Identifying Unhealthy Boundaries in Veterinary Medicine | Episode 39 | Reviving Vet Med

If you have ever given your cell number to a client when you didn’t want to, covered a shift for a team member when you felt exhausted and overwhelmed, or said yes to a neighbor who asked you for a work-related favor on your day off, then you are not alone. Unhealthy boundaries are common among veterinary team members and not only impact our relationships with others, but set us up for burnout and poor mental health. 

In this episode, we discuss the different types of unhealthy boundaries commonly experienced by veterinary professionals, as well as strategies for recognizing those boundaries if they aren’t obvious to you. Practical tools and strategies for identifying unhealthy boundaries in the moment by tuning into feelings, thoughts, and sensations are also covered.

Listen now and unlock your potential for a healthier, balanced, and fulfilling veterinary career!

TOPICS COVERED:

• Recognizing and honoring our needs and limits
• Reflection on daily non-negotiables for setting boundaries
• Unhealthy boundaries leading to resentment and physical discomfort
• Examples of unhealthy boundaries
• Unhealthy boundaries around time, tasks, and technology
• Impact on mental health

Resources

Quiz: Are your boundaries healthy or unhealthy? https://revivingvetmed.kartra.com/survey/boundaries

Online Programs

To learn more about our 4- and 8-week online programs approved for CE credit in jurisdictions that recognize RACE, please visit:
https://revivingvetmed.com/programs/

Newsletter

For more practical pointers and tangible tips related to veterinary mental health and wellbeing, subscribe to our e-newsletter:
https://revivingvetmed.kartra.com/page/newsletter

Questions or Suggestions

Email podcast@revivingvetmed.com

Transcript

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Hey everyone! Welcome to another episode of Reviving Vet Med.

In today's episode, we will be discussing one of my favourite topics, boundaries. Specifically, we'll be focusing on how to identify the unhealthy boundaries in our lives. We'll touch base on boundaries we have with ourselves in terms of managing the three T's. Time, Tasks, and Technology.

And we'll also unpack boundaries with clients, coworkers, and our boss. This episode is a good one, and I'm really excited to share this information with you, so let's go ahead and get started.

This is the Reviving Vet Med podcast, and I'm your host, Dr. Marie Holowaychuk. My mission is to improve the mental health and wellbeing of veterinary professionals around the world.

Let's start by reviewing what a boundary is. According to the Miriam Webster dictionary, a boundary is something that points out or shows a limit or end. And in the context of psychology, which is how we'll be framing boundaries today, it's the limit between you and something or someone else. So when I think of healthy boundaries, I think of how we recognize our limits and honour our needs.

For example, how we spend our time, where we allocate our energy and what we tolerate, or more importantly, do not tolerate in our lives.

The topic of today's podcast is identifying unhealthy boundaries with which always starts with awareness and awareness of our needs, what I like to refer to as my non-negotiables.

So how many hours of sleep do you need? How much time and reflection do you need? What sort of daily movement or exercise do you need? What you need in terms of social connections and the way in which people communicate with you. All of these are examples of needs, and our needs essentially are what give us energy, what bring energy into our lives.

It's also important to have an awareness of our limits. This helps us to manage the energy that we are putting out. So we all have limits in terms of how much time we spend at work, how many days we work in a row, what our caseload is at work. How much time we spend with others versus alone because most of us are introverts.

How much time we spend on technology; even limits on how much money we might lend to someone else, and so on and so forth.

So I cover a lot of this awareness in my Building Better Boundaries program, and it's something that I encourage everyone to reflect on. And that is to take a moment to think about what your daily non-negotiables are.

So very often when I pose this to the people in my programs and who I do coaching with, they say to me, my gosh, like, I have no idea. I've never even thought about my non-negotiables. And this is a really important thing because when you know what you need on a day-to-day basis to be able to show up as the best version of yourself in your work and in your life.

Then you can make sure that you create your days and your weeks to allow for those daily non-negotiables. And in order to do that, you will have to set some boundaries.

The other piece that is really important to reflect on is to recognize what your limits are with regards to how you spend your time, whether it be at work, whether it be with certain individuals, or doing other activities.

And again, it's important to stay in your own lane when you do this reflection because what each of us has in terms of limits is different. And you know, for some of us it might be perfectly fine or reasonable to work five or six days in a row without a break.

I know for me as a critical care specialist, my limit is working four 12 plus hour shifts in a row. Beyond the fourth day, it just becomes too exhausting. I feel like I've haven't had that time to meal prep and reset and do the things that I need to do to be able to show up at work, again, as the best version of myself.

