Knowledge Lab

Welcome back to Tails from the Lab, a veterinary podcast.

As you may have noticed, we’ve made some exciting changes around here. I am your new co host, Dr. Brad Ryan, senior Professional Services Veterinarian at Antech diagnostics.

And I’m Dr. Holly Brown, a clinical pathologist and Chief Veterinary Educator at Antech.

Together we’ll be discussing real patients and bring in expert guests to offer deeper insights into the laboratory diagnostics used to solve interesting and challenging cases.

Tales from the Lab is a production of Antech Diagnostics. The intent of this podcast is to provide education and guidance with the understanding that any diagnostic testing and treatment decisions are ultimately at the discretion of the attending veterinarian within the established veterinarian patient client relationship.

Our mental health podcast series is meant for educational and informational purposes only.

It is not meant to provide medical or mental health advice,

diagnosis or treatment. If you need mental health support, please reach out to a licensed professional or.

Crisis line Content Warning this episode contains discussions on mental health topics that may be sensitive to listeners. We encourage you to take care of your well being. If you need mental health support, please reach out to a licensed professional or call or text 988 in the United States or Canada.

Welcome back to another episode of Tales from the Lab. I am Brad Ryan, Senior Professional Services Veterinarian at Antech Diagnostics.

Hopefully you tuned in a few weeks ago for my conversation with Dr. Jen Brandt, who is AVMA Director of Member Wellbeing Initiatives.

She received her PhD in social work from the Ohio State University and she is,

as far as I’m concerned, the leading expert on all things mental health within veterinary medicine. She’s been working with veterinarians for her entire career. I met her as a vet student or when I was a vet student at the Ohio State University College of Veterinary Medicine over a decade ago,

and during that time she worked as Director of Student Services. So she has,

you know, been listening to the to the needs and mental health concerns of veterinary students and veterinarians for a very long time.

In our first episode we talked about the integral role of boundary setting as it pertains to mental health. And of course that is one of many subcategories that we could place under the topic that we’re going to discuss today,

which is self compassion and what that means,

what it what it doesn’t mean.

I think that,

you know, I certainly and what I’ve learned over the recent years attending your lectures, Dr. Brandt, is that I I was a lot or I was just off base in terms of what that meant.

I Thought self compassion was a yoga class or whatever it might be.

Just telling myself, I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, doggone it, people like me. But obviously it’s not it. Exactly right,

so let’s start there.

So what is self compassion? What is, why is this such an important foundational topic when we’re talking about mental health and veterinary medicine?

So when we think maybe more formally about self compassion, it’s the treating yourself with the same kindness and fairness and just maybe gentleness that we would offer a loved one.

I can come back in a minute and explain an exercise I do, but in gen terms I just cite, like, it’s just like being decent to yourself, you know, like just the basics of decency to yourself and not, you know, abusing yourself and using language that’s harmful to yourself.

Like, we’re all human and we really are all doing the best we can to get through life. And I think sometimes we can really beat ourselves up about that in the process.

So how,

how does that differ from other topics like self indulgence?

You also mentioned performance based self esteem. These, these are distinct, right? These are, these are not the same as self compassion. What do those look like? And why is it important that we know the difference?

Yeah, I would say self indulgence is more, you know, just giving myself whatever I want, you know, I want that I’m gonna get it right. It’s not the internal dialogue of, you know,

I’m a decent person. It would be more of the self compassion.

Self esteem is largely really based on outside of myself. So if I do something and get rewarded and I can feel really good about that, that can be contributing to self esteem.

But again, self compassion is just the, it’s the inside relationship that I have with me and how I treat myself. And um, we may go into it a little later, but I, I so often have heard, oh, well, but if I, you know, if I don’t beat myself, if I’m not hard on myself,

then I won’t perform or I’ll be lazy. And like, who, who says, like, who said that? Where did that come from? Because I, I don’t meet many people who, if they just don’t flagellate, you know, constantly, if they’re not berating themselves, that they just sit around and don’t do anything for society,

I’ve not met that person. But that, I think, you know, that’s one of the,

that we have behind this is why I have to be hard on myself. That’s, that’s what motivates me and keeps me going.

Like,

usually like self abuse means masochism. Yeah, exactly.

