“Energy vampires” are individuals who drain our energy and affect our emotions. As a veterinary professional, Dr. Cari Wise understands the significant impact anxiety and stress can have on those around us.
In this episode, she shares her personal experience as a practice owner and how it affected her interactions with her staff. It is crucial to recognize and understand the impact of anxiety and stress.
She provides tips for veterinary professionals, including embracing imperfection, seeking support, learning from mistakes, and choosing empowerment.
Healing our relationship with ourselves and letting go of control is encouraged.
Signs of being an energy vampire include mood swings, blaming others, feeling responsible for everything, and dreading work.
It is important to address internal issues rather than trying to change external circumstances. Veterinary professionals should prioritize their wellbeing and embrace the possibility of a better future.
Resource: Vet Life Academy
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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
This transcript is auto-generated and may contain typos.
Hi there. I’m Dr. Cari Wise, veterinarian, certified life coach and certified quantum human design specialist. If you are a veterinary professional looking to uplevel your life and your career, or maybe looking to go in an entirely new direction, then what I talk about here on the Joyful DVM podcast is absolutely for you. Let’s get started. Hello my friends.
Welcome to another reflection Friday here at Joyful DVM. Today is Friday, February 2nd, 2024. So today we’re gonna be spending some time talking about energy vampires. And what I mean by energy vampires are those people that we encounter who just shift the way that we feel energetically. So when we’re around them, we notice that our own energy changes, that we feel more,
a little bit more cautious, a little bit more heavy, I think maybe that’s a better word. We, we feel heavier. We feel even maybe anxious when we weren’t anxious before. And when it comes to energy vampires, what we really have to consider is that individual anxiety. So the anxiety that we carry individually actually has a massive impact on the people around us.
So if we think about this in the scope of veterinary medicine, if we are individually feeling very anxious, it absolutely is having an impact on our veterinary teams. Now, this is a topic that I am pretty close to because I have had anxiety. I have dealt with anxiety for many, many, many, many years. And when I was at the point in my career that I was the most burned out and stressed out when I was a practice owner,
that anxiety was relentless. And in hindsight, as I look back on how I was then, how I behaved, then how I interact with my staff, then I can see that it had a massively negative impact on them, even though I thought it didn’t. So I thought that I was doing a really good job of managing my stress, of covering my stress,
and of staying in an energy, of being helpful and and friendly and supportive to the people that worked with me. That was not the case. And that’s one of the reasons that I wanted to talk about this today, because as I’ve gone through the last few weeks, and I’ve encountered people in all kinds of different situations, so not only in veterinary medicine but in all different aspects in my life and different groups of people,
I’ve been acutely aware to who the energy vampires are. Now, I’m not using that label to shame anybody because this is something that when we are the person who is suffering in this way, we don’t even know that we are. And it’s important though, for those of us who interact with them to understand a little bit about what’s going on on both sides so that we can also protect our own wellbeing.
The most common way that this shows up in veterinary medicine tends to be where people are really shutting down or avoiding working with other people. And we might think that it’s just a, I don’t like you kind of thing, or that there’s cliques going on within the hospital. And those things do happen. But what’s really happening at the surface of it is that there’s an energetic disruption happening within the team.
And each of us is just trying to navigate that disruption in a way that protects us the most. Now, the thing of it is, is there’s usually not even just one person that is having this individual anxiety that’s then leaking out to everybody else with the larger the team, the more likely it is that there’s multiple people dealing with this. So today I wanted to share some different things about this.
If it is you who is experiencing this kind of anxiety and some things just to keep in mind things that I know that when I was in the heart of it, I couldn’t see for myself. And then I also wanna share with you how you can identify if this is happening. ’cause like I said, a lot of us don’t even realize the extent to which anxiety or stress is having an impact on our lives.
So I’m gonna give you some tips on that. And then I’m also gonna share with you what you can do about it, because this is not a, an like a something that you’re just going to always have to deal with. There are some very concrete things that you can do to help yourself feel better, which is ultimately what we all wanna do,
right? We all wanna be happy, but as long as we’re struggling with this debilitating anxiety with low level or even moderate level stress, and we think that we’re handling it okay, or we think that it’s normal for whatever job or life phase we’re in, then we are not going to ever be able to live our own lives to our fullest potential. And that is heartbreaking because the only thing that’s getting in our way here is us.