So carving out time right now by pausing this podcast to do this reflection or resolving to do this when you are done listening is gonna be very, very beneficial for you in the future. Because at the end of the day, recognizing our boundaries ahead of time helps us to navigate our lives in a way that is predictable and prevents us from feeling exhausted, overwhelmed, and burnt out.

Now, I'll be honest with you, you can reflect all day long and still not recognize every single one of your boundaries until it is happening. And what I mean by that is you might have figured out some of your non-negotiables and your limits, but then it might take just one conversation with a person to recognize that, oh, you know what? I think there's a boundary for me here too.

So the way that we typically notice the boundary when it is happening is with a particular feeling, thought, or sensation. So the feeling for me and many others when it comes to unhealthy boundaries is the feeling of resentment. So resenting the other person for whatever they're asking of you or expecting of you, and very often this goes along with the thought of "I'm being taken advantage of," or "this doesn't seem fair," or "this is asking too much."

And then the sensation piece comes from tuning into your body and what is coming up for you in that moment, and very often the sensation might be feeling a knot in your stomach, feeling your ears burning or tingling, feeling tears welling up in your eyes.

Very often, these are sensations that we can experience that coincide with an unhealthy boundary. So I'm gonna give you an example and I want you to really tune into the story that I'm telling you and envision that this is happening to you now, and then taking this opportunity to tune in to your response. So I'll use the example of a friendly neighborhood favor.

So imagine that this is a Sunday afternoon and you have just settled in to time with your family. You had some work things that you had tidied up earlier in the weekend, and then you were out running errands all morning, and now is the time that you have to rest and reset before your work week begins again.

So you've made plans with your family to do something that you really enjoy. Maybe it's taking the dog for a walk. Maybe it's going to your favorite ice cream parlor, whatever it might be. You are literally just getting ready to do this thing you love when you hear a knock on your front door and you open your door and there stands your neighbor.

Now this isn't, you know, your best, best neighbor who you hang out with and you know, text with and that sort of thing. This is a neighbor that you've seen out in the neighborhood. You maybe know their name. You don't have a strong relationship with them. And you know that they have an animal at home and they are coming to ask you if you would mind, since you are a veterinarian or a vet tech or vet nurse, to come by and take a look at their dog because their dog has been itching the entire weekend and they've had it.

They've been waiting and waiting and waiting, and they know it's Monday tomorrow, but they just can't bear another night dealing with their dogs itching. Would you please relieve them of their misery and come over and take a look at their dog?

So I want you, as you hear me telling you this story, which might sound very familiar with you, to tune in. How do you feel at the thought of going and looking at your neighbor's dog on a Sunday afternoon when you have carved out time to be with your family? What's going through your mind? What are your thoughts in response to what they are asking?

And as you tune into those feelings and thoughts, what are the sensations that you are noticing in your body? Now you can imagine, me sharing this example with you, that this is an example for me that would represent an unhealthy boundary.

I would definitely have the feeling of resentment. I would definitely have the thought of "Well, I would never knock on my physician neighbor's door and ask them to look at a rash that I have on a Sunday afternoon," and then I would probably also have the sensation of my face burning up and my jaw clenching as I think about how am I going to politely, but clearly, establish this boundary with this neighbor.

Now I want to recognize that not everyone has the same boundaries. So you might be listening to me share this story with you, and you might be thinking "Great! Sure, no problem. Let me grab my stethoscope. I'll be right over to examine your dog." And that's the tricky thing with boundaries is that not everyone has the same ones.

So this has come up in my programs where I've had individuals who have shared, you know, that a firm boundary for them is that they wanna go to the grocery store and get their groceries and they don't wanna be approached by their clients to, you know, say hello or ask them questions. They feel like that's breaching a boundary. And I've heard from others in the same program who've said, "But I love it when I go to the grocery store and my clients come up to me and talk to me!"

So clearly we all have differences when it comes to our boundaries. Which is why it's so important to recognize your needs, and to identify your limits, and to tune into your feelings in these different situations because it's important that we don't talk ourselves into how we should or should not be tolerating certain behaviors just because someone else does not share that particular boundary.

Now, I want to briefly touch on some other boundaries that we frequently see breached among those of us in the veterinary profession. And the first of those, of course, is the topic that everyone likes to talk about these days, which is our clients. Our clients, yes, are a huge source of stress in our daily working lives. I think that clients can be a great source of joy as well. And obviously our clients are a source of revenue generation for our practices, and they can be demanding and interactions with our clients can be challenging.

