Hit breaking point? Can therapy help you survive in veterinary practice?

Can coaching and therapy really help?

My dad passed away, very suddenly, of a stress-induced heart attack at the age of 50.

He was, quite literally, here one day and gone the next.

No warning, just gone.

I was 25.

It hit me hard. It turned my entire world upside down. It sent me to therapy, for the first time.

Before then I would have said that therapy was a load of bunkum, something that people did who didn’t have the strength to cope with whatever life threw at them. I would have said if you needed therapy then you were weak.

That therapy changed my life all over again. It didn’t put my world back up the right way, it changed it completely. And I will be eternally grateful for that.

My dad was a lovely person, he was kind and caring, he was fun, he enjoyed life.

He was also a vet. A job which he loved but which stressed him out into the bargain. He had other stresses in his life, of course he did, I’m not saying for a moment that the job was solely responsible for the stress hormones that coursed through his body but it definitely played a part.

His death set me on a course that eventually led me to doing the work I do these days.

Therapy taught me how to understand, accept and release my own stress.

It taught me how to understand, accept, move through and release the anxiety that I had lived with for most of my life.

Learning simple strategies helped me to cope on a daily basis.

Understanding how I had become stressed and anxious helped me to release them.

Learning about how my mind worked produced lightbulbs aplenty.

Understanding that I had learnt to respond and react in certain ways allowed me to learn new ways.

Benefitting from therapy led me to the decision to become a therapist myself, so that I could help other people to help themselves. I guess I am at least partly fuelled by the wish that my lovely dad could have received the same kind of help and understanding.

There is no need, in my opinion, for any of us to experience severe stress and anxiety. There are so many simple ways that we can start to change our responses and our thinking, to change our habits and ways of reacting, so that we can lower the amount of stress and anxiety that we experience on a daily basis.

So what are some of those ways?

My top 3 tips are:

1.     Breathe….

Your breath is one of the most powerful tools that you have at your disposal. It has the power to calm your nervous system and release. There is much to be said for taking a moment to breathe in slowly and deeply through your nose and then breathe out slowly and deeply through your nose or mouth. Give it a try now, close your eyes while you do it, if you can and it is safe to do so. Feels good huh?

2.     Ask yourself this question:

Will any of this matter in 5 years time?

Sounds like a simple question doesn’t it? Ask it and give a true answer. Invariably the answer to that question will be “no”. Why? Because you have no idea where you will be or what you will be doing in 5 years time. And here’s the thing, if it won’t matter in 5 years time then I promise it doesn’t matter now either. It feels like it does but it really doesn’t. If the answer is no then I will refer you to tip 1, a nice slow, long, deep breath in and out will help you release the stress or frustration that you are experiencing in this moment.

3.     Appreciation.

Start practicing appreciation, as often as you can, as many times a day as you can fit it in. Begin by taking a long around your world and making a list of all the things in it that you appreciate, even if that’s only 2 things. Make that list and read it numerous times a day, remind yourself of it on a regular basis, add to it as new things pop into your head. Feed yourself with appreciation.

I hope you find those tips useful.

I hope you will make the commitment to yourself to start looking after your mental and emotional wellbeing on a daily basis. It doesn’t need to take you long but it will undoubtedly pay dividends.

To your very long and prolonged good health.

Jo xx