And so just hang with me. Let me unpack this for you, and I think you’re gonna find a lot of clarity in what I share and hopefully a lot of hope as well. So let’s start out and think about those of us who are the energy vampires, those who are very stressed out in our jobs. First and foremost, I just wanna be real honest with y’all.
You aren’t hiding it. So you might think like I did that you are able to hide your level of stress, but I promise you, you are not hiding it. People are feeling it and evidence that people are feeling it is that they retract so they avoid you. And we might just think people are just, I don’t know where the people are that need to be helping me.
I can never find my techs or I can never find my doctors. And so we think that it’s a performance issue. But if we look a little bit closer, what we can start to see is a pattern of people just avoiding us because of the way that we are behaving. So that energy, even before we’ve said anything, it’s very normal for people to pick up each other’s energy.
And so if you are already just completely wound up and stressed out and anxious or frustrated or angry, because frustration and angry are really the second step. So we’re the stress, the frustration and anger comes from being so stressed out. It comes from that underlying anxiety that they feed into each other. So if you feel that internally, even if you haven’t said a word to anybody,
just know that that level of concentrated uncomfortable or low quality emotion is actually being picked up by people around you and they will just kind of naturally avoid you when they sense that from you. Another way that that this is important for us to see and that we’re not hiding it, is that even if we think that we’re hiding it, the way that we interact with the people around us is absolutely influenced by it.
So you might think that you are being kind, you might think that you are being helpful and supportive. You might think that you, at least if you’re not saying anything at all, that you’re not being grumpy or hurtful. But I want you to just recognize that because of the way that action is promoted by emotion, there is no way for you to interact with people that is not being influenced by this level of anxiety and frustration and fear,
and however that shows up for you. So you’re not hiding it as much as you think you are. And this is so important for us to see because it does impact our teams. And again, this isn’t to shame you, it is to show you that the solution here is not going to be the teams themselves. So you’re not hiding it. People are reacting to it.
They’re probably avoiding you. And as much as you think that you’ve got it in check and that you’re not bringing it to work or that it’s not showing up in your interactions with the people that you work with and the people that you help, I promise you on some level, it absolutely is number two. What you gotta keep in mind here, and what you could need to know it’s so important,
is that you are actually limiting your own effectiveness. As long as you stay in this constant state of anxiety and stress, you are limiting your own effectiveness. And the reason is because we cannot focus on two things at once. You can’t have a split focus and still be effective. So if part of your brain is constantly freaked out about stuff, wondering about what’s gonna happen,
who’s gonna be mad, who’s not doing their job? If somebody part of your, your focus is constantly on that, then there’s no way that you’re putting a hundred percent on your focus on the things that are actually, are your responsibilities. Utilities can be any member of the veterinary healthcare team. So important to notice, I’m not talking about any one particular type of timber here.
This can be any of us in the veterinary healthcare team that are, are interacting this way. So if we are constantly, constantly that I’ve got very good help here here. Tilly says she keeps knocking over a microphone. All right, let’s get back to this. If we are constantly stressed out, if we are carrying around frustration and anger, which is all connected,
it’s all connected. If that is the way that we feel internally, day in and day out in any environment. So I’m talking about work right now, but my friends, this bleeds over into everything. But if that’s the way that we are experiencing everything, then it is so important to realize that you are not being as effective as you think you are because you cannot be focused on all of these things that are stressing you out.
All of these worries, all of these external things, you can’t be focused on that, have any part of your brain focusing on that, and also be effective in the things that are your tasks to accomplish. So you will make mistakes, you will miss things. You will not perform at the level that is your potential because you cannot focus on two things at the same time.
So this whole idea of multitasking, which has been something that has been really encouraged and something I myself used to put on resumes all the time, it’s absolute nonsense because none of us actually can multitask effectively. We can get a lot of shit done, don’t get me wrong. But we can’t do anything simultaneously. So as long as we’re allowing our focus to continue to be pulled toward these things that we believe are creating our anxiety and stress,
then we are outside of what we are actually able to engage in in the present moment, which means we are being ineffective. Number three, it’s present in all aspects of your life. So thinking, I’m only stressed out when I’m at work, I just want you to, I just wanna call it complete BS on that because that’s not true. You’re not only stressed out at work.
