Mental Health in Veterinary Medicine: A Conversation About Personal Agency and Boundary Setting with Dr. Jen Brandt
This episode begins a three-part series on mental health in veterinary medicine on the Queues du laboratoire podcast, hosted by Brad Ryan (MSC, DVM, MPH), Senior Professional Services Veterinarian at Antech, in conversation with Jen Brandt (LISW-S, PhD), Director of Member Wellbeing Initiatives at the AVMA.
The conversation centers on boundaries, personal agency, and how small, intentional shifts can support wellbeing—not just individually, but across teams and practices.
You can listen to the full conversation here.
Starting with Clarity: What Do We Mean by “Boundaries”?
Dr. Brad: «Let’s start by clearing up any misconceptions. When we talk about boundaries, what are we really referring to?”
Dr. Jen: One of the most helpful things to know about boundaries is that they are something we have control over. Many of us think we’re setting boundaries, when in reality, we’re making requests or demands, and that confusion is very common.
At its simplest, a boundary is a personal commitment to yourself, sometimes communicated to others and sometimes not, about what you will or will not do in a given situation.
For example, if someone asks you to take on additional responsibilities, that boundary may sound like:
- “Yes.”
- “Yes. I will take on the additional work for the next two weeks.”
- “No. I cannot take on additional work without changing my current responsibilities.”
- “No.”
Where things get muddy is when boundaries are confused with requests or demands. For example:
- “Please don’t yell at me” is a request.
- “You need to stop yelling at me!” is a demand.
Requests and demands depend on the other person’s response. The person may comply. But if they don’t, then what? Repeating the same requests over and over isn’t healthy for the relationship—and rarely effective. Boundaries involve using your personal agency to change how toi respond to or behave in an interaction, regardless of how the other person chooses to respond.
For example: “If you continue to yell at me, I will walk away from this conversation.”
It’s important to recognize that boundary setting is not about trying to control someone else. In fact, what may surprise many people is that healthy boundaries involve accepting that you cannot control other people or outcomes. Instead, boundaries are about being clear with yourself about your own values and capacities, honoring those in ways that protect your health and wellbeing.
Why Boundaries Can Feel So Difficult
Dr. Brad: “Why do you think boundaries are so hard for so many people?”
Dr. Jen: For most of us, it makes complete sense that boundaries feel challenging—because we weren’t taught how to have them.
Many people grew up learning, often very subtly, that other people’s comfort mattered more than their own. A familiar example is a child being admonished for not wanting to hug someone because the other person might feel hurt.
The underlying message becomes:
- Your discomfort is less important than someone else’s feelings.
- It’s your job to keep others comfortable.
That early messaging sticks with us. When people begin setting boundaries—especially in relationships where they’ve historically been very accommodating—they may hear comments like:
- “You’ve changed.” — Often reflecting discomfort with no longer being put first.
- “You’re not as caring as you used to be.” — Often reflecting frustration with hearing “no” more often.
- “You’re being selfish.” — Often reflecting that a boundary is getting in the way of someone else’s expectations.
These comments aren’t always meant to cause harm. More often, they signal discomfort with a shift in a familiar dynamic. Recognizing this can help people see attempts to guilt or pressure for what they are—not signs that a boundary is wrong, but evidence that old patterns are changing.
Understanding Boundary Patterns Without Judgment
Dr. Brad: “Can you talk about different boundary patterns and how they show up?”
Dr. Jen: Boundary patterns are often described as rigid, permeable, or adaptable—and it’s important not to label these as simply “good” or “bad.” Context matters.
A rigid boundary might look like never letting anyone get close to you, out of fear of being hurt. However, this can create other kinds of harm by increasing one’s isolation over time. A rigid boundary could also look like never sharing sensitive personal information with strangers, which is generally protective and beneficial.
Permeable boundaries can show up as always saying yes or putting others first, even when doing so comes at a cost. They can also look like being open to feedback or allowing outside perspectives to inform your thinking.
What we tend to aim for are adaptable boundaries. These have structure, and also flexibility when appropriate. Think of it like having several different gates of varying sizes and security levels that you can access and knowing which one to use depending on the situation at hand.
