ERM* – The Inner Lawyer

The Inner Lawyer is one of the roles your Rider plays, or “falls into” – often without you even realizing that’s what it’s doing. Here its job is to serve you (as a real lawyer might) by coming up with all the reasons and arguments about why you should do precisely what your Elephant is “telling you,” or justify why you’re feeling as you are about something.

For example, you see an ad for something you think you’d like…and you realize (actually your Rider has become aware) that you want to buy it; you might hesitate (maybe you’re not sure it’s wise) but the more you think about it, the more you come to want it. That’s because your Rider, serving as the inner lawyer, rises to the task and starts to come up with all sorts of reasons why you need it and will use it…

Another example: You express an opinion and someone disagrees…suddenly, you find yourself coming up with all sorts of reasons to support your position. What’s happened here is that your Elephant (i.e., you!) doesn’t like to feel threatened – and this is a time when your Rider will naturally jump in as the inner lawyer to defend your opinion or position, finding – and often confabulating – all the reasons you can come up with to support your behavior (i.e., what you’ve said) and how you feel…

______

Now – this is a wonderful yet dangerous thing! It’s wonderful because it gets you to think, often deeply and with insight, about your values and what’s important to you. It’s dangerous because it is biased – which means your thinking is truly limited by the position you’re in, and your Rider will tend to see only from this perspective. This usually results in preventing you from fully considering what’s really going on – that is, being blind to, or not aware of, other salient facts or data – and may lead you into making an unwise, risky, even harmful decision.

______

The inner lawyer usually serves by rationalizing what the Elephant has determined you want; it “works” to come up with all the reasons (even [and often] rather silly and arguably irrational ones) to justify why you want, or want to do, or want to believe/defend something. Notice how easily the Rider can take the particular viewpoint (just as real lawyers are paid to do), and interpret the facts and the situation from this assigned perspective.

What will become most helpful is to realize that you (i.e., as the Rider) can recognize engaging in this role as the Inner Lawyer…and, when you do, then choose to argue against the original feeling and belief from which it came (i.e., the Elephant). In other words, the Rider (you!) can decide to take on the “role of the opposition.” This is empowering – for it is the essence of disputation in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) – and is how one can bring about new and different and more desirable outcomes!

When you understand how your inner lawyer works…and then learn to utilize this capability in a consciously directed effort…it becomes a particularly effective skill in training, or re-training as necessary, the Elephant.[1]

______________________________________

[1] One approach – although it may sound corny – is to give these two “lawyers” actual names when engaged in processing problems and difficulties. E.g., Fomy would be the counsel who argues the for me side of the conflict, and Agin the counsel who argues against. In the psychological struggle that ensues, Fomy is called upon and all the evidence for doing something is considered; and then Agin is called on, and asked to make the argument for not doing it, or doing something else. This is the mindful practice of disputation – a powerful CBT practice in getting your Rider to effectively perform the skills of valuing, reasoning, analyzing, and considering in a more objective, less emotional way.

__________________________________________________________________________

*Elephant/Rider Model: The Happiness Hypothesis, Jonathan Haidt, 2006.