The exercise that I’ll share is I work, you know, with many people who are hard on themselves. And so I’ll have them look at an empty chair or a spot on a wall and I’ll say, I want in that chair or that place on the wall, I want you to envision somebody who you really care about.

And I add, you know, maybe younger than you or vulnerable, so that you.

A place of tenderness for that individual.

And then I say, I want you to imagine speaking to that loved one, that beloved person, the way you just did to yourself.

And you immediately see the reaction. And you know, and it’s often very verbal. I would never do that. I would never treat someone else like that. Like, that’s it right there.

Right? We should not including our own selves. And then usually there’s again a whole series of rationales. Okay, well, that’s different. I mean, with me,

I need, you know, I need to be hard on myself, but I would never do that with someone else. And so recognizing when we, when we see it happening to someone else, we,

we are horrified by it and we would not want that for anyone else. And, and then the goal is to start recognizing it’s the same kind of not good thing when we are aiming at our, at our own selves.

You and I have discussed this before.

It’s,

you know, it’s a profession that demands. Veterinary medicine is a profession that demands compassion.

And we are so often walking into an exam room and,

you know, dealing with, with people who are, who are, you know,

in very vulnerable states. And,

and there may be moments of I, I, I didn’t do enough or I haven’t done enough for my pet, whatever it may be.

And, you know,

relying on our professional development background and also just good instinct, right. And underlying humanity that’s there,

you know,

we offer that compassion up and we were able to give that to the client.

And then maybe 30 minutes later, we are being completely vicious in our internal dialogue with ourselves about any number of things that might be happening that day. Right.

Why is it so common in veterinary medicine? Or do you think it’s common for us not to be able to take that compassion that we’re giving outwardly and turn it back around and allow that to flood our own being?

So I would say I do believe it’s common in veterinary medicine, and I believe it’s common in the population.

I think most of us are trained or modeled. Of course, you’re supposed to be kind to others.

Yes. But what happens is again,

I do a lot of things based on family of origin. Let’s say, you know, you might have a parent who is raising you. Of course we’re, you know, we’re kind to others and do unto others.

But then you’ll hear the parent berate themselves, not the child,

but the parent, you know, you idiot. And you know you’re dumb or you should have done something else. And so the parent will be doing it. And so what the child takes in is that clearly there’s a space for this kind of language.

And so that you do unto others, but you don’t do unto you.

And so we see that kind of modeling and you know,

we’re ingrained that the customer is always right or you know, the client in this case. But we don’t often apply that to ourselves and we don’t necessarily apply it to our colleagues or those around us either.

It tends to be a one sided compassion.

Right.

And you’ve, in your, in your lectures on this topic you often mentioned Dr. Kristin Neff,

right? Who.

I don’t, I’m not going to try to give her a resume here, but I believe that, you know, she runs the Self compassion research lab. Is that that true?

Yes.

And she talks about, and I’ve, I looked into her work and she says that that self compassion has three elements. There’s the self kindness which I think we’ve, we’ve been sort of focused on here.

She also mentions this common humanity, recognizing that,

that, that most of us, you know, this is part of being a human right. That most of us have these, these feelings of self inadequacy.

And that by understanding that this is not a uniquely individual phenomenon that’s going on, that, that can help just that that mere acknowledgment can help cultivate self compassion.

But also this idea of, of mindfulness. And I think the most important part of that from my research is this idea that we’re not over identifying with the, the negative thought that’s happening.

That I am not the thought that I’m having about myself.

That, that it’s, that it’s a thought and I am separate from that.

And that’s a lot trickier, isn’t it?

For some people,

I think probably for all of us at some point, again, if we haven’t seen that one,

there is a kind of a brain bias that we have. It’s a negativity bias. And so I like to explain that the brain ultimately wants us to stay safe and so it is going to be very good at picking out problems.

More so than it’s going to be a wow, isn’t, you know, isn’t it pretty today? Or it’ll be like, you did this wrong and you did this wrong. Like we’re trying to avoid any bad outcomes.

So we’re, it’s really wired that way for us to see the negative.

And I also go back to early childhood development that, you know, we don’t understand really our place in the whole wide world or even really anything outside of us. So the only way we have to make sense of things is if something bad happens.

You combine that with the negativity bias, it must be me,

right? We don’t think about, we’re not thinking as a three year old, gosh, what are the contextual factors, factors that were going on, but like, it must be me. And then another explanation because I’m not lovable, I’m not worthy, I’m not good enough.

