On the call with my life coach that week I could not fully verbalize the depth of my grief.  Through the sobs I could only choke out the words, “this is just not right and it has to stop.”

I never met Dr. Yin, so why did her death affect me so deeply? I only know that it caused me to profoundly recognize that we, in this profession we love so much, need help. Her death was the spark that set me on the path of Heal ThySELF DVM.  I could no longer stand by silently and let others struggle.

***

I grew up knowing I would be a veterinarian.  There was absolutely no doubt in my mind that I would achieve this goal. It was a forgone conclusion.

In high school I shadowed a woman veterinarian who had a mixed animal practice.  I loved every single minute of that experience. I vividly remember helping her castrate a horse in the field. During that procedure I got some blood on my sneaker.  I was in heaven! It was a rite of passage for me. I wore that sneaker with pride and unwashed for months!

When I graduated Vet school I thought I was a superhero. I knew there were still things to learn, but I felt strong and capable.  But very quickly the doubts and the defeats started. I was soon haunted by a vision of a small, frail version of myself with heaps of dead dogs and cats piled around me. The bodies were accusing me of killing them unjustly or letting them die. Therein lay the conflict: my goal was to save every animal yet animals died by my hand.

I had multiple jobs between 1990 and 2005 due to family situations as well as dissatisfactory jobs.  What I came to realize is that all the jobs were the same. All of them beat me down with client demands, long hours, poor pay, friction with the staff and witnessing too much suffering and death. I was depressed and disillusioned about my profession.  But at some point I realized that I was the constant, the common denominator.

I changed jobs, but I didn’t change myself.  

***

My healing journey began quietly when I met Jane Savoie, an Olympic equestrian and transformational speaker, and realized that I felt better while in her presence. Something deep inside of me recognized that she had an optimism that I desperately wanted. So I started creating my path to healing.  I found people, books and animals who helped me remember things that I had once, as a child, known: How to find happiness daily and how amazing we all truly are.

One of the most powerful things I have ever heard is “You are not broken. You don’t need to be fixed. You haven’t done anything wrong.”  This was a revelation to me and it still takes my breath away. I believe it to be true for all of us.

That was where I started.  I started by taking those statements as truth.

I was not broken. I was just deciding I wanted something different.

I didn’t need to be fixed. Everything I had experienced so far in life was so that I could be the person I am today.  

I have never done anything wrong.  I have always made the best choices I could given who I was and what my options were at the time.

These beliefs and the powerful statement by Maya Angelou, “when you know better you do better” released me from self-flagellation over perceived mistakes.  I believe that I am in charge of how I feel. I know that emotions are attached to thoughts and I control the thoughts. I have learned that I can be compassionate without losing myself.  I have beliefs and techniques to relieve stress and stay connected to myself so that I can enjoy a fulfilling and prosperous career as a Veterinarian.

I know how important and possible it is to find that healing path for yourself as a Veterinarian. Through Heal ThySELF DVM, I enjoy helping other veterinarians explore their path in a safe and nurturing environment. That spark that I now have, and want to share with others, is eternal and ever growing. I will honor Dr. Yin by transmuting our common belief of inevitable sorrow into the belief of undeniable joy.

The suffering veterinarian will become a myth.  

***

If you feel, as I once did, if you are hoping that your career could be prosperous and happy, please set up a time to chat (totally free, of course) with me personally by clicking here: calendly.com/healthyselfdvm 

You can also reach out to me via email at pamela@healthyselfdvm.com 

I know I have struggled with this idea as a major source of anger and depression in my career. I would get so angry when clients refused my treatment recommendations. I would struggle to find the words to convince them to do what I thought was the best option. I would relive conversations at night, looking for what words I could have said to change the outcome. I would review treatment plans of patients that died, trying to find a mistake. I would berate myself for not being enough. Enough to get the patient to live, and enough to get the client to agree to a treatment plan.

But here’s the thing. I cannot control what other people do! Yes, I can see you nodding your head in agreement with that statement, but then turning around and getting angry when they don’t do what you wanted! I know, because I have done that very thing, often. Often.

You cannot control what choices clients make. You cannot control the outcome of a discussion. You are not God. You cannot make them do what you think is best.

You cannot attach your happiness, self worth or inner peace to what decisions a client makes or you will be frustrated and unhappy, a lot. What you can do is base your self worth on knowing that you collected and presented the information the best you could, given whatever constraints the client gave to you.

You need to find peace with your ability to educate the clients, lay out their options and let them decide what they want to do. Pressing them only creates an uncomfortable energy that will end up with unhappy clients feeling shamed into a decision. Clients saying that you are “only in it for the money” as their push back to feeling pressured.

This idea of giving up the attachment to an outcome also plays a large part in accepting a patient’s death. We are not God, and cannot control the outcome. Patients will die unexpectedly. Patients will die despite our implementing the correct treatment plan. We need to accept that their death, a vast majority of the time, is not because of us.

Letting go of attachments to an outcome. A difficult lesson for me at times. But adopting it as a core belief has allowed me to move through my days with much less anger and self recriminations.

If this idea resonates with you let me know. How have you given up the attachment to outcomes? Let’s chat at pamela@healthyselfdvm.com.

Why someone makes the decisions they do. You just don’t know what is going on in their lives, what medical/relationship/financial/life stresses they are experiencing at the same time their pet is ill.

You just don’t know their deeply, yet perhaps unconsciously, held beliefs around illness and death for themselves and their pets.

So can you allow for the possibility that the decisions they make, including lack of treatment, has absolutely NOTHING to do with you, and everything to do with them?

