Ep. 101: Get your facts straight: stop letting stories run your life as a vet

Isn’t it funny how we’re so suspicious around scientific studies, and don’t just accept any pseudoscience crap anyone presents to us, but THEN, when it’s stories coming from our OWN brain, we just run with it?!

“I failed to examine it properly the first time”

“The owners would rather have someone else look at their pet”

“I’m too slow at this (bitch spey/dental/consults)”

In this episode 101 (!) of The Overwhelmed Vet Podcast I give you a structure to know if you’re just bs’ing yourself in the worst way, with tons of examples (and a few mistakes I made last week, so you can see you’re not alone). 

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Email me: gunila@gunilalifecoach.com

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The Overwhelmed Vet Podcast 🐾🩺 by Gunila Pedersen

Transcript

Hi! How are you? First of all, I would love to have some feedback on the meditation I did last week, because, you know, I get so excited about these things, because I'm like, this is amazing! But I don't really know how helpful it is for you. I feel like, for me, guided meditations are…

amazing, and they really helped me, but I don't… I don't know if this was helpful, or you… I should just quit doing that and let you guys, you know, listen to proper meditation teachers. So let me know, that would be amazing. Like, you can leave a comment on YouTube, or you can leave a comment in, in the podcast show notes, or just send me a message or an email. I would love to hear back, like, how it was for you, or if there's anything you would like me to change. Because, since I'm, like, spending this time doing this, I'd love to…

make something that's actually helpful. And today I want to talk about, something that I think I don't say enough. I think that's something that I really, really want to emphasize, and it is…

Getting your facts right. So let me explain.

When I first started out coaching.

I remember people come to me with that story, you know, for example, oh my god, I make so many mistakes as a vet, or I have so many complaints, and in the beginning, as a coach, you don't realize that what the brain

tells us it's not necessarily the truth. It might more be a story we are making out about the truth, right? So, I would completely believe what they were saying, and we would spend maybe half an hour coaching on, like, all these mistakes, and what I… and I would believe it, I would think, I'd be like, oh my god, if you make that many mistakes, you know, as a vet, like, how is that?

how does that affect you, this and the other. And then at some point, I might then ask, way, like, into the coaching session, and how many mistakes are we actually talking about, you know? And then it would be, like, 2 in 10 years, or, you know, one complaint in 5 years. I don't know, like, so it really taught me to get my facts right, and…

Just lately, I've had a few coaching sessions, so, obviously, like, I…

do CPDs because I want to keep being, like, a good vet, and always become better on that, so I do like my vet tonight CPD, but also as coach, I also want to always make sure, you know, I get better, and that I don't, like, drop into, like, making mistakes that are just not great, so I exchanged coaching sessions with other coaches that I studied with, and I was coaching

Another coach that does… she's a coach on overeating, so she coaches people that binge eat and have really, really issues with this, no?

And she was having problems selling her coaching, because she's like, yeah, because I can't really guarantee the results, and, you know, if they ask me, can I stop binge eating, can I really help, you know, can they really stop doing it? And then I actually made her…

Like, I'm like, pull down your numbers, like, how many people do you actually… have you actually helped? Like, of your clients, like, how many have actually… and it was, like, 70% had completely stopped binge eating.

20% were still kind of in the process, you know, they were still being coached by her, they hadn't stopped completely binge eating, but they were feeling a lot better, and then there were 10% that just, like.

they kind of was hoping she would just give them, like, a magic button and just stop waiting, and that didn't work. And I'm like, those numbers are amazing! And as soon as we looked at them, she's like, oh, no, I can totally sell this, because I, like, that is amazing, right?

And another example, like, I could have spent so much time coaching her on, like, overcoming, you know, really, truly believe you can help people, when in actually she does help people, she doesn't need to work on the belief, right?

And I was coaching, a vet that is, that runs her own business, so she does home visits, she's, an equine vet, and she was really worried about, oh my god, you know, because I was one client that had been unhappy once, and what if, what if now, like, I end up not having any clients, or they all, like, I end up living under the bridge, you know, and I was like, well, how many clients have you actually got? Like, how many clients have you signed in this year since you left?

left the practice and you started your own, and how much money have you made? And then we actually just sat down and looked at the numbers, and it was just amazing. She had, like, way over 300, like, steady clients, and was making, like, she ended up closing the year with so much money, she actually had to go out and spend some, because she has so much tax to pay, you know?