And so again, we go back to that early training. If we don’t learn another way, if we don’t learn about reframing or kind of reality checking,

then we get really, really good at the beating ourselves up.

All really in a goal to try to get control.

Like, we want control, we want consistency, and we want to be able to ensure that only good things happen.

And for many of us, we believe that path is if I just beat myself up enough basically to get myself to do the right thing, then maybe I can prevent anything else bad from happening.

So there’s a lot of complexity that goes behind this habit.

And,

and yet we know that,

that we, you know, I think, I think intuitively we, we have this idea that yes, we want to, we want to be the best veterinarians that we can be. We want to show up to work and we want to be the absolute best version of ourselves that we can be.

And a lot of that is,

you know, being the, the type A student and having the knowledge base, of course.

But then there’s this whole how we,

how we take care of ourselves so that we can, we can actually show up for other people and not be,

you know, a mess of a person.

I should probably say that in a nicer way, but, you know, I mean, I call myself a hot mess all the time. So that’s, that’s kind of the way I’m,

that’s the way I’m thinking.

I call myself sometimes a hot buttered mess. So I add in, you know, I add in some food product to the mix.

Yeah, I like that butter makes everything more palatable.

That’s, that’s right.

But yeah, I guess my point there is that,

you know, I,

I think that it’s important for those who are listening to understand that that lack of self compassion actually has been linked to like or not. Not the lack of, but the, the cultivation of self compassion actually makes you a better veterinarian.

Can you, can you expand on that in terms of what we know about decision making under stress and making sure that we don’t burn out and completely self destruct in some cases?

Absolutely. And I think about again,

that phrasing of I want to be the best at whatever it is, veterinary professional.

So we tend to think about it as this checklist of just always doing your best, trying your hardest, whatever, eliminating any mistakes. But rarely when you hear somebody say that is that I want to cultivate my compassion and my kindness toward myself and others and my.

Just that, you know, we’re not really talking about the emotional aspects. And the reality is when we’re self compassionate, then we get out of that binary of it’s all good or it’s all bad.

It’s a more balanced perspective. And when we have that more balanced perspective,

it does improve our decision making. Right. Because we’re not in the extremes anymore. Like we’re able to be present, we’re able to listen. There’s, we can hear the nuance, we can hear the complexity.

And so not only then does it help with decision making, again, it can contribute to more team trust. Like we’re more present authentically and like the example I gave you before.

Because I worked with lots of families over the years,

often a parent will say, but I was never judgmental of my child. But the child at some point will say, but you know, you were of yourself, I saw you looking in the mirror beating up yourself.

And the same thing is if that’s what we’re doing in the job, we might have a boss say, oh, it’s okay if you made a mistake.

We hear that, but what we see is people getting beat up for making mistakes or beating themselves up. And so we don’t ever believe that because we’re not seeing it really is okay,

that we can learn from that instead of having to beat yourself up. So it’s very complex when we think about self compassion because we think about it as only, well, you’re just being nice to yourself or this toxic positivity, you’re telling yourself you’re great when you maybe weren’t that great that day.

And it’s not that at all it is a realistic,

kind,

humane perspective of yourself. And then think about when you have that, how you can model that for others and kind of the contagion effect then that has on the people you’re around.

You know I just, I’m having flashbacks to vet school and you know when whenever an exam grade was posted,

you know, it’s just like an explosion went off and everybody’s getting on their phones and looking up their grade and I might be staring down a C, staring down at a C plus and I’ve got somebody in my ear behind me literally calling themselves an idiot or whatever word you want to fill in the blank over their A minus.

Right.

And, and, and that, and that idea of like, you know, they’re like that, that, that for them, like you said, they’re, they’re probably coming at that from like oh I could have, I could have done better.

I, I, I want to hold myself to a higher standard. The intention is not to create that contagion of self loathing or lack of self compassion. Right, but that’s what happens when we’re either verbally saying it or letting our non verbals express that lack of self compassion.

Inevitably people do compare themselves to each other.

Right,

Yeah, I was gonna say, you really have worded that brilliantly. That that isn’t the intent.

You know, we’ll assume that is not the intent. But that is the impact I think about. If somebody is looking at me as maybe a model and I make a mistake or do what I want to and I’m just an idiot or you know, gosh, I’m just gonna have to try harder or whatever.

