistake. After working as a therapist with lawyers for a dozen years or so, I can say plenty of attorneys confuse their law firm with a parent figure, then relate to the firm like eager-to-please children. It leads to hurt feelings, resentment, anger and much unnecessary human misery.

For the record, I’ll state the obvious: No, that law firm where you work isn’t your damn father – and it doesn’t want to be. It is a business, and aims to make money. To the extent you assist in that process, fine. But no, it can’t be pleased, or won over, or convinced to love you. And it sure as hell isn’t looking out for your welfare, keeping an eye on you or making sure you don’t overdo it, either.

If more lawyers would realize their law firm isn’t their damn father…well, it might prevent a lot of pain. The reality is that these law firms are more like Joe – they don’t want to be your damn father, but unlike Joe, you never get to ask them straight out, so you never get told it straight out, either. That leaves things dangerously ambiguous.

Here comes some psychobabble, but don’t fret – if you could survive Civ Pro, you can handle a little jargon, and it’ll speed up the explaining process.

A “parental transference” means you’re relating to someone through the filter of your early relationship with your parent. At some unconscious level, you’re confusing that object (say, the law firm where you work) with your “primary object” (say, your damn father.)

It’s understandable enough, and perfectly human. People fall into the same syndrome in romantic relationships – for example, relating to your girlfriend like she’s your damn mother. There are a million delightful ways this stuff can play out in real life.

In all cases, what’s actually happening is a “regression” – you’re falling back (mostly out of habit, so it’s unconscious) into an earlier mode of behavior, i.e., acting like a kid relating to your dad.

Okay, got it. Let’s talk about kids, and the younger version of yourself that you regress into.

Most kids are pleasers. They’re programmed by evolution to please parents so they can receive necessary care, and survive. A little bird who makes mama happy receives a mouthful of worm. A little bird who doesn’t goes hungry. (That happens in nature. If there’s insufficient food for a brood, a mother bird will cull her chicks. It occurs with other animals, too – a bit like culling associates at a law firm during an economic downturn.)

Lawyers, as kids, are baby birds who make mama happy. If there’s regurgitated worm, they’ll clamber over their own siblings to get it. Remember law school?

As a general rule, the best way to please parents is to do what they say. That’s because most parents subscribe to the fallacy that they know what “a good kid” is (i.e., a kid who does what they say, and becomes what they desire.) That means a “good kid” earns good grades, obeys commands, gets into a fancy university, obtains a prestigious job and earn lots of money. The standard definition of “a good kid” isn’t about the kid, it’s about the parents’ expectations and desires.

Lawyers collude with this fallacy to try to become “good kids.” That’s how you wind up a lawyer – at least, if you have no other reason to do it (there are rare examples of lawyers who actually like law, but, alas, they’re in the minority.)

Following this path in life, you wind up a frustrated little pleasing machine sitting on a lot of anger – the bottled rage produced when you deprive yourself of self-expression for years in the service of pleasing parent figures.

Eventually, you wind up at a law firm (the more prestigious the better), and keep doing what you’ve always done – trying to make someone else happy, waiting for the perpetually deferred dream of finally managing to please Mom or Dad.

What does that look like, managing to please? It’s a fantasy, obviously, but I picture it as something like a merger with the parent, a sort of apotheosis, or coronation, where a crown is transferred down from the old king to the young prince. Amid much celebration and congratulation, a torch is passed, and it is publicly affirmed and validated that you have, indeed, pleased, and are now loved utterly and completely, and may thus assume the mantle of power and begin to love yourself. The ultimate outcome is straightforward – now everyone has to please you (so it’s probably time to have children of your own.)

You may have noticed that this fantasy looks a lot like the hyped up ceremony of being “elevated” to partner in the old days, back when people actually made partner at law firms. That was before partnership morphed into an endless process of delay and double-think culminating in odd titles like of counsel or senior attorney or the bizarre neologism cum oxymoron, “non-equity partner.”

But I regress….

Let’s get back to what it’s like to relate to a law firm like it’s your damn father. What’s it look like? Well, you try to please the place (i.e., your surrogate father) by doing what you’re told, and the firm pockets about eighty percent of your billables, so they say terrific, be our guest, work around the clock and bill an insane number of hours, that would make us really happy. So you do. They also encourage you to be really really good at what you’re doing, and so you work really really hard to be really really good, too. And then they say, “keep it up!” smile, and walk away to count their money.

It’s important to note that their money is really really important to them (more important, by a large margin, than you.)

A few tough truths you might derive from this experience:

The firm is not going to specially reward you because you’re so committed and hard-working – they’ll pay you “market,” which is, by definition, the least they can get away with paying you and still keep you there;

The firm is not going to keep track of how you’re doing or take you aside, concerned for your welfare, or insist you take a vacation. That’s your problem. If you want a vacation you’ll have to wait if and until they finally say yes and even then it often makes sense for a lawyer to take an “adventure” vacation in Patagonia or Mongolia or East Timor, not so much for the exotic or adventurous aspects as for the practical reality that there’s no wifi or cell phone reception so you might not have to work the whole time; and

No, the nice lady from HR is not to be trusted – she reports to the managing partner (who pays her) and, unsurprisingly, that’s where her loyalty lies, too.