And… and this is what I want to emphasize with you, like, how quick our brains are to latch onto, like, some random data that are not even real, and just run with it. And this is the story now. So let's say that

let's say you had a surgery that didn't go well. Let's say that you did a surgery, you did some sort of procedure, and now there's a post-op complication. So let's say maybe you did some work on a joint, and now there's, like, an infection, or you did a spay, and the sutures came out, or whatever it is, you did something, and there's a complication to it.

And now your brain will, like, just…

batter you down with how bad you are at doing this, and they will just, like…

I don't even know how to describe it. It's like it in… like, this cloud comes down over us, where we only can see this complication, and how we did this wrong, and we should have done this other thing, and why didn't we do this, and we should have, you know, prepared the owner better, and what have we done this instead, you know? And we make it into such a huge problem.

And then people come to me, and, you know, I need coaching because, you know, I'm such a bad vet, and it's a bit like, well, how many post-op complications do you have? What are we talking about? Is this, like, a couple of weeks? How much do you actually operate? And it's maybe like…

1 in 12 years, you know? And I'm like, you… I mean, statistically, that is not bad, right? So you've got to…

Once you notice that you start getting agitated, upset, frustrated, anxious about something, like, just check your facts.

write them down. I don't know, this is, like, the episode 101, I'm so proud I got to 100 episodes. And… but if you remember episode 1, I explained the model, which I was taught in the life coach school, which is you have a circumstance, right, which is completely neutral and completely factual, so the sun is shining, the dog died.

you know, I have a car, whatever it is, like, a fact that happened, and then you have your thoughts around this fact. And then this thought makes you feel a certain way, and then you take actions from that feeling, and then you create your results for yourself, which is amazing.

But where people often go wrong is that they think…

that their thoughts are the facts, which is not true, and I'm telling you, when you beat yourself up, and you say to yourself.

oh, I'm so sketchy, oh, I'm not really good at concentrating, oh, I'm a procrastinator, oh, I'm not really good at bitch space, oh, you know, I really hate dentals, oh, I'm not good at this, I'm too slow at that, people think I'm this, people believe I'm that, you know, all these things.

We think that that's just a fact, that you're stating a fact, like, for example, oh, I'm not earning enough money. Well, how much are you earning? And you're actually managing then to cover your bills, and save up, and you're investing, and you're like, I don't know, going on holidays, and you're like, oh, okay, so maybe I do have enough money. You know what I mean? So…

we state these things, and we are so convinced that that's just what it is, and we just run with that story. And it's a bit like, if you were a journalist, and you did that, imagine that, like, oh, you know, you just, like, hear a rumor, and then, like, you put it on the first page of your newspaper, no? Or, if you were a scientist, and then you're, like, you're testing, I don't know, like, ketamine on rats, and then one rat falls asleep out of 100, and you just look at that rat, and you're like, oh, ketamine?

Make rats fall asleep.

You know, it's funny, because, like, as vets, we completely know, like, when you do a study as a scientist.

like, you have, like, a minimal number you want to do it on, you have, like, a placebo, you have blinds, you know, all this, but when it's ourselves, when we're in our own brains, we just take, like, this random…

pilot project, and we think that that is a research, you know, that is, like, the data we're gonna run with. So whatever you're telling yourself right now, that you are bad at, that you're not good at, that you think people think of you, that whatever it is, that's not making you feel good.

you want to check those data. You really want to sit down, and you want to write it down. Like, write it out. I… I just have so many complaints. I am just not good at this. I am just not good at that. So what does it actually mean? So let's look at, for example.

If you have… the bitspace is just something that comes up so often, but…

for example, if you have… you say, I'm just not good at bed space, so what is it you're not good at? What are you not good at? Are you not good at cutting with a scalpel? Can you not… do you take… are you really… does it take you really long to find the ovaries, but how long does it take you? Or do you really hesitate when you have to cut the ligament? But what does that mean? Like, what…

do you actually, every time you spay, you accidentally nick the ovarian or the uterine artery, and they bleed, and it's a huge disaster every time? Like, what do you mean when you say you're not good at them?

