Episode 214 | Feeling Stressed? Get the eff off social media!

In this episode, Dr. Cari Wise discusses the profound effects of social media on mental wellbeing. The conversation centers on the importance of self-reflection regarding social media habits, encouraging listeners to evaluate the types of content that capture their attention and the emotional responses these provoke.

Social media platforms often lead users into negative emotional states. Many individuals find themselves interacting with posts that elicit feelings of anger, judgment, or frustration, rather than those that inspire or uplift. This pattern creates a cycle of defensiveness and negativity.

Dr. Wise identifies a troubling trend within many veterinary social media groups, describing them as toxic environments marked by judgmental attitudes and criticism of colleagues’ medical decisions and case management. This retrospective judgment often occurs under circumstances where individuals are critiqued for choices made under pressure and with limited information. Such behavior cultivates a culture of blame and division within the veterinary community.

Key Takeways:

  1. The episode addresses the negative impact of social media on wellbeing in the veterinary field.
  2. Social media often fosters negative emotions like anger and frustration instead of positivity.
  3. The culture of client shaming is discussed, where professionals blame clients for rejecting recommended services, worsened by undercharging.
  4. Listeners are advised to unfollow or snooze negative social media accounts to improve emotional wellbeing.
  5. The episode emphasizes self-awareness regarding social media’s influence on personal and professional life.

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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’re a veterinary professional looking to up level 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 back to the Joyful DVM Podcast. Today we’re going to be spending some time talking about something that has a major influence on your well being.

And I’m going to dive really deep into it to show you what you might not even be noticing. And that is social media. So whether you are spending time on Facebook, on Instagram, on TikTok, wherever you’re spending your time on a social media platform, it is absolutely having an impact on your life. So let’s take a look. Consider what is it that sucks you in on social media?

So when you’re sitting there and you’re scrolling on your device, what halts your scroll? What type of stories is it that you’re stopping to look at? How often are those stories ones of inspiration, or a piece of information that fuels your soul, or a meme that brings you peace? Be truthful. Quite honestly, I’m sure you’re going to find that that’s not very often what’s stopping you. It’s more likely that you’re spending time looking at posts of acquaintances or people that you don’t even know, and then you’re feeling angry or judgy or frustrated over what you’re reading.

Those tend to be the things that stop the scroll, the things that kind of ignite us in a defensive or angry or frustrated kind of energy. So then we have to look at how often are we feeling offended or defensive over what has been posted? How often do we jump to the end of the comments and then go right into a rant on a post that maybe the person who posted it isn’t somebody that you even know?

Have you done that? So you’re scrolling in your social media, you come across something that ignites anger or frustration or judgment, and you jump right in the comments to make your opinion known. And you may not even know that person. And how often do you share the injustice of what you’ve seen on social media with your own friends and family during conversations later in the day? This one’s a big one.

We’ll talk about something that we saw on social, and it’s often the thing that we are sharing is not something warm and fuzzy and bright and cheerful. It’s something that has frustrated us or made us angry or upset us. That’s what we’re sharing and reinforcing. So what we probably don’t even realize is that in doing that, we are giving away our most precious assets, that is our time and our energy.

So the time that we spend on social engaging in content that does not actually add to our well being is giving away our time and our energy to things outside of us that actually we probably don’t even value. And here’s a big truth bomb. When it comes to social media groups, especially the veterinary kind, most of those groups are pretty darn toxic. So what happens inside of those groups?

Why am I calling most veterinary groups toxic? Well, it’s because of the behaviors inside of the groups themselves. Inside of those groups, there tends to be a lot of attacking each other’s medical choices and case management. And we’re completely forgetting that we’re all just doing the best that we can, right? In sharing some case or some situation that we’ve encountered, we’re doing the best that we can. We’ve made the best decisions that we can in the moments with the information and the resources that we have available.

But after the fact, it’s always easier to judge what other people did and to decide what they should have done instead. What we’re not even realizing is those judgments that we place on the way that a case is managed or a medical choice that a colleague made, those judgments are being made after the fact. And we also still don’t have any way of predicting what would happen next had that person chose differently.

We don’t have the power to actually predict anything. But that doesn’t seem to stop many of us from jumping in and attacking each other. When somebody’s sharing about a case or sharing about a situation at work, we jump in in judgment. We attack what they did. We have, we share our very strong opinions on how they should have done something different to avoid it. And that actually doesn’t do anything to help the colleague who posted in the first place.

Inside of these veterinary groups, we often criticize and ostracize each other over our choice of employment. That’s another way that we’re creating divides within our profession. Using this social media tool, we start to jump in. And if we have very strong opinions about things like relief vets or corporate practices, we dive right into every single post that it talks about one of those things and we post in there our grievances about those.

