In this episode, Dr. Cari Wise poses the thought-provoking question, “Who are you mad at?” This inquiry serves as a catalyst for listeners to introspect on their feelings of frustration and anger, emotions that many may not consciously recognize they are harboring. Dr. Wise encourages her audience to reflect on whether they frequently experience irritation at work or find themselves rehashing negative interactions at home, especially concerning clients or coworkers.
Dr. Wise underscores the significance of identifying the root causes of anger and frustration, as these emotions can lead to a relinquishing of personal power. For example, if a veterinary professional feels anger towards a client due to inappropriate behavior during an appointment, carrying that anger throughout the day can diminish their effectiveness in their role. Since individuals cannot control the actions of others, holding onto anger becomes counterproductive. Instead, Dr. Wise advocates for focusing on personal responses to such situations, emphasizing that individuals have control over their reactions.
Dr. Wise elaborates on how anger can manifest in body language and tone, impacting interactions with clients and colleagues. She urges listeners to scrutinize their behaviors and conversations, particularly if they find themselves frequently venting about work-related issues. Such behavior often indicates unresolved anger that requires attention.
Key Takeaways:
- Many veterinarians & veterinary technicians may not recognize their anger, which can manifest as frustration with clients, coworkers, or work conditions.
- Anger often arises from unmet expectations and the belief that situations should differ from the reality they are experiencing.
- The behaviors that stem from anger and frustration can create a toxic work environment, negatively affecting client and colleague interactions.
- Accepting current realities fosters a constructive approach to problem-solving and personal empowerment.
- Listeners are urged to reflect on their anger and shift focus from blame to personal agency and positive action.
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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 explore a simple question.
Who are you mad at? Now you may think, well, you know what, Cari, I’m not actually mad at anybody, but I’m going to ask you to consider that maybe that’s not true. Are you frustrated? Do you find yourself getting aggravated throughout the day at work? If so, why at home? Are you rehashing things that happen throughout the day? And as you do that, you’re not rehashing like positive, happy stories, but instead you’re ranting a little bit about maybe clients or maybe co workers.
If so, you’re probably carrying around some anger. And it’s important that we start to consider and be curious about where that anger is coming from, who is it directed toward and what’s really going on. So as I’ve asked you these questions, if you recognize that you actually are really frustrated about something or with somebody, then what are those things and who are those people? Because what’s happening actually is that you’re giving your power away to somebody else.
Now let me explain. If you’re really angry at a client for the way that they treated you in an exam room, and then you carry that frustration and anger throughout the day with you, and then it goes home with you at night, and then you share it with your friends and family and maybe you post it in a social media group, who wins? It’s not you. That anger that you’re carrying may be justified, right?
So what I mean by that is it’s very possible that a client said something that was completely inappropriate to you when in a, when you were with them in an exam room. But how are you going to fix that now? You’re not, because you’re never going to control the client. So we can be aware that somebody says or does something that’s completely inappropriate and we can feel angry or frustrated about that.
But hanging onto that anger and frustration only makes us ineffective because there is no solution for the thing that happened. You’re never going to control client behavior. When you, though, hang on to the anger and frustration that you experience in that client interaction and you carry that around with you, that is Something that you do control. And as long as you hold on to all of that, then you have given your power and the determination of your well being to that client who created that initial situation in the first place.
This is how we give our power away. It’s okay to be angry or frustrated about what somebody does, but you get to decide how long you stay there. And the more quickly that you can drop that anger and frustration and just step back into the truth, which is that you will never control what another person does. The sooner you get your power back, the sooner you get your peace back.
And you’re able then to shift back into a state of well being that is actually more beneficial for you. But we don’t do that. As humans, we spend so much of our time being mad about all kinds of things. In veterinary medicine, another thing that we’re often angry about is the schedule. Right? We’re mad about the schedule. We’re mad that there are double bookings. We’re mad that there are appointments that have gotten squeezed in on top of other appointments.