Because if you go into the operation with that thought, I'm not really good at this, and I always, like, I'm too slow, but you haven't actually looked at the facts. You go in with such hesitation and such self-doubt that it makes it into a terrible experience for you, and you will then struggle to learn and get better at it, because you always go in with this, like, level of terror of doing something wrong, no?

And… who was I caught you in the other day?

So I was coaching another vet the other day that had some wildlife in, and…

And she was like, yeah, because I'm not really used to wildlife, and there's another vet that's much better at it, and I had expected these, some sort of, like, baby birds. And she had looked at them, and she was, like, really busy. Actually, I did this mistake as well, but let me first finish with this one. So she quickly looked at the… at these little things, and she was like, oh, no broken wings, no, like, blood, they seem like they weigh okay, okay, so let's put them in a, you know, kettle and see what happens. And then the other vet came in.

And he's like, no, but look, like, they have bald patches, their feathers are just not growing right, so this is like, we better put him to sleep. And she felt so bad, she's like, oh my god, I should have looked so much better at them, and I should have realized, and he's so much better than me, and I'm like.

Yeah, no, because, like, often when you get wildlife in and you get something in that's run over, the first thing you assess is, like, vitals. Is this, like, has it got, like, a broken spine? You know, is it an inner bleed, something really terrible? And then you kind of let them sit a bit with it, don't you? Like, kind of observe, like, are they eating? What are they doing?

And then, kind of, like, you reassess maybe next day or later on in the day, and I'm like, that was the second assessment he did, so this story you're telling yourself is not a fact.

And I actually made a mistake, so we got, I think it was a red Kaiden.

the last weekend of night, oh my god, I just rubbed my eyes, and I've been chopping chilis this morning.

because Jamie Oliver says you should eat chilis for breakfast, so I did that, and they were, like, extremely strong, and I just rubbed my eyes. So if I start crying, not because I'm sad, it's just like I'm in extreme ocular pain.

So we were really busy, and a member of the public brought a red kaiden, wrapped in this jacket, and so, luckily.

I did a rotation of exotics in Colorado State University when I was a student, and one thing I know about, like, big birds like this, I don't go near their clothes, right? That was something I learned. So, you know, I know sort of to handle them, so big gloves, you know, and I was looking at, you know, are they grabbing with their feet? Is there blood around the mouth? Does it feel, like, heavy? Has it got, like, all the wings in place? I was stretching the wings out, no blood, no fractures, I thought I could see, just seemed, like, completely natural.

So I just stuck it in an auction tent and thought, like, because we had so many emergencies going on, I'm like.

do what are, you know, in there, I can't see any obvious injuries. And then, luckily, next day, the nurses managed to arrange it, getting picked up, together with the badger babies. I also saw that night, it was a crazy wildlife night. And they all… this bird got taken to the bird center. And then, we got,

slightly, I guess, let's say, constructive feedback from the Wildlife Center that I had missed, that this bird had, like, it had two bite wounds in the top of the wing, like, you could see when you really separate the feathers. And I remember having that initiative hit of, like, oh shit, I missed that, oh my god, you know.

And then I was like, no, it's fine, like, if I…

like, that was the second assessment. Like, I assessed and made sure this dog, this, sorry, this bird.

doesn't have to be put down straight away, because it's got an obviously horrible broken wing, or something terribly wrong with it, so I just, like, if it survives on oxygen overnight, then it's worth then doing a second assessment, which this woman and this wildlife center then did. So I didn't take a…

criticism personally in a way, like, oh my god, I'm a terrible vet, I don't know how to… how to assess birds, you know, even if I actually learned back in the day. No, you know, like, look at the facts, like, instead of just running with this first story your brain introduces you with, which is, like, oh my god, you're so bad at assessing, and you were not thorough enough, and what kind of vet are you, and can you not even do a clinical exam? No, you did your initial clinical exam, you made sure there was no…

reason for… to kill it straight away. It has some sort of chance, and then you kind of leave it, you move on, do something else, and then you come back to it, and that is perfectly fine, but isn't it funny how our brains come with this other random story and saying you're a terrible vet, and you're not thorough, and you don't know how to do a proper clinical exam, and what have you got your hands and eyes for, right?

