This post came across my feed today. It is not much different than many others I’ve seen about the topic, except for one line.
From my perspective, the most important part of the post speaks to the real core of the issue – most veterinarians are, “empaths with a perfectionist(ic) personality”. God made me with a big dollop of empathy, life experiences seem to strengthen the trait, and along the way I developed perfectionistic tendencies to achieve and overcome. I have learned just how much these two traits can wage war on the psyche. Taking on the feelings of others while working in environments that are not perfect, demanding much of yourself, blaming yourself for things that simply are out of your control, being blamed by others for things that are not your fault, then feeling bad for not achieving — wheew.
We certainly can’t be sustainable in life if everyone has to tiptoe around our triggers and feelings – how are people to know? We all should certainly have manners, respect, and engage in a civil way with other people, and be mindful of how difficult the jobs people in a service can be – and perhaps extend some extra grace here and there.
I’m a huge advocate for people in the veterinary industry to learn – learn as much as you possibly can about your own personality. Therapy twice a month is my own strategy that has helped me learn what is known about people like me, tendencies, and methods to ground, focus, prevent, and feel less hopeless. Like every other animal, humans pick have a few options for addressing adversity – fight, flight, or retreat.
- Fighting may just mean being direct and facing the problem head on – being firm on your values, not necessarily fighting in the sense of aggression or out of anger.
- Flight can be avoidance, or for the perfectionist it may just mean convincing yourself to “let go” of something that is weighing on the heart and mind.
- Retreat is unfortunately the safe spot for many folks that walk around with this combo of traits, the one we’ve used the most our whole lives – we just retreat, internalize it, and try to figure it all out on our own, or dwell on it until something else worse comes along to make us forget about it a while.
Yes, I appreciate all of the nice ways clients can take it easy on us. But, I also think we have got to normalize talking about topics of mental health. We have to learn more. We can choose to tackle life in a healthier way, and feel better more days than not.
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