Now, you might be blaming your stress and anxiety on things at work, which we’re gonna get to that in a minute. You might be blaming it on that. But the truth is that that tendency to have anxiety to be stressed out, that is something that is an inside game. And so it is showing up in all other areas of your life as well,
even if you aren’t aware of it. And for many of us, it may not even be a primary work thing. You might have other things in your life that are going on that are creating stress and anxiety and you don’t have any ability to manage them to do anything with them. And because of that, you put your attention on what you do have some ability to control.
This is a very natural thing. So when we’re feeling kind of out of touch or out of out of control, feeling very stressed out about things that we see that we can’t fix, then we start to take that anxious energy and push it into areas where we have influence. And it doesn’t always, and quite often, almost never then comes out in an effective and in a good way.
So just know that when we are carrying around this anxiety and this stress, when we are in this state of anxiety and stress on the regular, it is actually influencing every single area of our lives, even if we are trying to convince ourselves otherwise. Another thing that is so important for us to know is that the anxiety and stress is never gonna be be resolved by taking more control,
more control. What I mean by that is you absolutely cannot solve what’s stressing you out by controlling what’s happening. This one is a big one. And so many of us take this approach because we just don’t know, right? We don’t know what approach to take, and we think we believe that what is stressing us out. If I say, okay,
why are you anxious? Why are you stressed? You’re probably gonna be able to drop for me a whole laundry list of things. And they’re gonna be external variables. They’re gonna be things outside of you. And so the more that we try to control those things, because our brain is doing this cause and effect thing. So lemme just take a second and kind of remind us,
what are the main causes of vet med stress? I’ve been studying this for years, and when I look at all the things that stress this out in veterinary medicine, they all boil down to four main categories. Those four main categories are human interactions, right? So I’m talking about all the humans, the clients, the coworkers, even our families, human interactions.
Number two, unexpected events, right? That that’s things like cases that don’t turn out the way that you expect them to un surgeries that have problems or patients that die, even things as as small as people who don’t show up for their appointments or people who reschedule, or somebody who shows up without an appointment or something that’s out of stock all of a sudden,
or a piece of equipment that is broken. All of that’s in an unexpected event. So it kind of falls into that category. Third category, personal inexperience. So believing that we should be better or know more than we actually do. And how we loop on that as the reasons why things aren’t turning out the way we want them to and why this isn’t easier.
And then number four is prior decisions I should have, I should have, I should have, I should have. So those things, those four categories, and some of the things we’re stressed about can definitely fall into more than one. But every single one of the things that we would identify as being the cause of our anxiety or stress is gonna fall into one of those categories.
And what you need to know is that you can’t control anything in those categories. You cannot control what other humans do. You cannot control events, unexpected events, right? They’re unexpected by nature. There’s no ability to control that. You cannot control the level of experience that you have in this minute in time. Now we can all get more education, we can all get more practice.
And so our skillset is going to be different on the other side of that. But in this moment, you cannot control it. It is what it’s, and you will never control your prior decisions. They’re done, right? They are just fact at this point. So looking back at your prior decisions, believing that if you’d done something different, you would’ve had a different outcome.
And that’s something different. Could have been using a different medication ta, doing a different diagnostic test, taking a different career path, marrying a different person. Whatever it is that you’re looking back on and you’re saying, if I had had done something different then then I would be better today. That’s nonsense. You can’t change it. It’s the way that it is because it’s just the way that it is.
It’s part of your history, it’s part of your journey. And giving any attention to this what if or this should have from back then that is only gonna continue to stack anxiety and stress. So how do we do this? A lot of us still look at these things and say, okay, I, I’m stressed out today because Susie was late for work.
I was stressed out today because Sarah didn’t show up on time. I was stressed out out today because Becky continued to forget to snap the heartworm test when it was ready to be snapped, like all these external things. And so one of the ways that it shows up that we try to fix our stress is by controlling those people, by getting on them,
by barking at them, by being aggressive in the way that we talk to them, or being snippy or being snarky or avoiding them altogether, isolating them. So the very same things they’re doing to us that we start to do to them. And that is never going to fix your stress because your stress is not ever caused by anything outside of you. Stress and anxiety are 100% an inside game.