So this is something I really, really want you to think about. If you have some stories in your head that you think are not stories, and this is why coaching is so important, because it's so fucking hard to do this by yourself. Just like the coach I was coaching, she was so convinced that

you know, she could not prove that she was actually helping people, and it was so evident to me. I'm like, but you just look at your numbers, like, how many clients finished with you and are actually no longer overeating? Let's just look at the numbers. And she's not done that. I'm like, it's so obvious. But we don't, because our brains are so busy, you know, elaborating this complicated story about how you're not as good as you think you might be.

And it's, it's just really interesting to me. And this comes back to,

the word metacognition, which I learned

listening to a podcast, so Brenna Brown right now has a podcast with Adam Grant, who wrote, Think Again, I just love those two. And they were talking about mental condition, and they were using the example of, and I think I have mentioned her before, now I cannot remember her name, but there was a really famous, incredibly young, incredibly beautiful, incredibly smart, funny.

female skier that won something at the Olympics, and

And she was being interviewed, I think I said, Michelle Hu? Something who? She's half Chinese, half American, I think. And she's, like, doing all these amazing things, and somebody said to her.

Do you think, before you speak, in the nicest way possible, the question was placed? Because you answer so eloquently, and so…

wisely, in, like, as soon as you get the question, like, how do you even do this? Now, how can you… how can you elaborate and answer so quickly after having a question?

And so, Burnett Brown was pulling this interview apart with Adam Grant, and they were talking about metacognition, and metacognition is when you have a really great awareness of what your brain is doing. So most of us, we have, like, zero metacognition, we just go through life.

Shit happens to us, and our brain happily makes up stories around this. Oh my god, I was like…

beaten as a child, so that means I'm a people pleaser, and I will always be sad, and I will never know how to, I don't know, have a healthy relationship. And we just run with that, and that is the story. Or, I'm just a procrastinator, I'm really bad at stuff, I can never get things done, that's just who I am. Or, oh my god, I failed so big as a vet, I…

didn't do a proper clinical exam, like, I'm failing everybody. Like, we have these stories that our brains just make up randomly from, you know, from old patterns we have, and we have no idea what we're actually doing. And in order to become the person you really want to be, in order to become the vet you want to be, in order to live the life you really want to live.

you can get that with metacognition. If you are constantly course-correcting what

what you're doing, what you're thinking, what you're feeling, not in that order. What you're thinking, what you're feeling, and what you're doing, that is how you… you can constantly course-correct your life and correct your… who you are as a person, no? And it doesn't matter what age you do this at, like, you can literally…

rewire, you know, pathways by doing this, like, by recognizing, oh my god, like, the last 20 years, I have been beating myself up, I've been telling myself I'm not good enough, I have just accepted I'm not a confident person. That was my story for a long time as well, it was like…

I just… I'm just not confident enough, and I so remember still being… being, coached by Brooke Castillo, who was, like, the owner and CEO of the Life Coach School, and I was like, oh my god, she's coaching me as a supercoach, and she's like…

And so what? Like, what… why are you telling yourself that you're not confident? I'm like, you what? Like, can you just… like, that's just who I am. She's like, no, that's just something you're telling yourself. My brain just broke there, you know, and you're just like, what? I've always believed this, and and the same, like, when I became… it took me a long time to accept, like, I'm actually a real vet. I'm actually, you know, I am the adult in the room. I am the one that is capable of making decisions. I am good enough as a vet.