So some of the boundaries that we might recognize coming up with clients will be around their expectations for our availability. So it is not uncommon for clients to expect that we might give them our personal cell phone number, that we might respond to their email outside of working hours, that we might come in on our days off to either see them as an appointment or to return phone calls regarding lab results.

We can also have situations of unhealthy boundaries with clients in our interactions with them. So sometimes we have clients who treat us or speak to us in ways that are rude or disrespectful. In those situations, it's important for us to establish boundaries to identify how we expect to be treated; what sorts of conduct is appropriate versus what is not in the context of the work environment.

Another unhealthy boundary I see with veterinary team members and clients is with regards to responsibility. So it is not uncommon for veterinary team members to have the unhealthy boundary of taking responsibility for the problems of their clients that are not theirs to take on.

So I'll use the example of a client comes in and they have a pet who is very sick. The pet needs an emergency surgery, and the client says "I can't afford this. You need to figure it out." And the team members very often do quote unquote "figure it out."

They call the rescue organizations, they contact the shelter, they bend over backwards to make ends meet. They set up the GoFundMe page, they take on the responsibility of figuring out this client's problem. Which, at the end of the day, is not their problem to fix.

I often see unhealthy boundaries as well with clients in the context of clients' feelings and emotions. Where, yes, we are empathetic individuals in veterinary medicine, and yes, it's important for us to have compassion and demonstrate empathy for our clients and our patients.

What is an unhealthy boundary is when we take on those feelings, emotions, and responses as if they were our own experience. Okay, so there are a lot of ways in which we have unhealthy boundaries with clients. And there are lots of opportunities there to establish healthy boundaries.

Another area in which we tend to see unhealthy boundaries can be with our coworkers. So this can be in the context similar to boundaries where we might be oversharing with our coworkers. We might be communicating a lot of personal things to our coworkers just in the context of not necessarily oversharing, but spending a lot of time socializing and communicating. You know, we often have this mindset that our team in the veterinary space should be like our family. And with most of us, with our families, we share a lot with our families.

But what often ends up happening in these circumstances then is that we have these unhealthy boundaries where the lines get blurred between the working relationship and the personal relationship and the expectations of both of those.

And certainly for me, I have found when I am a leader within the group, especially as a criticalist in the ICU, I am the leader, I am the go-to person. When I have what I consider to be unhealthy boundaries between me and, you know, the team members I'm working with, maybe they're students, maybe they're interns, maybe they're even my residents. We might be close in many situations.

And it's important for me to have some boundary and some sense of separation between what I keep for myself in my personal life and what I share with my team. And it doesn't mean that I'm in lockdown mode and I never share any personal details of my life, that wouldn't be realistic. But it means simply that there are boundaries in terms of what I keep close to my heart and what is open for sharing with the team.

Now, in the context of coworkers, we can also have unhealthy boundaries around our helping of each other. Now, I don't mean this to mean again, that you should never help your team members and not be a team player, but what I mean is that we can sometimes forget that we don't have to say yes to our team no matter what they ask of us.

We often have team members that consistently want to have someone take their shift or stay late so that they can leave or cover their lunch break or whatever it might be. And again, this is where it's important to tune into that resentment and frustration. If you have a team member that is constantly asking you to work their Saturdays because you quote unquote, "don't have family," and you are starting to feel resentful about that? That to me is an unhealthy boundary, and that to me indicates that it would be a good conversation to have with this person to just outline for them what your limits are in terms of what coverage you're willing to offer them.

Now, in the context of coworkers and boundaries, we certainly covered this in previous episodes, but sadly enough, it's not uncommon for some of our coworkers to not treat us well. There can be negative attitudes or criticism or even bullying in the workplace that can create a toxic environment and really wreak havoc on our personal health and wellbeing.

So identifying when we are being treated in a way that does not sit well with us, that lends us to feel as though we are being chastised or bullied or criticized or treated unfairly, and again, identifying those situations and recognizing that there is a boundary there that needs to be set in terms of what we will tolerate and what is unacceptable for the way in which that we are being treated.

Now when it comes to boundaries in the workplace, we can also, of course have unhealthy boundaries with our boss. So whoever is your quote unquote boss, so that might be your practice manager, that might be the practice owner, that might be corporate headquarters. You know, maybe you are the practice owner and you are the boss, in which case you are your own boss and you're answering to yourself. And we're gonna talk about that in just a moment.