A law firm is a business. They can mouth platitudes (e.g., “our people are our most important resource!”) yet the fact remains: They can always find another smart young lawyer willing to work for market to pay off loans.

But they can’t treat me like that, can they? I mean…they’re Dad. Your father can’t just act like money is more important than his kid, can he?

The thought of your father acting like money is more important than you are might make you want to kill him, burn down his house, burn the whole world down, or even set yourself on fire to punish him, if that’s what it takes. This is the primal rage of a child betrayed, with all its quasi-suicidal twisted logic…and it’s what some lawyers (operating within this regression, within the parental transference) regress back to. You essentially work yourself to death (or at least make yourself sick from overwork) in order to punish the person (or entity) that is supposed to provide care to you (in the fantasy.) You kill the thing they are supposed to take care of (you) to punish them (the law firm cum parent) for not providing sufficient care.

(Suicide, or quasi-suicidal self-destructive behavior, is a twisty neurotic puzzle, which is why, in addition to the horror of hearing about this sort of acting-out, you might also be left scratching your head afterwards, wondering why it happened.)

Amid all this neurotic fantasizing, you wait, and observe, in steadily increasing outrage, while the firm behaves…like a law firm. The nice lady from HR sees you acting nutty and getting sick, frets about liability, and clucks with concern over your state of mind…as she prepares a paper trail in case she needs to dump a flaky associate who bills like a gunner, but is starting to turn a little weird on her.

They’re not your damn father.

Let’s pull out of the regression for a moment and see what your law firm looks like when you are not infantilized into a fantasy that they’re Dad: They look like a law firm. In other words, nothing to look at here – they’re an office that does, you know, law, mostly for the money.

More significantly, once you stop relating to your law firm through a neurotic distortion, how do you look, to yourself? Very different. Instead of a helpless victim, a child, mistreated and ignored by a cruel, uncaring parent, you might glimpse the person you really are – a competent adult making your own way in the world, a person with options, pursuing your own agenda amid real challenges.

Once you begin to see your true, adult self and relate to yourself that way, the rest of the world will follow your lead, and start seeing the real you too, and that will change how they relate to you. No one wants to be saddled with the care of a needy child, but most people will welcome into their lives an adult who makes it clear he’s willing to take care of himself.

How does the world look to a confident, self-reliant adult?

Your job at the law firm starts looking like just that, a job, which you, a person with choices, has chosen to take for your own purposes (just as the firm is using you for their own purposes.)

Things start to take on a new balance – they start looking like a two-way street.

What are your goals in working as a lawyer? Maybe you’re there for the money – either you have loans to pay off, or you simply want to stow away some savings. Or maybe it’s about prestige – you need a few years at a firm on your resume before you go in-house, or apply to be a prosecutor somewhere or go work for a government agency, or start your own damn law firm. Maybe you’re hanging on until year-end to collect a bonus and quit to become a software engineer. I don’t know. They don’t know. Only you know, because when you’re operating as an adult (instead of a child) you take your own life in your own hands, and make your own decisions.

When you switch to adult mode, you stop mourning the failure of your parents (real or imaginary) to provide you with love and care and guidance, and start providing it for yourself. You embrace the sad truth that no one else, not the greatest parent in the world, can provide you everything you require to flourish. A lot has to come from you, which means you have to learn to parent yourself, and offer yourself the care you need.

That guy, Joe, in the psychotherapy group, might seem like a father figure, but he’s not your damn father. He’s just a guy, older than you, struggling to figure his own life out and take care of his own needs. If you relate to him like another adult, he might eventually become a friend.

Same thing with that law firm. No, they aren’t keeping an eye out for you, planning your future successes, mentoring you into a dream career – they’re not a perfect dad who’s going to raise you to be like him someday.

More likely, they’re glad you’re a steady biller and do decent work because it earns them money. To that extent, they like the fact that you’re behaving like “a good kid.”

But if you treat them like a law firm instead of a father figure, they might still be useful to achieving your agenda: They could pay you much-needed money, give you training in your field, and maybe write up a recommendation when it comes time to leave.

Calling law a “profession” can make it sound like a continuation of school, i.e., yet more teacher-pleasing and parent-pleasing and the whole infantilizing business of growing up a pleaser.

But law isn’t a “profession” (whatever that even means.) It’s a job. It’s a business. You’re out of college and on your own, and this is for real, not simply about making your parents happy. It’s about making you happy, employing some law firm as a stepping stone in that process.

And no, they’re not your damn father.
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This piece is part of a series of columns presented by The People’s Therapist in cooperation with AboveTheLaw.com. My thanks to ATL for their help with the creation of this series.

Please check out The People’s Therapist’s legendary best-seller about the sad state of the legal profession: Way Worse Than Being a Dentist: The Lawyer’s Quest for Meaning

And now there’s a new Sequel: Still Way Worse Than Being a Dentist: (The Sequel)

My first book is an unusual (and useful) introduction to the concepts underlying psychotherapy:Life is a Brief Opportunity for Joy

I’ve also written a comic novel about a psychotherapist who falls

in love with a blue alien from outer space. I guarantee pure reading pleasure: Bad Therapist: A Romance