5 Ways to Get Over Your Pity Party.

We all have those moments in life where it feels as if we are hit hard and knocked down by our circumstance.   We are cruising along doing pretty well for ourselves and all at once, something happens that takes us down and stops our forward momentum.   We hit a wall in our business, experience a health issue, or have a personal relationship failure.  Something happens that causes us to slide into negative thinking and feeling. 

What can we do to get ourselves out of this negative life space and avoid the pity party?

Live in the truth for a short time.  Give yourself a bit of time to feel bad or mourn your loss.  When you feel let down by someone, or something that didn’t happen for you, it is OK to acknowledge those bad feelings and really feel them.  If you avoid the bad feelings and try to push them away, they will become more powerful than they actually are. Give yourself a short time to feel negative emotion about the lost dreams.  Once you have felt the negative feelings all the way through, it will be easier to let go of them and move on.

Avoid a victim mentality.  Feeling like a victim for example, when a client yells at you for something beyond your control, destroys your self-confidence and removes your sense of empowerment over the circumstance. The more you dwell in disappointment and worry about that client’s feelings, the more difficult it will be to get into problem solving mode and overcome the difficulty.  Self-pity or victimhood can be destructive if you choose to dwell there. 

Get a little perspective.  We often feel sad or disappointed about something that we will not really remember in a month or so.  Think about the big picture.  Let your mind go to a place several months in the future and think about whether this disappointment will be relevant then.  Are there other more important things that you can think about now to move on?  Realizing that many of the things we experience in life will not be important months or years in the future, will help you to gain perspective about the issue at hand.

Remember that success does not always equal happiness.  Successes often feel great in the moment, but that happiness is not sustained over the long term.  Studies of lottery winners show that they are no happier one year after their lottery win than they were before the money.  Life has a tendency to even out with levels of negative and positive emotion.  There are times when a good failure is more important to your long-term success than an instant win.  You can choose to be happy with each moment regardless of the circumstance.

Identify your next opportunity. Focusing on the lessons that a failure brings will allow you to envision future successes. Knowing that each day offers renewed opportunity to try again will allow your brain to get beyond the self-pity and move on to future possibility. Focusing on your next move will help you let go of the current problem and use the lessons learned to propel you forward. 

When things don’t work out the way you originally planned, realize that nothing has gone terribly wrong.   Failure and disappointment are difficult for all of us to deal with, but you can face it with dignity and grace if you follow these five steps.  Treat yourself with compassion and see what you can learn from the situation.  Try not to judge yourself so you do not get stuck in a downward spiral of the prolonged pity party.  Let it go and move on.

Dr. Julie Cappel

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https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-veterinary-life-coach-podcast-with-dr-julie-cappel/id1451549730

“It's not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters.” - Epictetus

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do.” ― H. Jackson Brown Jr.

The Three Mistakes We Make

As I work to research stress and anxiety in our profession and talk to veterinarians about their daily struggles, it becomes clear to me that most of our stress comes from our expectations about, and interactions with our clients.  I have been doing this job for a long time and it seems that client interactions have become more and more tense for us.  We stress about correct diagnosis, treatment success, and surgery skill, but the things that seem to hit us the hardest are the things our clients think about us, say to us, and how they treat us on social media.

 

As I have been working through these thoughts, it occurred to me that there are three main reasons that we mentally struggle with our clients.  Three assumptions that we make about them, that if we could think differently, we could do a better job at managing our stress. 

Our first mistake when dealing with clients is that we assume that they know more than they know.  Sure, they often “Dr. Google” their pet’s symptoms and sometimes they are in the ballpark, but they really don’t have medical knowledge to discern whether their research makes practical sense, or understand diagnostic tests will be needed to confirm that Dr. Google diagnosis.  When I ask them questions about diet, symptoms, length of illness, or past medical history, I often get answers that do not add up.  For example, I see a mammary mass on a dog that is encompassing one quarter of the abdomen and the client tells me that it just popped up in the past few weeks.  I know that this cannot be true.  I know that this really means that the client is busy with everyday life, so they did not see anything wrong until it was seriously wrong.  If I choose to be upset by this fact, I will cause myself undo stress.  If I accept that this is where we are, and I can do my very best to make proper treatment recommendations from this place in time, I can proceed without taking on any anxiety about it.

The second mistake that we make when dealing with clients is that we assume that they want the very best and will do the very best for their pet.  We think we know “best”, but clients get to decide what is best for their pet and their situation.  Best is a matter of opinion.  We may not always agree with the choices that our clients make when it comes to their pets, but our job is to give them the options that we have been trained to give.  We need to allow them to make the choices for their pet and their family.  It is not up to us to judge their decisions.  We are there to support them in whatever decision that they make, without taking on the emotion.  We should assume that they will do what they believe is best for their pet.  We can love them through any “best” decision.

The third mistake that we make is that we assume that clients know how difficult our job can be.  We know that we are not God and cannot save every life. We understand our limitations.  We assume that clients realize this as well.  We think that they know we are doing our very best to help them in every situation.  They may actually think that we make a lot of money and are living richly off of the dollars that they spend in our hospitals.  They may think us uncaring when we give them a treatment plan that they cannot afford.  In reality, we are caring individuals that are doing a very difficult job and taking this all home with us.  We are causing ourselves undo stress and anxiety over every one of their pets’ problems. They do not see our pain.  Continuing to communicate with the public about how difficult some of our days can be is the first step in bridging this gap.

So, if you are a veterinary client reading this, or a working veterinarian, realize that we all care about the same thing: loving and healing pets.  Clients, you need veterinarians to be healthy and whole to help you. Veterinarians, you need your clients to continue the valuable work that you are passionate about.   We have a difficult job as veterinarians, but pet owners have a difficult job as well.   We are on the same team and we should treat each other with respect, compassion and understanding.

Being open to each other makes us better humans.

Dr. Julie Cappel

If having a soul means being able to feel love and loyalty and gratitude, then animals are better off than a lot of humans.

— James Herriot

Truly caring people know they have to take care of themselves first.
 - Marty Rubin

Join me on the Podcast!!

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-veterinary-life-coach-podcast-with-dr-julie-cappel/id1451549730