Internal signals that our boundaries need attention often appear as resentment, exhaustion, or that familiar thought: “I can’t believe I put myself in this again.”
These thoughts and feelings aren’t failure. They’re information.
Personal Agency as a Foundation for Wellbeing
Dr. Brad: “Personal agency is the thread that seems to run through so many wellbeing conversations. Because we can’t control another person’s behavior. What we can control is our response to what’s going on around us, and how we choose to show up. Would you agree?”
Absolutely. Many of us have experienced hoping that a situation—or another person—would change. Sometimes that change does happen, (because the other person chooses to change, not because we begged or pleaded.) Often, though, change does not occur in the way that we want. And we find ourselves responding by engaging in the same patterns over and over again.
Your wellbeing becomes more stable when it’s rooted in your values, your capacity, and what feels safe and sustainable to toi—rather than in the choices or behaviors of others.
When decisions are guided by those anchors—rather than obligation or pressure—it creates more predictability and less emotional wear and tear. Not just for you, but for the people around you as well.
Practical Steps for Setting Boundaries
Dr. Brad: “What are some steps people can take, individually and as a team, to start setting boundaries?”
Dr. Jen: On an individual level, it really begins with awareness. Paying attention to moments when you feel frustrated, overwhelmed, or resentful can be especially helpful. You might ask yourself: What’s consistent about these situations? What patterns keep showing up?
Those emotional cues often offer useful information about where your boundaries may be getting strained.
From there, you can start to consider what a boundary might look or sound like in that situation. It can be helpful to begin with a lower-risk scenario before moving into more challenging ones.
For example, if you have a friend who tends to call during dinner every night, you might say, “In the future, I am not taking calls between 6:00 and 7:30 p.m. That’s our family mealtime.” Or you might simply mute your phone during that time and follow through on not answering it.
If a client raises additional, non-urgent concerns during a technician-only appointment, a boundary might sound like, “I want to make sure those questions get the time they deserve. Today’s visit is scheduled just for the nail trim, and I’m unable to go through everything today. I’ll help set up a separate appointment with the veterinarian so those concerns can be addressed properly.”
These kinds of boundary often happen in the moment, through clear action and follow-through, rather than through advance notice or a formal announcement. Boundaries are ultimately less about what you explain ahead of time and more about what you consistently do in real time. When you’re clear with yourself and follow through, you’re not asking for permission—you’re practicing alignment with your role, your time, and your capacity
At the team level, identifying a shared, manageable pain point gives teams an opportunity to practice having these conversations together—building clarity, trust, and confidence that can later be applied to more complex issues. For example, a team might notice ongoing frustration around last-minute schedule changes or unclear expectations about who stays late when appointments run over. Naming that pattern and agreeing on a consistent approach—such as how late the team will stay or how those decisions are made—allows everyone to practice setting and respecting shared boundaries.
Dr. Brad: “Do you think some veterinarians struggle to connect the dots between a lack of boundary setting and the slow, progressive burnout that can eventually lead to shutting down or leaving practice?”
Dr. Jen: Yes—and part of that struggle is that burnout doesn’t usually show up as one clear breaking point. It develops gradually, shaped by repeated interactions between people and the systems they’re working within. It can be hard to see how those day-to-day patterns contribute to what eventually feels overwhelming.
In many workplaces, the volume of requests, expectations, and informal “asks” becomes normalized. When that happens, people may spend a lot of time hoping the system itself will ease up—more staffing, fewer demands, clearer priorities—without realizing there may also be small but meaningful ways to respond differently within those same conditions.
What’s especially hard is that burnout often does feel like it’s happening to us—because in many ways, it is. Workplaces, expectations, staffing models, and cultural norms all shape how much is asked of people and how often. Those external pressures are real, and they matter.
At the same time, when boundaries aren’t named or supported, people can end up responding to those pressures in ways that slowly become unsustainable. Not because they’re doing something wrong, but because they were never taught how to recognize or interrupt those patterns—or supported or given permission to do so—within the systems they’re working in.
It’s very common for that interaction—between the demands of the environment and our own responses within it—to go unexamined. Noticing it isn’t about blame or self-criticism. It’s about identifying the parts of the system–person relationship that are within reach and realizing there may be different ways forward that don’t require waiting for everything else to change first.
