Mental fitness training in veterinary medicine

Veterinary medicine is a blend of science and art, leadership and service – but the emotional demands can be overwhelming. Burnout, compassion fatigue, conflict and workplace stress are pervasive, threatening both personal wellness and patient care. Dr. Marie Holowaychuk explores this reality in her new book, “A Compassionate Calling: What It Really Means To Be A Veterinarian”.

Mental fitness training empowers veterinary professionals to build stronger resilience, unconditional self-worth, and a deeper connection to what brings meaning and purpose to their lives. 

Why mental fitness matters

In this context, “mental fitness” means experiencing less stress, less often, and recovering more quickly when stress does occur. This is essentially the definition of resilience. If you agree that your quality of life is determined by how much time you routinely spend in unpleasant emotional states versus time spent enjoying calm or pleasant emotions, it becomes easy to see how mental fitness can truly change the game.

Veterinary professionals face long hours, emotionally charged situations, ethical dilemmas, and financial pressures. They experience friction with teammates or clients, and many don’t feel appreciated by their leaders. The eventual result: overwhelm, resentment, and apathy — the end-stage decline of people who’ve checked out long before they quit.

Positive intelligence: An evidence-based approach to resilience and wellbeing

Positive Intelligence (PQ) draws on neuroscience, cognitive behavioral psychology, and behavioral science to address the root-cause of self-defeating thoughts and behaviors that generate most of our stress. 

Through a blend of insight and daily practice, PQ teaches people how to activate the “Sage Mind,” where empathy and purpose prevail. The result is a calm, focused mind better equipped to navigate challenges and uncover hidden opportunities.

One of my coaching clients, a veterinarian, described her experience after just eight weeks of training: “I feel more resilient, balanced, and equipped to handle challenges in my career and personal life with a clearer, calmer mindset.” 

Practical applications for veterinary professionals

1. Reduced stress

Mental fitness training helps reduce the impact of stress and self-doubt. When you feel less stress throughout your day, there’s less to recover from at the end of it. (Remember that “quality of life” idea?)

Much of our “optional” stress comes from letting our minds wander into future worries or replaying and second-guessing negative experiences from the past. PQ uses a variety of “self-command” exercises that harness the power of present-moment awareness. Unlike meditation, which can certainly help you recover afterward, these exercises work in the heat of the moment to dissipate stress before it hijacks you.

For more ways to use Positive Psychology in veterinary medicine, check out Dr. Laura Woodward’s book “Mental Wellbeing and Positive Psychology for Veterinary Professionals.”

2. Faster recovery

In veterinary medicine, setbacks and failures are inevitable. As a profession of givers and healers, we often blame ourselves when things go wrong. The Inner Critic is always waiting for an excuse to berate us for “failing” the people who need us the most.

In my 24 years of ER practice, I’ve experienced soul-wrenching shifts that left me an emotional wreck for days. Nowadays, after a challenging shift, I’m fully recovered in about 30 minutes. Think about what that really means.

Your recovery time directly impacts your happiness, and it’s one of the most important skills to develop if you want a better quality of life.

The 2023 Merck Animal Health Veterinary Wellbeing Study confirms that proactive approaches, like mental fitness interventions, help reduce burnout, increase appreciation, and improve workplace culture. Resilience training, in particular, is shown to heighten awareness of stress patterns and strengthen the ability to recover from adversity — for both veterinary students and practicing veterinarians.

3. Unconditional self-worth

If you’re struggling with Imposter Syndrome, perfectionism, people-pleasing, or a need to overachieve, you likely have a transactional sense of self-worth. This means, on some level, you’re trying to earn or prove your value by making yourself indispensable. While striving for empathy and excellence are wonderful qualities, they need healthy guardrails — without them, they can easily drain you.

Perfectionism taken too far means you’re constantly stressed, trying to meet your own impossibly high standards. It can also frustrate others, who can never make you happy, until eventually, they stop trying.

People-pleasing without boundaries leaves you feeling unappreciated as you sacrifice your needs for others’ wants. And a relentless drive to achieve may earn you accolades in the short term, but it’s a fast track to burnout if you can’t turn it off.

Reconnecting with your unconditional sense of self-worth means you no longer need to sacrifice self-care or important relationships to feel valuable at work. It also means having the courage to uphold your boundaries when someone tries to take advantage of you. Unconditional self-worth and self-empathy form the foundation of PQ.

For more on the link between stress and transactional self-worth, see Shifting The Focus: Stress to Self-Worth by Dr. Dave Nicol. 

4. Better relationships

Too often, a lack of understanding about what drives human behavior leads to conflict and friction in our relationships. PQ is like the owner’s manual for the human brain you always wished for. When you gain deeper insight into what drives your own behavior, you can act from conscious awareness rather than on autopilot. And when you understand what drives the behavior of others, they no longer trigger you the way they used to.

PQ teaches empathy and practical conflict-management skills that strengthen relationships both at work and at home.

These aren’t aspirational goals — this is what’s possible when you change the way your mind works at a foundational level. You see things differently. You act with unshakable faith in yourself. You become a better version of you, inspiring the people around you.

What difference does this make? A big one. You’re learning to focus your precious energy on the things you can control — how you respond in any given situation — and stop wasting energy trying to change what you can’t control: other people’s thoughts, feelings, and actions.

For more on what’s possible when you grow your emotional intelligence, see this article from the AVMA. 

Thriving in veterinary medicine is possible

Positive psychology interventions, including those underpinning PQ, have consistently demonstrated both short- and long-term improvements in wellbeing and performance for veterinary professionals and their teams.

Veterinary professionals dedicate their lives to the wellbeing of animals, clients, and their communities. Mental fitness training empowers you to prioritize your own wellbeing while continuing to achieve success — without having to sacrifice one for the other.