That took me a long time to accept, you know, and get over the story that I wasn't good enough, and that was always…

another vet that could do it better than me, and then, like, becoming a coach and going through the whole fucking process again, you know, and I'm a good enough coach, and when will I know if I'm good enough, and what if I'm not good enough and I do the wrong thing? And the coach just said to me, you just decide that you're good enough. It's just a decision you make, like, who decides? Like, you…

when you don't have parameters, you just decide you're good enough. And it's these decisions we make every day, these, like, incredibly conscious decisions of…

How do I want to show up to work today? How do I want to let the client's words affect me when they tell me I'm not good enough, I'm just in it for the money?

am I just gonna, like, grab my phone and mindlessly scroll and get angry and frustrated over all these posts about, like, vets are just in it for the money, and what the hell? You know, like, how much are you actually stopping and seeing

what am I thinking? What am I feeling? What am I doing? How is this affecting my life? And, so I'm completely nerding out on this concept of metacognition, but I think the first part of it, no matter what, is getting your facts right.

not accepting the story your brain is telling you, and… and to me, like, when I was in the life coach school, and I was doing my coaching certification, we had to self-coach every day.

And I say this to all my clients, and I know a lot of you guys will struggle with journaling because… and self-coaching, because it is just not fun. Like, once you sit down and you open that Pandora's box of…

self-loathing and self-doubt, and am I good enough? You don't really want to look at it. It feels much more comfortable to just buffer and do something else, or keep working, or, oh, let me study some more, and I think that's why a lot of us are learning so much, both because we want to become better, but it's also actually a buffer, and it stops us from sitting down and actually feel what we're feeling, accepting who we are in this moment, and…

And accepting what we're thinking, right? And so, it took me 8… I had 18 months

where I had to, every day, sit down and write down, what are you thinking? Why are you thinking this? How is this affecting you? Do you want to think something else? Why are you feeling? And sometimes I hated it, but because in the life coach school notes, when I took my master coach certification as well, you had to, like, present yourself coaching, which is, I'm telling you, this is no fun. This is no fun, like…

opening up and telling your inner, most darkest secrets and fears and desires and self, like, criticism to others, it's not… it's not the most fun thing in the world, but it has brought me to a level of metacognition that now, when shit happens, when people say things to me, when I am in situations that are complicated, when something goes wrong, when I make mistakes,

I can, like, quickly recognize, oh, wait, no, like, I made a mistake, that's true, this is terrible, let's… what can we do to correct it? What can I do to not happening again? And why did this happen? No, and, like, taking responsibility for what I do, but not using it against myself to show myself how a terrible vet I am. So, this last week, we were so busy, and I just… I did make mistakes, so I failed to see this injury on the red kite.

And then there was a dog while I was given… what the fuck was it?

we had a ton of HGE patients in, you know, gastroenteritis, and and we were giving, like, metaclopramide drips, and ondansetron, and this and the other, and I'm, like, so in with Ondansetron right now, so for anyone listening and you happen to not be a vet, it's like an anti-nausea medication.

And… I don't know in your practice, but in my practice, the metocarpamide and the dentedron are next to each other.

and they are the fucking same color. Like, literally, the boxes and the ampoules, the vials are the same color. So, I happily gave a dog that was already on a Metaclob CRI, I then thought I was gonna give it, an Ondansetron loading dose, and I gave it another Metaclop dose on top, because they were, like, different, and, you know, they were not…

I was just so busy, and, we didn't have,

I've written an assistant in to help us, I was just trying to do 5 things at the same time, and I made a mistake, and obviously in that moment, it hits you, you're like, oh my god, if this had been another drug, I could have fucking killed that dog, no? Luckily, it wasn't. So, like, quickly recognized, like, checking in with my nurse, checking the secondary effect, like, checking on the dog, everything was fine, and then I'm like, oh my god, why did this happen? Gunila, you're being too busy, you're doing too much stuff, like, you need to, like.

Because I love,

I love helping my nurses out, and when we don't have an assistant in that can do the cleaning, take the payments, take the phone, and all that, I will, like…

spread out a bit and do that work with the nurse, because to me, it's like, we have to help each other. But I realized I was doing too much of that, and it was stretching my veterinary brain, my clinical brain, too much, so I had to take a step back from that and just, like, chill a bit more. And then we would just have to leave cleaning and some stuff for the people next day. Sometimes we would have to send clients away, because it was just… we did not have the capacity, you know, because I want to help everybody, but I recognized this mistake was a symptom of me

being too busy and too distracted, no, because we were being too busy. It also… then I was like, okay, so this is what happened, this is why it's happened, I take responsibility, let's check the dog is okay, which was absolutely fine. And then next day, I pointed it out to my clinical team, like, the day team, I said, this has to change, we knew… you have to put, like, labels on these, so we don't mistake these medications, one from each other again, no?

