How ‘Lawyer Brain’ Impacted this Barrister’s Mental Health

A New Zealand-based KC recently shared insights with Lawyers Weekly about tackling depression while trying to continue with his professional career.

Content warning: This article may be triggering or upsetting for some readers. Discretion is advised.

On a recent episode of The Lawyers Weekly Show, host Jerome Doraisamy spoke with Daniel Kalderimis, a King’s counsel practising in Wellington and Auckland (who also has chambers in London and Singapore), about his journey navigating the complexities of juggling a career in law while battling serious depression.

Kalderimis shared some of his experiences, touching on how the repetition of pushing towards the next big step in his career began to take a toll on his mental health and his passion for his work.

“I was high on grim determination and very low on joy and meaning. It was a bit like imagining the climbing of the ladder that my career had involved: doing well in this exam, and then trying to win this case, and then getting put in this directory, and various things along the way,” said Kalderimis.

“But then the ladder just became a hamster wheel, and I just lost a sense of why I was doing it because each case would just become another case. Each thing I was doing would just become another thing I was doing. It felt like I was peeling off the layers of colour that had animated my life.

“Then I got out of it and kept doing the next thing, the next thing, and then it got harder again, and I realised that something really wasn’t working about the way I was living my life.”

Kalderimis reflected on how he began to question the significance of his job role, believing that a quest towards endeavours that held what he considered “real meaning” would offer the fulfilment he was yearning for.

“All of these different forms of success and achievement felt like they were dissolving in the rain, and behind it, I could just see greyness. It was just another thing, and then another thing. I just wasn’t really sure that what I was doing had any real meaning, and I was quite desperate to find it,” said Kalderimis.

When it came to managing that endeavour using the analytical skills that came naturally, Kalderimis said it was difficult, citing that his lawyer brain pushed him to fixate on certain issues, resulting in somewhat of a tunnel-visioned approach.

“I found it incredibly hard. In fact, the big blinding insight for me was just how much my lawyer brain was getting in my own way. The way I would put it is that my lawyer brain was really good at judging and deciding and having a view on things,” he said.

“But it really struck me when I went and started reading much more widely and had a bit more time to reflect that there are a lot of people in the world who don’t look at the world like that. They just look harder and they see more.

“I realised how little I saw of the world through my depressed mind, which was sort of like a stencil that could easily block out all the things I didn’t really want to see or could just intellectually dismiss, and in this way wouldn’t show me the things that I didn’t want to see. I was not connecting that well with the world around me, and I had no idea that that was the way it was. I needed to change how I was relating to everything.”

After going through these experiences, Kalderimis believes it’s changed how he approaches both his profession and his everyday life.

“The thing I’m much more attuned to now is how our words and our arguments and our ideas can often clothe less attractive things,” said Kalderimis.

“I’m less seduced by my own advocacy, and I’m more focused on getting really to the heart of what something is. And when I’m in court, arguing before a judge, I’m much better now at trying to see what the real problem in their mind is, which might not even be the intellectual proposition they’re putting forth to me; it might be some sort of sense that they’re just not comfortable with this kind of language. Being able to just see that [gives rise to] better communication, and I find that in many aspects of my life now.”

You can listen to the full episode here.

Help is available via Lifeline on 13 11 14 and Beyond Blue at 1300 22 4636. Each law society and bar association also has resources available on their respective websites.