By Carol Hurst, LVT, CVPM, CVJ
You know the feeling. It is an hour past when you were scheduled to leave and the critical patient that contributed to the lateness still weighs heavily on your mind. You get into your car to drive home and your nerves are a wreck. Your team was particularly stressed and overwhelmed – and for good reason. The case completely derailed your afternoon, which isn’t novel. You are already several hours behind for tomorrow. You start thinking about all of the things that you have to do tomorrow. Each task pushed back by the few things you didn’t get done tonight. And oh-wait, you set the alarm to the clinic before leaving, right?
We can continue this scenario all the way into this manager’s home-life and how her nerves being such a wreck contributed to her “losing it” as soon as she walked in the door and nearly tripped over shoes that were haphazardly discarded. While not every day is going to be this stressful (hopefully), bringing home the anxiety, anger and frustration from the clinic isn’t uncommon.
In fact, this was my story 7-8 years ago. I was oblivious to the level of stress that I was bringing home to my husband. When I was at home, I was so exhausted that I never wanted to do anything except zone out behind a book. It took a gentle (but firm) prodding by my husband to get me to examine what was going on.
Let’s face it, our jobs are stressful. This isn’t something that is going to change. I love this field. I loved having the connection with clients through their furry family members. I enjoyed the whirlwind of educating, motivating, inspiring and then rinsing and repeating. However, I did not handle the stress well. How we handle stress and recognize our own reactions to it – and even further than that, our triggers, can greatly impact our overall job satisfaction.
Before I went on my journey of self-awareness, there were a couple of tactics that I used to help me in the present.
Reflection and “Letting it Go”
I had a 45 minute commute to and from my clinic. What I knew for certain was that I didn’t want to end up at home feeling just as wound up as when I walked out the door of the clinic. So, I clicked my radio off and I started examining why I was feeling stressed/anxious/angry/unhappy, etc. Sometimes, it was like unraveling a large ball of yarn in my head that had gotten all snarled up. Rarely was my stress triggered by an event that happened 15 minutes before leaving. More often, it was something that happened earlier in the day that I was forced to compartmentalize so that I could move on to the next task.
For example, I’m feeling anxious and as I start thinking through what happened during the day and where this feeling came from I realize that the interaction I had with one of my staff members didn’t go exactly as I planned or hoped it would. So I was anxious about what to do next.
After I pinpointed what was causing that discomfort, I gave myself 2 choices. 1. Can I do anything about it? If the answer was yes, sometimes I plotted my course of action for the next day, or maybe I just made a note to myself so that I didn’t forget to follow up. Or maybe all I needed to do was to give it a good post-mortem. If the answer was no, I gave myself permission to…that’s right – LET IT GO.
Now, I’ll admit that this step was often way more difficult in play than putting it down on paper makes it seem. Sometimes I had to keep going back to the fact that there wasn’t anything else I could do.
My rides home suddenly became a lot more productive. Sometimes I would have several things to unravel and make a decision about and other times it would just be one thing. As time went on, it became easier to identify in the moment when a situation was going to throw me off my game and I needed to “come back to it.” I now almost run through this process unconsciously.
Making the Most of the Time You Have
The other thing that really helped me feel less overwhelmed, was to make the most of the time that I did have. This meant going off-site for my lunch breaks (even if they only ended up being half an hour) and even if this meant me just eating in my car. Giving myself that mental break did wonders for my mental state coming back into finishing the rest of the day.
Sometimes there is very little you can do in the short-term to help with being under-staffed and having to play catch up. Sometimes you are just physically and mentally worn down when you “clock out” for the day. My encouragement is to not squander that time that you have at home with your family. Even if you aren’t “feeling it” going into the evening, making the effort will go a long way in helping you to balance out the stresses of the day. This doesn’t mean that you have to be a Super-Person when you get home, but make the effort to cook dinner. Spend that time and take your dogs on the walk that you both enjoy. Sit down and pay attention to the drawing your daughter spent the last hour on. Baby steps are key here.
You Can Do It!
We have busy, stressful roles within our practice. It is easy to let our to-do list swallow us whole. I’m hoping that my experiences can helping someone going through a similar journey. Anytime we can increase our self-awareness, it can help us become more well-rounded, happier leaders. Please don’t hesitate to reach out if there is anything I can help with!