Like they’re looking at that.

You know, sometimes we think but that’s my leader or that’s my model or that’s the person I was striving to be like and they hate themselves or you know, and if they can’t get there and it’s never enough, then I’ll never achieve that.

And of course those are never the intentions and the words are coming out. But to self compassion is one of those that just has a big ripple effect that we don’t immediately see when we think of the term.

Let’s start there then let’s make that our jumping off point to discuss the different patterns that make self compassion difficult.

And I know,

I think for me when I think about the conversations that I see online on,

on social media about mental health and veterinary medicine, they’ve largely focused on suicide, suicide prevention. And then the other word that comes up all the time is perfectionism.

And you know, I’ve said for years that,

you know, until I got into vet school and it no longer worked for me, I always felt good about identifying as a perfectionist. I felt like a badge of honor almost and that that was sort of an expectation in the culture that, that, that, that a perfection really takes academics seriously and takes the profession seriously.

Anything short of that,

that ideal of perfectionism is someone who’s not,

quote, unquote, not enough or not not doing enough, not caring enough and so forth. So I want to, I want to. And, and of course now I, you know, I give a keynote speech on mental health and you know, I, I sort of start off my presentation by saying no one ever told me that perfectionism was an unhealthy mindset.

And I say it as if the sky is blue. And I,

the, you know, the heads exploding in the audience sometimes because obviously we still have a lot of people that are identifying that way and they, and it’s a badge of honor almost or in the way that they,

they perceive themselves. So let’s talk about why perfectionism is a pattern that ultimately does not serve this, this aspiration towards self compassion.

I think one, because we’re not right, we’re not perfect, we are human.

But a lot of, and there are a lot of factors that go into per.

But one of them is really that it results in an external validation,

yes, some internal. But it is also praised and rewarded and raises come from that potentially. And promotions come from that. And all kinds of external quote unquote proof that you’re good enough come from that.

And again, that can be,

that can be tricky to undo. And so self compassion then almost feels like,

almost like a threat,

you know, like.

And we’ve also criticized it. We don’t criticize perfectionism so much, I mean, except from, as researchers, we know it’s not the way to go.

But in our culture, we don’t criticize perfectionists, but we certainly criticize anybody who would be showing a most emotional vulnerability or I’m being kind to myself. You know, we have labels for then that’s being overly indulgent and lazy or you know what,

all the terminology that comes along with that.

And also perfectionism, again is not only how I, how I prove to the world I’m good enough,

but also how do I prevent these horrible things from happening in my brain. And for a perfectionist, it isn’t about,

oh, I realize I’m, I can’t be, I’m not perfect. It’s more I’ll just try harder the next time. Right. And so it’s like I find with a lot of perfectionists, it’s that the goalposts always move.

You can’t ever reach it even if you could.

Right. Technically.

But we can’t reach it because a perfectionist will just move the goalposts and make it even harder the next time.

I’ll share. I am not a perfectionist. I don’t know that that’s ever been a quality of mine, but workaholism has been and it’s the same type of thing. I am praised all over the place for giving all the time and Gosh, you’re available 24 7.

Isn’t that great.

It’s hard to recognize that that external praise at some point isn’t going to sustain my health, but my relationship with me is going to play a big role.

Right.

In the book the Gifts of Imperfection by Brene Brown, which was my first sort of foray into this self help world,

you know, I,

I,

I learned for the first time that,

or I guess, I guess the, the takeaway point from that book of there were many, but the one that, that, that really stuck with me was that perfectionism is not the same thing as healthy striving.

Exactly.

And it doesn’t sound as sexy to say I’m a healthy striver as opposed to I’m a perfectionist. So I get perfectionist. I can understand why that, that, you know, has a bit of a little sexy quality to it if you buy into it.

But at the end of the day a healthy striver is, is, I mean I’m, I’m, as a recovering perfectionist,

that’s, that’s the terminology that I come back to, to keep me anchored to self compassion. Just that,

that I haven’t surrendered my,

my commitment to the profession. I haven’t surrendered my commitment to learning throughout my life and constantly improving upon myself.

I’ve just absolved myself of any illusion that I can be something that I can’t and beat myself up every step of the way and doing so. When you can release that and have a different ideal in mind,

I think that you can, at least for me,

I can start to reality check the messages I’m telling myself and not feel like I’m suddenly this slacker that’s given up on self improvement.