It is an inside in, internally created emotion. All emotion is all emotion is created by what we are thinking about, by what we, we are believing, by our interpretations of situations, by our perspectives, 100%. This is scientifically proven thought, creates emotion, nothing else. And so if we can start to realize that when we have a history of carrying around anxiety and stress and feeling stressed out and anxious and frustrated and angry a lot of the time kind of as our average mood,
we can start to see, okay, this is an inside opportunity. The only way to fix this for myself is to heal my relationship with myself. That’s the bottom line. Friends, the way that we fix this is to heal our relationships with ourselves. And when we heal our relationships with ourselves, then we are not influenced by all of these things that are just going to keep happening in the world.
And we can stop blaming these external variables for why we are unhappy, why we are stressed, why we are anxious, and then also stop blaming those things for our behaviors that stem from those emotions. Emotion drives action 100% of the time. No matter what it is that you do in your own personal behavior, it is driven by however you are feeling.
So if you are feeling calm, if you are feeling acceptance, if you are feeling encouraged, valued, then the way that you interact with people from that place is gonna be vastly different. Then if you are feeling discouraged, disrespected, overworked, frustrated, angry, you’re going to interact with other people, with people differently depending on how you’re feeling. And there is no amount of effort in the world that is going to completely cover up those emotions through your actions.
When those emotions are negative, there’s just not enough effort. You cannot try hard enough to cover that up, and it’s not doing you any f favors to continue trying. So like I said, that solution then is going to be to heal this relationship with yourself. So what does that look like? What does that actually mean? Well, part of healing the relationship with yourself is just to allow yourself to be imperfect.
Perfectionism and control. Those behavior patterns are simply behavior patterns that are trying to solve anxiety and stress, which they’re not ever going to solve, right? You think if you can control all the things, then you won’t have anything to be stressed out about. If everything is perfect, then there won’t be anything to be worried about or scared about, and that’s just not the way that this works at all.
So instead, when we heal our relationships with ourselves, when we realize imperfection is just part of the human experience, then we can start to kind of go into the next piece of that, which is compassion. We can have compassion for ourselves, realizing being imperfect is just part of this deal. And we can also have compassion for other people when they aren’t perfect either.
So we, it’s not that we’re compromising our expectations, but we’re realizing the expectations we may have set, were set from a place of fear and judgment and not from a place of reality and an understanding of what happens in the practice of veterinary medicine. Practice by definition not perfection. You can never do it perfect enough to guarantee that nobody ever gets upset and that all patients get better.
That’s just not how this game works. Another thing to consider is that you need to allow yourself to be supported if you wanna heal your relationship with yourself. So what that means is you have to let yourself be cared for. You need to care for yourself as well. You need to have a support system around you, people that you trust, people that you can talk to.
And if you don’t, then you need to find those people. A lot of us do not have people in our lives who understand what it’s like to work in veterinary medicine. And so when we talk to them about the things that we go through through the day, they usually don’t give very good advice at all. And they often will say things that are just hurtful.
And so it’s not that they mean to, right? They’re not. They don’t mean to, they just don’t have any idea how to help you, how to support you in what you experienced day in and day out. Because for most of you, it’s very different than what the your people in your close family and friends network than what they experienced. And so getting into a community where you can talk to people about these experiences and getting assistance if you need to.
Like for me, I got to the point that I absolutely needed to go to a therapist because I could not control my anger internally. And I thought I was doing a great job covering it up on the outside. I know in hindsight that I wasn’t, but I knew what was even more. What drove it home even more for me was just this constant up and down mood swing.
And we’re gonna talk about here in a few minutes, like the things to watch for to see if this is impacting you. So if it means you need to get into therapy, get into therapy, there’s no doubt, there’s no shame in that at all. If you need to get into coaching, get into coaching. If you’re afraid to do something,
one-on-one, get into some kind of group group program. Obviously our Vet Life Academy program deals with all of this. This is why it exists, is to help us be empowered and to have the information that we need and the support that we need to navigate this crazy lifestyle. So allow yourself to be supported. Learn from your mistakes, my friends, if you are working on healing your relationship with yourself,
you’ve got to learn from your mistakes. And what I mean from that is when you start to see a pattern of things that keep happening in your life that are not desirable things, there’s a lesson there, there’s an opportunity there. And those things will continue to happen again and again and again. Usually in an escalating negative way. Sorry. It’s just the way that it tends to happen until it gets our attention.