It’s not uncommon for there to be a Bit of a rant going on about how relief workers charge too much. And wouldn’t it be nice if I could charge that much or if I made that much by just working a few days a week? Maybe there’s something being posted that says, well, I know not maybe for sure. I’ve seen posts about, they make more than I do, they make more than I pay my associates.

And so there is this frustration that comes in the discussions around our colleagues who have chosen to be independent contractors. Those frustrations come out as quite honestly a reflection of our own money fears and our own failure to really pay ourselves and set our own boundaries in a way that we look at our colleagues who are doing independent contracting or relief work. And that comes from envy, right?

We’re looking at what they’re doing, and we want to have that kind of freedom, we want to have that kind of income, and yet we are not willing to make the choices within our own practices to earn that kind of money or to create that kind of time freedom. It’s much easier to just say it’s not possible, to say it’s too hard. There’s just not enough when we are practice owners, and to instead take those frustrations and throw them at our colleagues who have chosen a different style of veterinary practice.

If we could gang up on relief vets, somehow that makes us feel better. The same thing happens toward corporate practices. Those of us who have chosen to work in the corporate profession. There’s an entire subculture of veterinarians and other veterinary professionals who are very anti corporate. Notice that it’s creating a dividend. Within that divide, there is this belief that one is better than the other, that private is better than corporate.

And within that is this belief that corporate practice, just the existence of it, is killing veterinary medicine. As long as we look at it through that perspective, we will feel nothing but fear and frustration and judgment toward anyone, including clients who utilize those types of services. When practice owners have a hard time hiring staff and keeping associates, it’s really easy to then blame that on corporate practice. Well, they pay enough.

Like, they pay more. They can pay more than I can. I can’t pay my associates that much. I can’t give my associates that much time off. I can’t give them those benefits. And I hear you. Let me just be real, really clear. I hear where you’re coming from, and I understand that that feels really, really true. But the way that you can actually pay your associates more, and when I say associates, I mean your veterinarians and your veterinary technicians, the way that you can pay them more and you can provide them more benefits is to start charging what your services are worth.

Oftentimes people in private practice, owners in private practice are not charging adequately for your services. Then they justify that by this belief system that the people in your area can’t afford to pay those kinds of services, those kinds of fees for veterinary services. And this just perpetuates this trap of hyper responsibility. Because if you’re believing that where you live, people cannot afford veterinary care at the level that you would need to charge to be able to pay your staff well and yourself quite honestly, then you are going to stay stuck in the cycle of undercharging.

Along with that, you’re going to build resentment toward your clients, toward your profession, and definitely toward anyone who is making more money than you are in veterinary medicine. Now, this all gets tied back to another sense of hyper responsibility, which is if I don’t do it this way, if I don’t charge these lower prices, then these pets are not going to get help and then they are going to suffer and you’re taking on the responsibility for the care of the patient, which is actually not your responsibility.

So just hear me for a second here. Whether or not a pet receives the medical care that it needs is not the responsibility of the veterinary professional. That is the responsibility of the pet owner. As veterinary professionals, you are in a business of providing veterinary services for a fee. That’s how this works. Because we are not a subsidized. Subsidized. Subsidized industry. There is a cash flow that has to happen in order to be able to provide these services.

If we are so caught up in our own money stories that we do not charge adequately for those services, then we will not have the cash flow needed to be able to keep up with pay across the board. And that’s something that we are definitely seeing. And we are blaming it on corporate without taking any ownership over our own hesitancy and resistance to raising prices for what we do.

There is lots of opportunity to work on our own stuff, if you will, to raise our prices. To look at that, everything in the world has gone up in price. And it’s not only services, but it is the cost of goods. And if you aren’t raising your prices, then you are making less money in profit. Because what the. To do what you need to do. So to provide the services that you are providing is costing you more money now than it cost you a year ago.

I guarantee you that it is. And if you have not adjusted your prices, then you are losing money. Your profit margin is shrinking. If you are afraid to raise your prices because you’re afraid that nobody will come to see you, that is an area that you really need to spend some time exploring. Because we always just serve the willing. You provide a service for a fee and then the client decides whether or not they’re going to come.

If you then decide that they’re not coming because of your fees, or you can’t help animals because you charge too much, that is your own money story there, that is not based in fact. And it’s much easier to be mad about the whole thing. And to blame corporate or to blame relief vets, or to blame some other outside thing for the reason why you can’t charge more than it is to do the internal work, to believe in your own value and charge in accordance to that value.

I know it’s scary whenever we talk about money, it’s super scary. I know that. But I also know that if you are going to create and maintain a sustainable practice in veterinary medicine, then you have to charge adequately for your services. And businesses that are doing that right now are able to attract the veterinarians and the veterinary technicians, so the staff that they need to be sustainable. We are no longer in a period of time in our profession where people will just come no matter what we pay.