Like, but it's going through that process and not beating myself up. I think if I'd killed the dog, if I'd given it, I don't know, methadone or…

something else that I've killed it. I would probably feel a lot worse. Nothing happened, and I was lucky, but obviously, when you make a mistake, that could potentially have killed an animal. That's not great.

But it's like, oh, it happened, fully acknowledge, accept it's happened, take responsibility, and then look at why did it happen, and what can we do differently next time. It was just like, the whole process just happened really quickly, because I've got this level of metacognition, no? And this means, like, and I think…

A lot of us think that the more they beat themselves up, and the more they, like, put pressure on themselves, and the more they're like, you shouldn't have done this, you're not a good enough vet, like, they think the better they become. But I find, and it's proven as well, no, like, the less pressure we put on ourselves like that, and the more we're able to accept, take responsibility, recognize, but without the beating ourselves up, the better we can move on.

and… and learn much quicker, because we… not being in that place of terror and defensiveness of, like, oh my god, I'm so terribly bad, everybody's gonna find out now, I'm gonna be blamed, all this is gonna happen. If you can shut that down, and instead just be more neutral about it, you can actually learn so much more, make decisions, because imagine if I had

If I had had a lot of fear, and a lot of self-doubt, and a lot of, like, oh my god, always

thinking they're gonna find out how bad I am, I might not have acknowledged this mistake, because nothing happened, and obviously metaclopramide, you can probably give quite a big overdose without anything happening. I could have kept my mouth shut, and I could just have kept an eye on the dog, make sure it was okay, and then only admitted to my mistake if something happened, right?

out of fear of… of backlash, of having problems, or people thinking I was stupid, or whatever, I don't know. But…

because I was absolutely okay with making a mistake in this sense, like, I accept this has happened, like, it's terrible, it shouldn't have happened, but it did.

then we were able to take steps for it not to happen again, right? Because I can tell the clinical team, the hospital team, look, you need to… we need to change these boxes, you need to put labels on tape, on queen tape, something, so we can easily separate them, because they shouldn't be put together like this. This is why it happened. If you can't take responsibility for your mistake.

unaccepted.

in a way that you can actually then expose solutions and what happened.

then things are not gonna get any better, right? You can't improve things, and you can't improve yourself. This is when people talk about psychological safety at the workplace as well, but the particular psychological safety starts within yourself, and absolutely knowing that you're a good enough, but…

that you making a mistake does not mean that you're a terrible person, a terrible vet, it's not that you're letting everybody down, there was a cause behind this mistake, and why did it happen? How can we make sure it doesn't happen again? So,

So that was a bit about that, like, getting your facts right, and try to strive for a level of metacognition where you are actually fully aware of what's going on inside of you, and be acceptant of that, and taking responsibility for yourself.

And this is such a big work, in the sense that the more you do this, the more you can, like, write down what you're thinking, accept what you're thinking, looking at it, why am I thinking like this? What is the story behind it? How do I want to think going forward? How do I want to feel about this? It sounds like…

Hard work, and it's not fun to initiate, but the more you do it, the much better life you have, because you can do so much with it.

Right? You can do so much more when you are in a grounded place where you know your circumstances, you know your facts, you know what you think about them, and you are constantly course-correcting based on that.

Alright? So, I'll leave that with you, let me know how this went for you, what you thought about this episode, and please give me feedback on the meditation, I would love that, just so I know, like, even if you thought it was crap, just let me know, because then I just won't do it again.

And for the people on YouTube, I don't know if you checked my,

my tank top, which is, like, stethoscope down, yoga up, from Vet Yogi. Like, I'm friends with Chloe, who is the founder of Vet Yogi. I'm not sponsored by them, I bought this in the Congress. But, just to let you know, they were the ones who were gonna do the retreat together, and if you haven't checked Vet Yogi out yet, their platform, they have yoga for vets, and products, and stuff, and meditations as well. So their meditation is probably much better than mine, because I actually trained in it.

Alright, right, all the best, have a great week, I love you all, bye!