Yeah, I love the term the healthy striver. Yeah. Again, when we look at kind of the external role,

if I am a perfectionist and I’m less than perfect,

it will be about I didn’t do enough Somehow I’m not enough, I’m not smart enough, I’m not good enough, I didn’t try hard enough. A healthy striver can be hu,

you know, I wanted a different outcome or I’m looking for a different outcome and I wonder how I could do that. Right. It’s not a personal failure, it’s not a character indictment.

If I didn’t get the outcome I wanted.

It’s really an opportunity for just kind of looking at that and also a healthy striver. It might be that this really was okay, like this was the best that I could do or it’s the best possible outcome we could get even if it falls short from perfection.

But, but perfectionistic thinking, anything less than that again isn’t just oh gosh, that wasn’t the outcome I wanted. It’s I’m a bad person.

So those will have very different effects on us. Right. Walking through, I wish that could have been a different outcome. I wonder what I can do versus I’m a terrible person.

Again, we think of not only the personal effect but the ripple effect that has on others.

Right. So we struggle as a profession around these perpetual perfectionistic thoughts that are just hardwired in us and all the, all the while our self compassion is, is going down, down, down, down, down over time and our psychological distress.

Ultimately you, you know, you’re going to,

you might be able to play the game for a while, right. But eventually you’re going to burn your candle from both ends and, and, and you’re going to find yourself in a state of imbalance.

Right. Or,

or self destruction.

Absolutely.

So yeah, so that’s, that’s perfectionism, that’s, that’s just one of the patterns. Self critical inner talk. This was a big one for me as well. This,

you know, looking around the room and comparing yourself to other people and, and then the,

the, the, the mean,

I think cruel, vicious self talk in my case began to become the predominant voice and that’s, that’s something that I’ve had to really work on in my post vet school life.

So can we, can we talk about self, self critical inner talk and why that’s, I mean it seems obvious on the surface but can you really spell this out for us, why this is so detrimental?

Yeah,

again, I think so much of it can come from the environment.

Again not unique to veterinary medicine but certainly in high stakes environments where we will teach, you know, failure is not an option and error is not an option.

A mistake in these high stakes professions could mean death.

That is to be taken Seriously. Right. We,

we don’t want to minimize that reality, but we can have a different approach to it.

You know, I can likely have better outcomes when I can be curious about the process,

when I can recognize I maybe didn’t know something, but I’m capable of learning that something.

If my only default is I’m just an idiot and I’m not good enough, like, where’s the growth happen from there? What direction does that even go in? How amenable am I even to sharing that with somebody or getting support from someone else?

Because I think I am the root of all problems. Right. And so I just like, where do you go if it’s only you that’s causing the problem? I don’t know what you do with that.

I recognize like the pattern of thinking.

You know, it’s interesting. I, I would sit in on,

you know, various classes, veterinary classes and also human medicine classes. And I would watch what would happen when a student would raise their hand and I would even observe like the tension.

You could see. I would look at them and watch their body language and think, oh, they are debating on whether to even raise their hand. Right.

And then they would finally get the courage to do it. And the eye rolls or the snickering question or the professor who is like, well, we can see who’s not paying attention.

And I just think,

again,

the shame of it. And then so what? We will internalize. You idiot. You know, you didn’t read the room. You shouldn’t have done that.

I’m just gonna try harder. And so again, it’s this protection from having anything negative happen. And then we just start kind of like we’re just crumpling in on ourselves. And we’re doing that through a process of beating ourselves up and constant blame.

Constant sh. Constant not good enough. And I do think medicine, medical training and other high stakes. I talked to, you know, pilots who have some of the same and other high stakes environment,

but like it, it does not produce a better outcome. But we just, in our own brains, we believe it will, that it will keep us safe and it will help us be okay and not get into trouble.

And so it’s like a,

a very enticing belief pattern that we get stuck into.

Yeah.

Now let’s, let’s move on to that. We have, we have two more on the list.

Catastrophizing. And we, I think we mentioned this a little bit earlier and it might have been on the, the first episode, I think it was catastrophizing where,

you know, and, and this this is very interrelated with perfectionism in my mind.