So take a second and recognize that if this is you, there’s some opportunity there for you. And notice that if you spend a lot of time on social media complaining about these very things, that that is just a distraction to actually addressing the problems yourself. We aren’t going to fix veterinary medicine by getting rid of relief work vets and relief technicians, or by getting rid of corporate medicine.

Veterinary medicine gets fixed. It becomes a sustainable career field. One individual decision at a time, and that depends is very dependent on how we run our individual private practices. And it is different today than it was 20 years ago. Trying to run a practice today like a practice was run back in 2000 is not going to move you forward. It requires us to clean up our money story, to get really solid in what we value, to feel very confident about our services and to charge accordingly.

And to let people say no. When people say no to your services, that is not them saying no to you. That’s not them saying you are a bad person. It’s just not the right fit for them. This leads us into a perpetual culture of client shaming. So whenever we then have these things that we recommend to clients, especially if we’re really undercharging in a comparative kind of standpoint.

And then those clients say no to our services. They didn’t say no to our heartworm test, they say no to a fecal, they said no to a vaccination. We start to get very resentful toward the clients themselves. We start to shame them and say that they aren’t taking good care of their pets, that they should be doing it differently. Notice that we always have an opinion about what other people should do, whether they’re our colleagues or our clients, we always have an opinion.

But this culture of client shaming really tends to be exacerbated when we’re also undercharging. Because if we already believe that we are sacrificing our income to keep prices affordable and then those prices still aren’t taken advantage of, meaning the clients aren’t saying yes to the things that you recommend, then resentment is pretty normal. So how about this? So instead of getting stuck and trying to make things affordable for your clients, run your business as a business.

Charge what you need to charge to make your profit margin what it needs to be to keep the business sustainable, to keep employees employed and let the clients decide whether or not they are a right fit for you. Take, let go of the responsibility of the yes because it was never yours in the first place. All of these stressors that we’re under, they really fuel workplace toxicity and they encourage these coping mechanisms of complaining and blaming which we are really good at in veterinary medicine.

And this is where social media really adds fuel to the fire. Because if we are already complaining and blaming and then we can jump into a social media group and we can complain and blame and then people are giving a thumbs up on our post and they’re adding their own grievances to our posts. That feels super powerful and it feels like we’re right. But my friends, it’s doing nothing but killing your well being.

Because complaining and blaming about all the bad things in veterinary medicine is doing nothing to change them. But it absolutely is dropping your net emotional state and making you then ineffective. When we feed scarcity and fear, we just continue to lower our well being. And these social media groups do this all the time. They feed our scarcity and fear. They build on the very things that we are the most uncomfortable about and they give us more things to be angry about and they tell us who to blame for our plight, if you will, but they give you zero alternatives to overcoming these things or showing you how to thrive despite them.

There’s a lot of stuff going on in the world right now. There’s a lot of stuff going on in veterinary medicine. And quite honestly, the stuff in veterinary medicine isn’t really all that different than the stuff that’s been going on for generations. But we just have these platforms now to where we can, en masse, do the complaining and blaming, which then fuels anger and frustration, which feels powerful and makes it all feel very true and very limiting when the reality is it’s only as limiting as we believe it to be.

Nobody tells you that in these groups. Nobody’s offering you that truthful perspective. Here’s why. The people in veterinary medicine and in the world in general who are feeling happy and balanced in their lives, they’re not spending their time on social media. They’re not getting stuck by the scroll. They’re not getting sucked into these groups that are full of toxicity and drama. Instead, they’re out there living their lives.

They’re pursuing their hobbies, they’re enjoying their relationships, they’re working toward their personal goals. They’re not giving their energy and their power and their time away to things that they will never change. So why do we keep doing it? Why is it that we stop the scroll on these things that ignite an anger within us? But we do that because anger feels more powerful than fear. Anger feels more powerful than hopelessness, and it feels more powerful than defeat.

So if we can be angry, at least we’re feeling something. But that something doesn’t move us forward. It may help us to feel alive. And when we are together, then in anger, it helps us to feel included. And in that togetherness, we can feel justified. But the sad truth is that the actions and the behaviors that are driven by that anger make us super ineffective. They don’t actually create what we want in our lives.

And more so, we tend to hurt others along the way. So what do we do about this? What do we do now that we can start to recognize when we’re stopping the scroll on the catastrophic? As opposed to putting our focus into the things that lift us up, that inspire us, that bring us joy. Well, I’ve got a few tips for you. Number one, I want you to unfollow every single person and group that brings you down.

Or at the very least, hit that snooze for 30 days option on your social media. Do this as a test. So you’re on your scroll. You know you’re gonna be on there anyway. You’re going through the scroll. If you, as soon as you hit something, you see something that makes you stop the scroll, that Makes you feel, ugh. Then you go to whatever that account is and you either unfollow it or you snooze it for 30 days.