We’re mad because the receptionist booked a sick appointment for a 15 minute vaccine appointment slot. We’re mad, we’re mad, we’re mad, we’re mad. We’re mad and we’re mad about. And these things, the appointments, the receptionist, we don’t control those. We don’t control any of that. Can we have a conversation and request that things get moved? Absolutely, we can and we should. If we really think something needs to be adjusted, then we need to have a conversation from a calm standpoint so that we can educate our team members on how to appropriately schedule appointments.
That’s the professional way to handle this. But most of us do not address these things in a professional manner. Instead, we look at that appointment schedule and we conclude that either people don’t know how to do their job, which makes us feel frustrated, or that they’re doing it intentionally to us, that they are trying to screw us over by doing this. And when we are in either one of those two frames of mind, then we are going to feel angry and frustrated and then we are going to ruin our own days by feeling angry and frustrated.
We completely, from that point have no ability to make a positive impact on making a change to the schedule because we aren’t in the headspace to have a conversation that’s going to be received well. So instead we just accept it. We just, we don’t accept it. We deal with it through resentment and hang on to our anger and our frustration like a badge of Honor. And we go through our entire day from that perspective.
And so every little thing that happens from there on that’s unexpected or a mistake just adds on to our anger and frustration. And so the way that we show up with each other and with our clients and with the patients is negatively impacted. You’re not hiding your frustration and anger to the level that you think that you are. You might think you’re keeping it all inside, but I promise you that you’re not.
It’s showing up in your body language. It’s showing up in your tone of voice. It’s showing up in the way that you actually physically do things. It’s not good for you. So if you notice that you are frustrated and angry, you’ve got to get curious about what are you frustrated and angry about? And in the world right now, there’s a lot to be frustrated and angry about on all sides.
There’s lots of opportunity for us to look at what’s happening in the world and to believe that it should be different than it is. And it’s important for us to know this because whenever there is this gap between expectation and reality. Meaning. Meaning whenever there is a gap or a difference between what is happening and what we believe should be happening, there is opportunity for frustration and anger.
As we then engage with our world through frustration and anger, we just keep creating more of a divide within it. This is the truth for a veterinary practice, a family, a community, a country, the whole entire world. When we engage with each other from frustration and anger, we don’t move closer toward what we want because we cannot create a positive outcome from a negative emotional state. When we dial this back to what happens within our veterinary practices, we can see where this whole concept of toxicity comes into play.
It’s because we’ve just got a bunch of humans who are trying to interact with each other in the confines of a veterinary practice, when the net emotional state of the entire practice is in the shitter, right? Negative anger, frustration. When we’re down in that place, we will not interact with each other with kindness and compassion and professionalism. It’s also almost impossible to do so. And so what’s happening is we have a bunch of humans who are walking around all stressed out all the time, trying to serve clients and treat patients, but fighting with each other either overtly or covertly through the entire day.
And so we start to then stack on these beliefs that if they would just get the scheduling right, if the clients would just show up on time, if Susie would just be faster at whatever Thing it is that you’re wanting Susie to be faster at. If these things would happen, then my day would be better. We grab onto these little things and we make them the reason that we are frustrated and angry.
Worse, we might pick a person in the clinic that becomes the scapegoat that they are the reason that everything is going bad. You know, pick a technician, pick an assistant, pick a receptionist. It happens all the time that we start to stack on this belief that that one person is the whole problem and that if they weren’t there, then we wouldn’t experience this anymore. And so eventually we get rid of that person, but yet we then still end up experiencing the same thing over and over again.
And somebody else just slides into the position of being the scapegoat. So who are you mad at? What are you mad about? Because what I really want you to understand here is that when you identify a person or a situation that you are mad about, then you’re probably believing that the solution is to fix the behaviors of that person or the situation itself as a path to not being mad.
That is never going to work because it has never been the person or the situation that’s creating anger in the first place. This is key, my friends. Anger doesn’t come from what people do. Anger doesn’t come from the situations around us. Anger doesn’t come from too many appointments on the schedule. Anger doesn’t come from three staff members calling out for work. Anger doesn’t come from a client who shows up 30 minutes late and still wants to be seen.