There are no words to make them understand the need for treatment. There are no words to make them come in to see you the first day of the vomiting instead of the 5th. There are no words to make them get a physical exam at least once a year.

You have minimal power to make the client do things. BUT…. You do have infinite power to control how you feel when the client does something with which you disagree.

For today, thank each client (silently or out loud) for seeking your expertise and skill no matter the circumstances. Be grateful they came to see you. Even when you perceive they made a mistake, remember that you do not walk in their shoes and you have no idea what is going on in their life.

I think you will find that as you are able to allow them to have their experience in life, you can have yours. Your job is not to make someone do something. Your job is to advocate for the pet. Once you have done that, allow the client to make the decision they feel is best.

Do not attach your self-worth or happiness level to the decision the client is making. Attach your self worth and happiness level to knowing that you made the best recommendations possible and that is all you can do. You have the power — by focusing on how you want to feel — to have a good day in the face of crappy situations.

Be grateful that they sought you out, allow them to have their experience, and you get to have a good day by not feeling responsible for their decisions.

And as the carrot attached to this recommendation from me, I know that the less stressed you get by client decisions, the more you will see clients that take your recommendations and the less you will be presented with those that won’t. You attract what you think about and spend energy on so spend it wisely.

If this idea resonates with you, or if you have questions about it, please click here to sign up for a free 1 hour phone consultation where we can discuss it more.

Recently I heard Dani Mcvety, DVM the CEO and founder of Lap of Love speak, and she put into words how I feel every time I perform a euthanasia.  She tells clients that ask how she can do euthanasias day in and day out, that it is an honor to perform this task.

How much better would you feel if you could come to the place that it is an honor to perform a euthanasia?  Not that you won’t be sad, and not that you would perform one that you did not agree with, but overall, how much stress would that mindset relieve?

To get to that point, one thing to consider is that no experience has meaning until you assign it one.

For example: we all know that some people meet the personal diagnosis of cancer with acceptance and the belief that their life still has meaning and go on to achieve great things.  Others can never move past the anger, hurt and fear of it.  The diagnosis of cancer was the same, but the meaning assigned to it was different.

The end result of the euthanasia is the same, but how you frame it allows you to move forward with serenity and calmness vs grief and anger.

I use this tenant “no experience has meaning until you assign it one” often in my day. When I diagnose a terminal disease in a patient, I am sad and upset for awhile. Realizing that I cannot change the diagnosis, but only try and make the best of it, I try and find a way in which this experience might be of value for me or the client.  Such as: I get to learn about recent advancements in the treatment of this disease, I might meet new doctors that will become part of my “go-to referral team” in the future, I might have dealt with this personally with one of my own pets and so have a chance to heal that experience a bit, I get to allow the clients to find their way through the process with dignity, grace and as much serenity as they can. The client gets to heal previous experiences with terminally ill pets, or maybe even family.

It is all in how you can frame the experience.

Euthanasias do not have to be a sad, overwhelming stress on us. We can chose how we think about them and how we allow the clients to experience them. It is all in the meaning we assign to the experience.

Try this idea on for size as you go through your day.  Email me your questions or experiences with it, I’d love to hear from you.

Over the past year, several articles have been published — in the Boston Globe and various trade journals — about how stressful it is to be a veterinarian. Each one highlights the fact that 1 in 6 veterinarians have considered suicide. Many people might be surprised by that statistic, but to veterinarians who face the daily challenges of exhausting hours, financial strain, and compassion fatigue, we know it all too well.

Our profession is in the midst of a mental health crisis. What has been done to address it?

My name is Pamela Datsko and at times during my 26 year career as a veterinarian, I have struggled with depression myself. But I thought I was just one of a small group of veterinarians who were having trouble. That changed with the suicide of veterinarian Sophia Yin in 2014. Dr. Yin created the Low Stress Handling program about how to make our pets’ time in the clinic low stress. Even though I’d never met her, I admired her work and her death broke my heart.

The tragic irony that she was so passionate about reducing stress in the clinic, and yet took her own life, hit me hard. From the outside, it looked like she had everything going for her, which made me realize that far more of my colleagues may be suffering in silence than I’d previously recognized.

I knew I could not stay silent and allow my colleagues to struggle any longer. That same year, I started mentoring through Veterinary Information Network (VIN). I found it fulfilling for what it was, but since it only involved emailing mentees, I wanted to do more.

There are a handful of veterinarians with other advanced degrees, like psychology, with online presences for counseling veterinarians. The American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) has an online self-assessment tool for veterinary wellbeing, and they provide some resources. Some of the pharmaceutical companies provide a similar service, with personal wellness modules on a free online learning platform. All of these are much-needed services, but I have the strong feeling that veterinarians also need deeper and more personal support.

I know I wanted personal, individual interactions when I needed help. Online support alone just would not have cut it for me. I began my personal healing journey in 2013 and it has transformed my life.

I created Heal ThySELF DVM because it’s time to stop suffering—because I want other veterinarians to be able to enjoy their lives and careers again. I want to do my part in helping to end the mental health crisis.

On Wednesday March 22, 2017, I will be hosting a free online interactive webinar called Veterinarians, Heal ThySELF! where you can join me and other like-minded colleagues in exploring some of the transformational techniques that have made such a difference in my own life—including a powerful guided visualization.

You can expect to walk away feeling uplifted and energized with a more positive outlook on your future. I look forward to seeing you there!

*And if you know someone who might benefit from this information, please forward this article to them. Thank you.