Right. Because if the bar is that I can never make the tiniest little mistake, then inevitably when I do,

then it actually feeds into inner self. It feeds into the self talk too. Right. Then it’s this idea that I made this mistake, therefore I am fill in the blank with something terrible.

Yeah. I think, you know, catastrophizing when you say it out loud. Most people who will relate to it like we’ve done that at one point. So catastrophizing is that belief. If I make this one mistake and then it’s this whole almost unconscious pattern of thinking we have and people will laugh at me,

I won’t have any friends, I’m going to lose my job, I’m going to be fired, I’m never going to be able to get another job. You know, I’m going to end up homeless, on the streets and you know, die in a pauper’s grave and laugh.

When we say that out loud,

most of us can say, yeah, that’s exactly what my brain goes to. And so again, it’s leading to if only the most horrendous thing can happen from my error,

then again I’m going to be wired to do everything I can to prevent that. And the default in our brain of doing everything we can is the negativity bias. Right.

Focusing on the negative things. Our default isn’t yet to do everything I can to help prevent that is also self compassion is vulnerability is asking for help. We don’t like that, that we don’t by default yet weigh those in to the equation.

And of course all the things that we’ve been discussing are usually reinforced by at least what has been in the past, sort of the cultural norms around a lot of this.

Right. And so that’s what we’re.

By doing this work at the individual level and hopefully at the team level,

we. I know this is your life’s work in a way. Right. That, that we might actually get there as a, as a profession.

Yeah. I will tell you some of the most powerful.

You know, if I had like 10 powerful moments in veterinary medicine,

they have come down to when an esteemed professional has acknowledged they’ve made a mistake.

Like you could hear a pin drop in the room. So I remember one time during orientation, the dean of student affairs came in and said, you know, hi, my name is, here’s my role.

And then the first fact,

the first fact she shared about herself was that she loved chickens. But the second fact was, and I did not pass my boards the first time around. Like,

that was part of the conversation. And you can almost hear the gasps.

Like, how is somebody in that position,

you know,

oh, my gosh.

And you could. And the feedback that we would get from that is, oh, my gosh. If, you know, if you’re not perfect the first time, but you can go back.

And the same thing would happen when the veterinarians or the guest speakers who would come in would share, here’s a time I made a medical mistake.

And gosh, they still have a job, and they still love their job, and they still have people around them who support them. You know, it was. Here’s how I learned from it.

But. But we don’t hear a lot of those stories. You know, we are being taught by the people who wrote the books and are revered, but they. But they got to where they are because they made a whole bunch of mistakes along the way and will continue to.

We just don’t like space.

More space needs to be created from that because I see the huge effects on the people who are listening to that, and it makes that expert even that much more relatable.

I’m 44 years old now,

and the idea of even sitting down with a room full of people in a social context and just, you know, like, where’s the.

You know, like, the. The beauty of life is in all the.

The messiness, right? The.

The.

The resilience that is being built over time because of these things that came before us. And to. To live in a space of I’ve got it all together and everything is exactly as it should be and nothing could ever be improved upon.

Like, where’s the.

Where’s the interesting.

You know, where’s the interesting way forward from that? I think.

I think that the. The humanity, the shared humanity, right,

Is.

Is something that we all.

The vulnerability of just of saying, yes, I am not perfect. These are the things that.

That didn’t go as I had hoped in the past. And here I am standing tall,

living my dream,

and there’s the beauty of life from my point of view.

Oh, my God. Yeah.

First of all, I love sharing my mistakes. I almost always will weave some humor into them, because once you get some distance from them in the moment, nothing is funny.

But you can look back years later and there’s some humor into it.

But I’ve been part of conversations that instead of the, oh, yeah, well, I’ve got one. You know, instead of trying to top each other in terms of achievement, it was, you know, like, sharing the mistakes.

Well, I’ve got a real doozy for you.

And one just the humor in the room and the laughing and then the relief that you can feel from it.

You’re knowing you’re part of like all of these other people and that making mistakes and being human is part of it.

But the fact that you can channel that into. Here’s what I’ve learned,

here’s what I know now. The perspective that I got from that there is just this beautiful component of humanity in those moments.

I don’t find that beauty of humanity in talking about how perfect we are.

Absolutely.

And so we’re gonna have to wrap this episode up soon.