So whatever the thing is that keeps happening, whatever the thing is that you keep doing, that you don’t like the results that you’re creating, give yourself a moment to just stop and look at it. What is that pattern trying to teach you? What is that pattern trying to teach you? Because there is a lesson for you there. And if you will,
stop judging yourself for these negative patterns that you’re experiencing and stop being angry about them and stop accepting that maybe you just have bad luck or you’re just bad at something because that is nonsense. But instead just get curious about it. Why does this keep coming up for me? Why do I keep experiencing this? There’s a lesson for you there. What do you need to know?
What do you need to learn? What is your opportunity to grow? So we have to get curious about the negative patterns that keep repeating themselves. Because what is not true, and hear me on this, what is not true is that you are not a person that is destined to keep experiencing negative patterns. That is not a thing. You are a person who has unlimited possibility and potential.
Absolutely 100%. And part of your journey here in this lifetime is to learn the things that you need to learn so that you can expand and you can enjoy your life, and you can live in your life as who you are meant to be. And so these negative experiences that keep popping up over and over and over again, they are just trying to get your attention because there’s something that you’re missing there at a deeper level.
Again, this is all healing yourself. So watch for those patterns and be curious about what they’re trying to teach you. This next one is a little can be a little blunt. And as we’re trying to heal ourselves, we, there’s one simple question we have to ask ourselves. Do you wanna feel victimized or do you wanna feel empowered? Do you wanna feel victimized or do you wanna feel empowered?
Because most of you gonna say, well, Kerry, I wanna feel empowered. And of course you do. But what you need to see is you cannot be victimized and empowered at the same time. So you get to pick so victimized. What do I mean by that? Oh, what was me? My job is so hard. People are so mean.
My client, my coworkers are so awful. My bosses are terrible. People never follow my directions. People show up late for their appointments all the time. They have no respect for us. People complain all the time about money like we have anything to do with the prices. That kind of dialogue is victimy my friends. You are giving your wellbeing over to all of these things that I just listed.
There is no empowerment for you there. If that is the narrative that you wanna stay in, then you’ll continue to experience your life and your career in the way that you are experiencing it right now. That is not what I want for you. So I want you just to come back and ask yourself, do I wanna be a victim or do I wanna be empowered?
Because you can choose. You can choose to rise above all of the things that are happening around you, heal that relationship with yourself, have your own back, find your own courage. That is how you move forward. Because my friends, at the end of the day, all anxiety and stress is anchored and fear. So what are you afraid of is another way to look at this.
What are you afraid of? My friends, this is your work. And when I say this is your work, I’m not pointing at any one individual. This is all of our work. This is what we are here for. We have to identify all of these areas of our lives that are tripping us up. And I say that as I say that.
I recognize that it’s actually that that may be received as me saying that you need to change things in your external life to fix this. That’s not what I’m saying at all. What I’m saying is that when we start to point fingers at things in our ex, in our lives that are causing us to feel anxious and stressed, we are missing the whole entire point.
And until we can start to understand that we only feel stressed and anxious about things in our lives, if we believe a story about those things that creates the emotion of anxiety and stress, then we’ll never change anything. We will just keep trying to change our external variables, our jobs, our relationships, the people we work with, the support staff that we hire,
the way that we interact with clients, the clients that we serve. We will just continue to try to change those external things to create a status of peace and wellbeing within. And that will never work. It will never work because the problem is not external. The problem is internal. And when I say problem, I don’t mean that in a shaming or judgmental kind of way.
It’s an opportunity and it’s an opportunity that every single one of us here on this planet faces at some point. When is it that we are going to be the champions of our own wellbeing? When is it that we are gonna stop giving our power away to things that we will never control? When is it that we are gonna stop giving our futures over to things that we will never be able to predict when?
And then when everybody shows up for appointments, then I have a good day when nobody calls and complains, then I’m gonna have a good day When I finally retire, then I’m gonna have a wife, my friends. You’re giving away your power. You’re giving away your energy to things that actually don’t have any influence over your energy at all. So how do you know if you’re an energy empire,
energy vampire? How do you know if you’re one of those people who is shifting the culture in your hospital simply because you’re carrying around all kinds of anxiety and stress? And again, I’m not, this is not judgment, this is not shame. Because as much as other people are picking up on what’s going on within you, the greatest tragedy in this is that you are living in that kind of way.