And for those of you who don’t really understand, especially on the Facebook side, how this works, if you, if it’s a friend, so it’s like a personal profile, a friend, a family member, even, that their stuff just makes you feel icky, you can unfollow them without unfriending them. So they can still be your friends, which means you can go to their account intentionally and look at what they’ve posted.

But if you unfollow them, then the stuff they post won’t automatically get offered to you in your feed. That’s called unfollowing. If you snooze for 30 days, then it stops that stuff from being in your feed for 30 days and then all of a sudden it’s going to come back. Now, I really like this snooze for 30 days idea because it can show you can be a bit of a test and an experiment to show you how removing the stuff from your feed has an impact.

And you’ll notice it most in the contrast when it pops back in 30 days later. So if you spend a little bit of time, go through, unfollow, or at the very least, snooze for 30 days, everything that makes you feel kind of ick or frustrated or angry when you see it in your social feed, then just see how you feel over the next few weeks and then notice how you feel when those things start popping back into your awareness.

At that point, you can make a more permanent decision. You can snooze them again for 30 days or you can unfollow them. I strongly encourage you to get this stuff out from in front of you. I don’t care if it’s your friends and family, because they’re never going to know. So if you unfollow a friend or family member, they’re not going to know that. If you unfriend a friend or family member, they’re also not going to know that they’re not going to get some notification that says, you know that you unfriended your mom.

Like, that’s just not going to happen. That’s not how it works. Same thing over on the IG side. Like, you don’t get notified when specific people unfollow you. That’s not how that works. So just take a nice big deep breath and decide whether or not you want that drama in front of you. All the time because it is impacting you. Even, even if you don’t think that it is, just by the state of reading it, you’re embodying it.

You’re having an emotional response to it. We’ve already identified. It’s not happy, cheerful, sunshine and roses. It’s more frustration, anger, annoyance, defensiveness that is pulling your entire well being down. I want you to also unfollow any groups that are bringing on the same thing. And my friends in veterinary medicine, that is going to be almost every single one of them. Now, some of you are going to be like, if I’m not in that group, then I’m going to miss some important piece of information.

No, you’re not. We practice veterinary medicine for years with no social media at all. You’re not going to miss anything significant by not being in a social media group. You’re certainly not going to miss something you didn’t even know about that’s going to impact your practice of veterinary medicine. But it’s going to give you a lot of stuff to be afraid of. And I know some of you, especially the newer grads out there, you’re in these social media groups, especially when they’re species dependent and you’re looking at all the stuff that gets posted and you’re beating yourself up for not already knowing all these little nuanced things.

My friends, you already are qualified. You passed the dang boards. You are qualified to do your job. Do your job. Let the experience just unfold authentically and naturally as it’s supposed to. Don’t overstimulate yourself with all these what ifs because it’s not going to be helpful. The vast majority of veterinary social media groups are toxic. Unfollow them. How do you know if they’re. And I’m not saying that the.

I want to take one second here that I’m not saying that the goal or the intent behind creating those groups was toxic. That’s not what I’m saying. But the way that they are utilized as forums for complaining, blaming and attack of each other and of clients does nothing to help us individually or our profession as a whole. Do yourself a favor. Unfollow. Snooze for 30 days and see how your overall perspective and demeanor changes.

Also unfollow our mute news outlets. The media makes its living. The whole business of media is to capture your attention, to get more eyes on the content. Fear sells. So be very aware of where you’re getting your news information. Pick some neutral sources, go in just as often as you think you need to. But you don’t need to know every single little thing that happens. You really don’t.

And if it’s creating frustration and fear, I’m going to give you permission to just unfollow that stuff, give yourself a break from it, and see how much better you feel. My rule is, if it’s not fun, don’t follow it. And I know that that sounds very optimistic, and optimism is something that I very highly value. But what I also know is that the things that scare us in this world are not the things that are happening in this moment.

It’s the what if of what might happen in the future. And the things that we afraid that might happen are never things that we control anyway. So you get to decide for you how much time you’re going to spend in fear and anxiety over things you can’t control over. Fear and anxiety over the what ifs of the future and over the regrets of the past, over the decisions of other people, over the behaviors of other people.

So whether it was within your own veterinary hospitals, whether it is the way that a colleague is choosing to interact with their own career, who they’re choosing to work for, how they’re choosing to make their money, whether it has to do with a client and the decisions that they’re making for their pets, what they’re saying yes to in your practice, what they’re saying no to, whether it is the profession as a whole and the trends as far as practice ownership, whether it is the world as a whole and the trends of things that are going on there.

I want you to notice and to be really hyper aware of how much social media is influencing your. Your experience of all of it. Give yourself a break for 30 days and notice how your perspective on your entire life is going to improve. All right, my friends, I hope this episode has helped. I’ll see you soon. Bye for now.

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