Gunila Life Coach

“The vets here get so stressed out over only 5 inpatients!! If they were in the UK, they wouldn’t survive a day!!”

One of my colleagues from the UK is doing some locum work in another country over summer, and is amazed at how stressed the vets get over (according to him) very little work load.

He feels they get anxious over different things than the vets in the UK; for example it takes painstakingly long for them to make decisions and carry anything complicated out, because they’re so terrified of doing the wrong thing.

It might just be the specific clinic he’s landed in, but it just goes to show how good veterinary brains are at finding problems and making life harder for ourselves.

I work in ER, and I frankly don’t have too much time to worry over making the wrong decision, because if I don’t make SOME decision the animal will die.

But I know for sure that when I’ve been less busy in the past, as a GP and especially owning my own clinic, and before I had the self awareness I possess now, that my brain wouldn’t stop just because the influx of patients did.

It’s a bit like having a deadline for a project: if you’ve got 3 weeks, you’ll fill up 3 weeks dillying and dallying.

If you’ve got 3 days, you’ll get it done, with much less fluff.

When a veterinary brain isn’t filled up with stuff to do right now, its tendency will be to go wandering for things to worry about, such as carrying out a complicated case perfectly, taking the exact right steps with every animal, and spinning in indecision.

I see proof of that over and over again, and it really exacerbates the need for us to be able to have some control over our brain.

It’s such an amazing and brilliant problem solving machine, and as any machine, it needs someone to manage it. And that someone is you, vet.

You want to notice when your brain is just filling up time going over and over everything that can go wrong, wanting to anticipate and control every little detail far into the future, and while it’s at it, also analyse and wish it could change stuff we think we didn’t do great in the past.

Do you know how much time you may be spending thinking and worrying about things you

1) Can’t do anything about
2) Experienced/did in the past
3) Might never have to face
4) Will know how to deal with anyway as and when they may happen?

Take a guess! You might be surprised.

Do you know that feeling when there’s a small parenthesis in all the chaos, where everything seems to be working, nothing is going (obviously) wrong, and it’s just a sensation of … calm and content, for a minute?

And then your brain suddenly breaks through with all the what ifs and you should have and the anxiety sets in again.

Basically, what is called “waiting for the other shoe to drop”.

Life in vet med isn’t always chaos and disaster, but because we only ever let ourselves delve in peace and happiness for mere SECONDS before we give into the inner worry and problem solving mechanisms, it FEELS like we never get a break.

We are SO used to having to think on our feet, be responsible and be prepared for the worst, that it’s actually really hard to NOT be in that state.

Feeling happy and calm actually feels dangerous to our efficient veterinary brains. Because, in order to feel safe, our brain likes

1) certainty and

2) being in control.

If I’m chilled and content right now, I don’t know and may not be prepared for the next moment’s possible disaster.

My brain wants me to prepare and analyse every little thing that could potentially go wrong (or may have gone wrong already, let’s just start going through all the consults and surgeries from last week that I wasn’t 100% happy with).

If you’re not aware of this pattern, you’ll do what I did and keep spiralling to make sure you feel more in control and prepared, and then burn out because you never take any time to celebrate what’s going well, chill when things are quiet for a second, or switch off when home or on holiday (because, what IF?!?!?).

It FEELS like it’s helpful to anticipate and prepare for the worst as opposed to relaxing and enjoy life, but it actually has the opposite effect: by the time things DO go wrong, you’re so wired and anxious that you struggle to make solid decisions and follow through, and you’re very likely to end up leaving the profession altogether because it’s just too draining in the long run.

How do we stop this?

➡️ Awareness. Notice when you start feeling anxious, and listen to your thoughts for a sec to see what you’re anxious about

➡️ Use my mantra I taught last week:

🔵 Is this TRUE?

🔵 Is this IMPORTANT?

If you can answer “no”, or “maybe not” to any of those two, practice letting go of the disaster-thought, because it’s just not useful, and is due to a pattern you no longer want.

What’s your most frequent and unhelpful thought that snaps you out of happiness and calmness?

If I had to start over, I’d start here; with awareness.

With understanding what’s actually happening in my brain before I walk through the clinic door.

Because burnout isn’t so much about the job being too hard, it’s about you managing it in a way that depletes you in ways you never imagined when you decided to become a vet.

These are the tools and principles that got me from complete burnout and having left the profession for good, to one year later being back in the saddle and 6 years later enjoying it more and more.

Today I’m sharing it here, for free.

Comment GUIDE and I’ll send you the link to download.