I know I did it for years and years and years. I waited way too long to get some help. I didn’t know where to start. I didn’t have anybody telling me the things that I’m telling you today. I felt completely isolated and alone and defeated. And if I would get any kind of negative feedback, I would be so embarrassed and offended.
So I get it. But my friends, I don’t want you to end up there. I don’t want you to suffer with this for years and years like I did, until you start to see the way out of it. Because until you decide that you wanna shift out of this, there is no way that you’re gonna fix it with your actions. You cannot fix this with actions alone.
This is an internal journey. There are things that you can do to shift this. And like I said, we do that in Valley Life Academy and coming up, we actually have our Elevate series, completely free series. Joyful devi.com/elevate is a great place to start, to start to shift perspective and increase inspiration and and feel encouraged. So by all means,
start there. But how do you know might you be an energy vampire? Well, here’s some things to ask yourself. Number one, do you have unpredictable mood swings? So are you angry at the drop of a hat? Can you be like floating, flying high thinking everything’s great, and then something happens and all of a sudden you’re just angry, fiery,
angry, and your mood’s going up and down? Even if you’re not externally vi verbalizing this internally, do you feel that shift within from being pretty calm and happy to being completely angry and frustrated, and is that happening multiple times throughout a short period of time? If that’s happening, then this opportunity to work on your relationship with yourself is absolutely front and center.
Number two, make a quick list of all the things that everyone else is doing wrong. So think about where you’re stressed out the most, like in what environment are you stressed out the most? Then ask yourself, why am I stressed out? And look at the list of all these things that involve other people that you’re putting on that list. If they would just make the callbacks when I ask them to,
then the clients wouldn’t get angry. If they would just show up on time, then I wouldn’t run behind and get home late from work. Those are the kinds of things I’m looking for. So if you can make a quick list of why it’s everybody else’s fault that you’re stressed out, you’ve got internal work to do. If you feel like everything depends on you,
that the whole weight of the entire veterinary hospital or the whole weight of your household depends on you, there’s internal work to do. You have opportunity to feel so much better if you’re constantly afraid of getting in trouble, whatever that means, constantly in afraid of getting in trouble for not paying your taxes, like from the IRS, like for whatever it is that you think that you’re doing wrong,
maybe by a supervisor. If you’re constantly worried that you’re gonna be in trouble for something, again, that’s an internal opportunity, my friends, you can release that anxiety and the stress over that when you learn how to heal that relationship with yourself. If you’d dread going to work. Now all of us are gonna have those days, we’re like, huh,
I don’t really feel like going to work today, but I’m talking about the dread that shows up as massive anxiety. Maybe you can’t sleep the night before. Maybe your day off is completely wasted. Thinking about, excuse me, thinking about having to go back to work the next day. If that is at the front of your brain all the time, you’re just getting through,
pushing through to get to your next day off, and then your day off is wasted and stress over having to go back. That’s an opportunity for you to do some internal work for you to heal that relationship with you so that you can make some new choices that are more aligned for you, more empowering for you, like we talked about before. Are you having a hard time staying focused on one thing?
Do you feel like your brain’s going a hundred miles an hour? You don’t ever finish one thing? Do you feel like you’re constantly putting out fires and that you’re required to constantly put out fires? If so, there’s opportunity for you here. Do you find yourself being resistant to delegating? Are you afraid to give anything to anybody else because you’re afraid they’re gonna mess it up and then you’re gonna be in trouble for it?
A very common way that this shows up, very anxiety promoting kind of experience. I know I’ve been there apprentice. There’s no way to live, there’s no way to work. So there’s opportunity for you there. Do you get frustrated when things change? So people who are late for their appointments, people who call off for work, people who show up unannounced medications or other pieces of equipment that are either out of stock in your hospital or things that are broken,
do these things really set you off? If so, there’s opportunity for you to feel better. It’s not supposed to be that way. These things should not get that much power in your life and over your, your wellbeing. And do you dread going to work? But then also worry about what might be happening when you’re not there. Another indicator that you’re really caught up in this anxiety and dread spiral and still very tightly believing that you have any control over what’s happening outside of you.