I think I want to just kind of reflect again on when we get to a place of self compassion individually,

what are the ways in which we flourish as a result of that. And once again this is a lifelong process, right. This is something, it’s not like we check five boxes and suddenly we’re self compassionate people.

Usually it’s two steps forward, one step back hopefully.

But as we’re,

the net effect is that we’re moving forward on that trajectory.

What are the benefits and outcomes of that?

First of all, very good to say it’s a process. Right. We’re not just going to have nailed it like today I’ll be self compassionate and then therefore ever that’s all I think about.

It isn’t but one. We do reduce the perfectionist thinking which is important.

We remove those layers of harsh self criticism. So it opens up the door for curiosity and vulnerability and listening. It also improves that decision making under pressure. Because now it’s not when, when all we think about is I can’t make a mistake.

We’re more likely to make a mistake. If now the thinking is I hope I don’t make a mistake, I’m going to do everything I can to avoid that. And if it happens, there are, you know, there are still ways I can respond to that.

That taking that pressure off actually allows us to perform at a better level.

Overall quality of life is improved whether that’s at home or at work in general.

And then in terms of effect again that self compassion really helps promote a psychological safety and trust within teams.

That’s so beautiful.

And once again this is, you know, I think people that are listening at least this is the way my brain works. I’m always looking for, okay, love everything that they’re talking about.

I, I, I, I, I,

I, I want to, I want to aspire to be self compassionate.

What are, what are some tangible first steps that we can take for ourselves as we start to tiptoe into those waters of letting go of some of those old mindsets that aren’t healthy, that aren’t serving us.

What does that, what, what can that look like at an, on an individual level, what’s one thing that we can do and what’s one thing that we can do as a, as a veterinary team?

Again, on an individual level, first we have to be aware. Like some of these thought patterns are so ingrained we’re not even aware we have them. So the first one would be awareness.

And then I will tell you, in working with people through the years, if I ask them to replace that mean thing they said for themselves,

they struggle with that.

But if I say, if you were to hear a loved one say that, what would you say? It starts giving a language for how we would replace it in an area that’s just a little less close to home.

So we are more able to envision that.

And then I think as a team even, you know, we tend to do the what’s went wrong, what went wrong today in the rounds. Which is fine, we can do that.

But what went right? You know, what are the,

what are the moments of the gotcha caught you doing something right.

Learning how to give, you know, balanced feedback. So part of that is, my gosh, you really handled that situation with this client or this colleague really well. I really appreciated the way that you did that.

So calling that out and having a framework, having time to talk about,

well,

are all parts of cultivating self compassion.

Yeah. And I think that it’s a conversation that needs to happen.

I hope that we’ve given all of our listeners some food for thought in that area. I know we have.

And once again it’s about saying, hey, what’s that one little thing that I can, can do today? And, and over time,

you know, when you reinforce it enough, right. Then that becomes the way you are.

That’s the way, that’s the way you show up in your and for yourself every day.

And, and then there’s always room to, to build on top of that and keep working towards that, that,

that more self actualized, self compassionate person. Right. But it takes, it takes time and we have to have patience with ourselves. Right?

We do. And I’ll just add one more thing. When all else fails, my shortcut to myself, like on those days, you just are not feeling great about yourself.

I just have a little mantra that I just say I’m enough.

Right. If I can just hold onto that, I’m enough. It doesn’t mean I’m perfect.

None of that. Just I’m enough and have that really ground me. I have found that to be a very powerful tool.

Yeah.

Well, thank you very much once again. This was our second episode on our series Tackling Mental health and Veterinary Medicine. If you didn’t get a chance to listen to our first episode on Boundary Setting that is available in our archive.

And please, of course,

like and subscribe to our podcast and be sure to share this with your colleagues. If you’ve, if you were listening today and this resonated with you, I promise you it’s going to resonate with everyone else you know, in the profession as well.

So please pass this information along and continue to show up for yourself every day the best, in the best way that you can.

And we’re all working towards that end together. And we’re going to get there. As long as we commit to staying the course and as long as we say aware, stay conscious that,

that, that these are, that these are,

that there is a path forward for all of us, we can do this.

So thank you, Dr. Brandt, again for joining us on this episode. We have one more that will be airing in just a couple weeks on Cultures of well Being. We hope that you’ll, you’ll tune for that one as well.

Thanks for tuning in to Tales from the Lab.

It.