Law school has a pretty bad reputation for breaking up relationships and alienating friends. Always one to believe “it can’t happen to me,” I figured I could just handle it. I mean, I handled Teach for America. Law school can’t possibly be as stressful.
I was naive. I forgot that there is more than one type of stress, and it’s the type that I forgot about that impacts relationships.
Stress Type 1: No time, no money, or “I can’t handle this.”
This consists of feeling overwhelmed and having to psych yourself up to do something. This was the type of stress I dealt with most of the time in TFA. Just straight-up too much to do in too little time. It can burn you out, but you are always aware of it and either stay away from other people or tell them “oh my God, I’m so stressed out” and they consider themselves warned. This type of stress, while intense, doesn’t really impact relationships because it happens in spurts. You can tell when you’re in a spurt, and you don’t attribute the negative feelings to your relationships.
Stress Type 2: This is hard, but I can handle it! actually, you can’t
This is the stress that I’m never aware of until my stomach is in a giant knot and I can’t sleep and my scalp starts to itch and ache. This type of stress is low level and tends to be situational, but constant. It can be caused by a competitive environment, feeling lost in life, or a long distance relationship. It starts to affect how much patience I have with strangers on the metro, or how much of a crisis it is that CVS is out of Vitamin Water. This is the type that affects relationships. It’s when you go to dinner with a close friend, maybe even a roommate, and you find yourself incredibly bored with the outing even though it was meant to be a fun “break” from whatever you were doing. More than once I’ve wondered if I was being boring or if I needed to spend some time with other friends because this friendship seemed like it was getting stale.
My Mistake: I was unaware of the extent of my stress (type 2) and blamed the fact that my friend couldn’t distract me from my problems, or that I couldn’t distract her from her problems, on the quality of the relationship. Sometimes a close friend can do a world of good by creating a distraction from stress, but when you’re not even aware of the stress and it’s being caused by an underpinning situation (like finals period) only you have the power to find and uproot it. A friend’s power to distract should not be confused with the connection you share.
I’ve realized that I need to keep this in mind in law school, especially as I develop new friendships and a new relationship. The low level stress that competition, uncertainty, and not having time to think about anything but school produce can make me doubt if I truly connect with people because their presence doesn’t ease my subconscious panic. But you can’t expect that of people. Even your best friends. And I know I’ll regret not getting close to some of the awesome people I’ve met just because I have a case of the behind-the-scenes crazies.
Like I said before: alienation can’t happen to me.
Do other people experience stress like this? How do you prevent it from taking over?
I have experienced some stress like that though I’m not sure if I would divide it so cleanly into two groups for me. Though I find the idea of the unknown stress particularly meaningful. The problem with it is that it takes over silently. I’m particularly open with my friends (and working on being that open with my partner) so when it happens I just clear the air and we move on. Of course, that kind of forgiveness is a two way street but in the long run it helps our friendships. Also, it usually requires some sort of incident that we then have to address which can have a negative impact on some of the friendships that don’t run as deep.
Everything Will Be Alright – A Journey Through Couples Therapy
oh dear, hope that wasn’t me