This is a very important lesson for all of us to learn, is that we will never control anything that doesn’t directly include us. So all of the things that I listed earlier, which is are the main categories of vet med stress, right? Human interactions, unexpected events, prior decisions, personal inexperience, those things are things that you cannot control in the present moment.
You can’t control a single one of those things. And any of your attention that you give to those things keeps you out of the present. It keeps you out of what you do have an ability to influence. And it’s when we get trapped in these spirals of what if and what if and should have and should have, that we just continue to stack on anxiety and stress.
And we might think that this is all just a head game, that this is all just going on inside of us and that we are actually covering it up quite well and playing the role and the way that for this shows, I should have put this on the list. Another way that this shows up for us, we put a nice smile on our face.
We can walk in the exam room, we can be really friendly to clients and deal with that. We walk outta the room, we shut the door, we roll our eyes, we huff, we start to bitch and complain about what just happened in the room, my friends. That is not a sign of somebody who is in a good place from emotional wellbeing.
That is a sign that we are in judgment. And remember, judgment is a mirror. Whenever we are judging others harshly, it is a reflection of the judgment that we hold against ourselves. That is why we must heal this relationship with ourselves, my friends, the way that we do one thing is the way that we do everything. So there is not a way for us to turn on and off this kind of behavior pattern.
It is not possible. And this is why so many of us in this profession end up in burnout. Why we end up frustrated, why we end up angry. Why we get to the point that we start to believe that going into veterinary medicine was the worst decision ever, that we think that it ruined our lives, my friend. That is absolutely not the case.
Absolutely not the case. But as long as we keep giving our personal power away to all of these external things, and we keep staying in this belief pattern that this job is going to be hard, that people aren’t gonna show up on time, that clients are gonna be disrespectful, that we are the only ones responsible for everything, that if we aren’t there,
the whole place is gonna fall apart. As long as we hang onto those kinds of beliefs, we have no opportunity to move forward because we do need to work with each other. And if you think that doesn’t, and I wanna really speak to my managers, my owners here, if you think as a manager or an owner that you’re covering up your internal stress,
my friends, I promise you that you’re not. The goal here is not to learn how to cover it up better. The goal here is to learn how to not to experience it because it’s optional. And I know that I did not know that feeling stressed out was an option that I had any ability to change it. But I promise you I have learned that that is absolutely 100% true.
And today, I can go into veterinary practice and I can witness what happens around me. I can walk into an ex, an exam room, I can be aware of, oh, there’s an energy vampire in here. Not judgment, just awareness. And I know what I need to do to protect my own energy in that situation and how to interact in a way that doesn’t actually have me pulling in their anxiety and their stress.
I can do that with clients, I can do it with team members, I can do it with family members. I can do it with random people in the grocery store, right? ’cause we are have people all around us. And I want you just to pay attention. How do you feel energetically when you walk into a room? Where is, if you’re feeling a negative pull,
where is that coming from? And just witness it. But that does not mean that you have to own it or that you have to change it or that it is your responsibility to change it. And for those of you who are the negative energy pull, who are sitting there feeling stressed out, ask yourself, what am I blaming for this? What do I think is causing this?
Because I promise you, you’re, you’re likely going to say that it’s something outside of you that’s causing it. And because you see that you do not have the ability to fix it. You are accepting that this is just the way that you are and the way that it is. And those are the biggest lies because they will never let you move forward and experience your life and enjoy your career in the way that is possible for you.
So my friends, lots of things to think about as you go into next week. And like I shared before, we have are opening up our Elevate series. We’re getting ready to go live again, seven days of live, interactive support and encouragement in elevate@joyfuldvm.com slash elevate. Get registered. I’ll be sending you all the details. It’s gonna be a lot of fun.
We had a blast when we did this last fall, so I’m bringing it back. We’re doing it again here in the middle of the month. So I hope that you’ll consider joining us there. And as always, stay well. Don’t keep prioritizing yourself. Your wellbeing is important. Remember, there’s only one you in this world. We need you here.
Nothing is wrong with you. This is your journey and everything can get better as soon as we simply decide to accept the possibility that it can be. So. All right, my friends. Have a beautiful week. I’ll see you next time. Bye for now.