Anger is not created by any of those things. Anger is created from our belief that those things shouldn’t be happening. And as long as we stay focused on what we believe should not be happening, anger is really our only option. I’m not saying that we should believe that those things should happen. What I’m offering you is the opportunity to consider that they are happening. They are happening. People are calling off from work.
Things are booked in a way that we didn’t want. Today on the schedule, clients are showing up late for appointments and asking to still be seen. Those things are happening. And because we can see that they are happening, we can let them be neutral and we can decide what we are going to do next. When we believe they shouldn’t be happening, we feel angry. When we believe we have to see them, we have to deal with it.
We feel resentful when we can say, okay, this is what’s happening today. What am I going to do now? We can feel more in control. We can feel more calm, we can make better decisions. So for that client that shows up 30 minute late, 30 minutes late and demands to be seen, we can decide do we want to still see them today? We can take out the have to’s.
Do I want to still see them today? Is there time in the schedule to see them and still provide a good experience for them and for everything else we have on our plate, that answer might be no. It’s okay to ask them to reschedule because they didn’t show up at their appointment time. And when they get mad about that, it’s okay for you not to feel offended. You are not required to feel offended by the behaviors of the people around you, whether they are your clients or anybody else within your veterinary practice.
When you feel offended, it’s because you’re believing that this is a personal attack on you. And it’s not. Their behavior is never about you. The appointments book that’s getting over scheduled, that’s also not about you. It’s unlikely that your receptionist staff is up there saying, I’m going to book on more appointments for Dr. Wise because I’m mad at her and so I’m going to screw her whole day by giving her more appointments.
That’s not what’s happening, my friends. What might be happening is that your receptionists are feeling pressure from the clients on the other end of the phone who are demanding that, that they get in. And because they haven’t been trained adequately on how to say no on how to move those appointments or to schedule those appointments at a different day, they’re giving into the pressure of the client on the other end of the phone.
And depending on who it is, who that client is, you may have some of those clients who you’ve got marked as a PIA client. Whenever they call, you just get them in because they’re always difficult to deal with. And so, you know, if you tell them no, they’re just going to get angrier. And so when they call you, your staff just. And everybody just kind of like walks on eggshells and does whatever they can not to set this client off.
And you’re completely missing that. That client makes up 90% of your headaches. You’re teaching them how to treat you. You’re teaching them that it’s okay to demand to be seen and then to get that demand. Why do you do that? From fear. Right? That’s the only fear is what keeps us doing that, fear of their retaliation. So we set a culture of responding to fear where the better thing to do is to disengage from that client altogether or to reset the expectations.
Now, somebody in leadership needs to step in and do that. And if they aren’t and these clients keep getting booked out of the schedule, don’t be mad at the receptionist if that’s what they’ve been taught to do. And it might not even be that traditional PIA client of yours. It might just be any client who gets frustrated on the phone that the receptionists are caving and setting an appointment time.
So when we see that things are getting scheduled in a way that actually doesn’t promote a healthy workflow, we need to get curious about that and find out why is it that they’re scheduling and this way, have we not trained them how to appropriately schedule appointments? I always start there. Have we not trained them the right way? If not, let’s go back and retrain them. Or are they giving into pressure, in which case we need to help them build the skills to say no to those clients and to move those clients to have those clients book it at a later time?
Again, this is actually a training opportunity. Not everybody’s going to know how to say no to a client who demands to be seen today. It all comes back to being driven by fear. So when we think about feeling angry, who we’re mad at, and we really are curious about the situation, so we notice that we are feeling frustrated and resentful and angry. A lot of the time, we want to get curious about that.
If we’re not even aware that we’re feeling frustrated and resentful and angry, then I want you to look at your behaviors. What are you doing? What are you talking about most of the time? Are you doing a lot of ranting at work? Are you ranting about clients and coworkers at home? Are you ranting about clients and coworkers and cases and the world? If you’re doing a lot of ranting and venting right now, then you’re angry about something.