The idea here is that we can also have unhealthy boundaries with management if they ask us to do things, to have a schedule a certain way, to complete certain responsibilities in the practice, to do things that we do not think that we should be doing. Maybe there's a moral boundary that's being crossed. Maybe there's a time boundary that's being crossed, maybe similar to our clients. There's an expectation that's being imposed on us that just feels unreasonable. Again, if you tune into your feelings and notice the thoughts coming up for you, if you're telling yourself "this is not okay," "I don't feel right about this," I don't like this." There's probably a boundary that needs to be communicated.

Now, last but not least, I wanna share the three T's in the context of boundaries with ourselves. That is with our time, that is with tasks, and that is with technology.

So you can know that you have an unhealthy boundary when it comes to your time if you constantly feel like you are running late, that you are running behind, that you are having difficulty with being punctual, with getting things completed in a certain amount of time. Now many of us do struggle with time management, and again, these are boundaries that we impose on ourselves. We are the ones who manage our time. We are the ones who choose how to spend our time, and we are the ones who organize our days, our weeks, and our lives.

So it is a common unhealthy boundary when individuals are spending time doing things that they don't wanna do, spending too much time on tasks that should be done sooner, or not allocating enough time to certain things that must be prioritized. So that's time.

Then there's the boundary around tasks. There are things you need to get done and they are not getting done. There are boundaries that can help you with that. So this can be things around the house, like getting chores done, doing repairs, getting laundry completed, scheduling things. This can also be tasks that work.

The biggest thing that comes up for me, of course, is finishing medical records. Very often, and especially in the emergency and critical care space, I see this a lot where individuals, you know, see 8, 12, 16 emergencies in a day, and then the end of the day rolls around, or the end of the shift rolls around and they have a stack of a dozen files to complete.

Working through those files is very challenging, and for many individuals that they don't have boundaries around how that is going to be done means that the files don't get done. They go onto the ne next day and the next day and the next day. So if you are an individual that struggles with task completion, there can be an opportunity to assert a boundary there.

And then last but not least, our beloved technology. So, of course we all have smartphones. We spend a lot of time online, whether it be doing emails, whether it be engaging on social media, scrolling through social media, connecting with individuals via text or other forms of communication.  Technology is something that bleeds into all areas of our life if we do not set boundaries.

And ways in which I can tell that an individual has an unhealthy boundary around technology is that they cannot put down their phone, they cannot take time away from their phone. They feel as though they have to be in their inbox or their DMs all the time. That if they're not on social media scrolling that they have this fear of missing out or missing something.

And I cannot stress this enough. The amount of time that most of us spend on our phones and on social media is shocking. And if we were to have better boundaries around that time, the amount of opportunity that that would open up for you to do other things like sleep, exercise, or engage in other forms of self-care, would be life-altering. It sounds like an overstatement, and I can assure you that I am not exaggerating when I say that.

So having boundaries around technology, whether it be where you engage online, if you engage online, how you engage online whether you're an active or a passive user. All of these things have a huge amount of bearing on your mental health, and these are all areas where we want to have boundaries, which really just function as guardrails to keep the experience healthy and beneficial, and not draining and detrimental to your mental health and wellbeing.

So those are the areas in which I see most veterinary team members struggle with their boundaries or engage in unhealthy boundaries, or just simply allow unhealthy boundaries to persist.

And in our next episode, which is going to be on asserting healthy boundaries we're gonna unpack how we can look at all of these unhealthy boundaries, and how we can, with confidence and clarity, communicate and establish healthy boundaries.

So that's it for this episode of Reviving Vet Med. I hope that you have learned how to better recognize your unhealthy boundaries and that you take some time after listening to today's episode to think about your daily non-negotiables and your limits that you want to establish in your work and home life.

If you're interested in a little bit of a self evaluation around your boundaries, then I urge you to check out my new quiz, "Are Your Boundaries Healthy or Unhealthy?" I'll link to it in the show notes and you can access it on the website revivingvetmed.kartra.com/survey/boundaries.

If you decide that boundaries are something that you would like to do more of a deep dive into, then my four week online program that is RACE approved, called Building Better Boundaries, is something you'll definitely want to check out. To do that, you can go to my website, revivingvetmed.com/programs and find information there.

If you enjoy today's episode, and other episodes within my podcast, I would love it if you would subscribe and also consider leaving a rating and review. Those ratings and reviews are what help to drive new readers and listeners to my website and to my podcast, and they really help to get traction on getting this information out into the veterinary space. So I thank you in advance for your time and energy in helping me with that.

And if you have any questions about today's episode or suggestions for future wellbeing topics, please email me at podcast@revivingvetmed.com.

Otherwise, I thank you so much for listening to today's episode, and I hope you'll tune in in a few weeks when we talk about communicating our boundaries with others.

In the meantime, take care of yourself. Bye now!