Episode 24 - Don’t Let Divorce Dictate Your Future - with Susan Guthrie

Most people that make the conscious decision to get married, don’t have an immediate expectation of getting divorced. However, things happen throughout life, people change, situations arise, and circumstances can create a deep-seeded conflict. Some people find that these issues are too deep to resolve.For over 20 years, Susan Guthrie spent countless days and nights fighting for her clients. As a divorce and litigation attorney to the wealthy, her practice focused on high conflict, multi-million dollar divorces. Every day for nearly 20 years, Susan listened to, supported, and went to battle for her clients amongst the competitive landscape that is the adversarial divorce court system. Hearing the stories, seeing the people impacted, and feeling the emotions that were a result of the divorce took its toll on Susan. It got to the point where she felt burned out and considered to stop practicing law altogether.It was in those moments that Susan realized her interest, concern, and empathy started to run dry. It didn’t only impact her emotionally, mentally, and physically, but it also reflected in the way she supported and served her clients.“I always felt exhausted emotionally, mentally, physically. I literally was just depleted. I was honestly at a point where I was going to stop practicing law entirely. I cared so much about my clients lives. I felt the burden of my clients issues. I felt I had to be their warrior because that is the way the system is built upon winning and losing. Many of us have a competitive nature. There was a part of that that was fed by the competition. It truly will burn you out. You get compassion fatigue. I became less empathetic to what my clients were going through. I stopped being able to have the same level of care for them. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to, it was almost my self-protection kicking in.”Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you felt completely drained, depleted, and not excited about something that you were once passionate about? Burnout is real. Compassion fatigue is even more real. When you’re in an industry that thrives in a competitive environment and landscape, it becomes nearly unavoidable to experience. If you’ve ever felt the devastating effects of burnout or compassion fatigue, or if you think you are on the brink of it, you’ve got to listen to Susan Guthrie’s story. She shares how she embraced change, shifted her perspective, and altered her new reality through her commitment to herself, and her clients. She did all of this through living authentically from litigation into mediation, coaching, and mindset.Join Pamela Savino on Tuesday, July 21st, 2020 for the Live Authentically Podcast series, where she speaks with one of the most well-known divorce attorney’s in the industry and a podcast extraordinaire: Susan Guthrie. Join us for a deep discussion on how to “focus forward” when overcoming the many challenges that often result from divorce.