What are you angry about? Who are you mad at? Because whatever you’re angry about and whoever you’re mad at, you’re giving your power to. Now, I’m not saying roll over and accept all the things that are happening at the clinic and at the world. That’s not what I’m saying at all. But what I’m saying is that until we can get it to a point that we can just accept what is, we cannot step into our power to take the actions to make the changes that we have the ability to make.
That’s the key Here. Because when you stay in anger and frustration, whatever action you take from that emotion isn’t going to be effective or sustainable. You’re not going to change behaviors and culture through anger. We change behaviors and culture through curiosity and compassion, seeking first to understand what’s happening so that we can then communicate effectively and make decisions that move us forward. This is on a small scale within our own organizations and on a broader scale within our communities and our entire lives.
We cannot make effective change from a place of anger. We must be curious, we must find compassion, and we must decide what is it that we do want to experience and what can we do to create that experience for ourselves. Hanging onto the anger feels powerful, my friends, especially when we are in a situation where there’s a lot of fear. And this is really important to know right now at this time in the world, because there are a lot of things that are creating fear for a lot of us.
I’m not even saying that that fear isn’t valid. But what I’m saying is that if we let fear drive our actions, it will drive us into anger. And from that point of anger, we become super ineffective. It’s okay to look around and not be happy about the way that things are, but staying in anger about the reality of what is happening right now doesn’t create a path forward for any of us.
Instead, we must be curious, we must be compassionate. We must be accepting of what is right now so that we can step into the power to change it. And don’t misunderstand what acceptance is. Acceptance is not condoning. Accepting something doesn’t mean that you agree with it, that you want it to be that way, that you are giving it permission to stay that way. That’s not what acceptance is.
Acceptance is simply acknowledging that, yes, right now, this is what is happening. And from that point, we can then become more curious. What do I want to happen next? What can I do to create that new outcome? Acceptance allows you to step back into your peace, to step back into neutrality, so that you are not stuck in fight or flight situations. This is so important for us every single day in veterinary medicine, because when we are engaged in frustration and anger and constant fight or flight, we are not doing ourselves any favors.
We’re getting through the day, but we’re probably like a bull in a china shop. We are interacting poorly with each other. We’re snapping at each other, we’re pointing fingers, we’re complaining, we’re blaming, we’re creating scapegoats. We’re identifying all these external variables. That are the reasons why we are unhappy in our jobs. And you do that enough, and you make enough forceful changes that aren’t actually creating results, you might eventually conclude that you’re not cut out to be in this job in the first place, or that other people aren’t.
And that’s likely not even true. The power to change your experience of any given day sets completely within yourself. There are going to be unexpected things that happen. There are going to be lots of opportunities to adjust the way that we do things and schedule things moving forward. But today is what it is. So are you going to look at today and stay focused on how today is not how you wanted it to be, which is going to ruin your day because you’re just going to feel frustrated and angry the whole time?
Or are you going to give yourself the gift of acceptance and acknowledge that today is not what I wanted it to be, but I still get to decide for myself what I do from here. Instead, can you allow yourself to sit in the truth that you can always do your best with the information and resources you have at any given moment? And when you show up from that just doing your best with what you’ve got, you create a more positive and beneficial experience, not only for yourself, but for your clients as well.
You take that idea and you move that into the rest of your life. That in every single situation, you can only do the best that you can given what is there in front of you. You will then create a more positive experience for yourself and those around you in the rest of your life as well. By shifting out of our focus on what we don’t want and into our focus of what is and what we do want, we change our entire emotional state in the moment.
As we do that, we also then change the actions that we take and the outcomes that we create for ourselves and for everybody else around us as well. So, my friends, who are you mad at? What are you mad about? That is the question that you want to consider as you go through this week. And as you start to identify all these external things that you’re blaming for the way your life is right now, I want you to consider that.
That those things can exist without them being the cause of your unhappiness. Because emotion is only ever created by what we believe. It is never created by the things that are happening around us. And so if you want to feel better day in and day out, the only thing you need to change is the story that you’re telling yourself. All right, my friends, have a beautiful week. I’LL see you soon.
Bye for now.