Hello, it's Anthony Chadwick for the webinar that's welcoming you to another episode of Vet Chat, the UK's number one veterinary podcast. Very fortunate today to have Gianna Gomez on the line, a fellow veterinarian, who has had a varied career. So perhaps rather than me introduce you fully, Gianni, you can tell us a little bit about yourself.
Sure. Thank you, Antony for the opportunity. I'm very happy to be here and share a bit about my story and my experience.
So I am a vet originally from Brazil and I studied veterinary science and did also my master's in Brazil and as soon as I graduated, I went to work in aquaculture fish farming, and from there I moved to Australia, lived there 10 years, and we think in Australia, I really work within aquaculture, but in the research settings in James Cook University and I did then my PhD there as well, with, you know. Developing new, new, tools for diagnosing disease in, in fish. And, so I was trained also as a marine biologist in this, during this experience, and then I worked with these settings of aquaculture and, you know, research for a long time.
And then I was really doing my PhD and afterwards, you know, during COVID that I start really questioning a bit about my journey and decided to, to change a bit and go more in the mental health part and supporting veterinarians and, and people working with animals. Yeah, brilliant, and we'll go over that in a in a minute. The, the agriculture.
Area is really interesting. My, the, the vet who helped me to get into that school did her PhD on fish mucus at Louisiana University at Catfish, so, became a leading aquaculturist and then became college Royal College president, Doctor Lydia Brown, who's been a great mentor. And support for me.
But obviously aquaculture, we talk a lot about the webinar vet sustainability and even on this podcast as well. Obviously aquaculture is a fairly new industry, it's a fairly new technique for farming more and more now we're eating more and more fish and yet we have this problem of marine pollution, potentially overfishing. How do you think aquaculture is fitting in and how is it doing from a, Sustainability perspective.
Yeah, yeah, aquaculture plays a, a, a key role here in sustainability, right? While it is a new industry is out there in the spotlight and sometimes get a bad reputation, you know, and, but like any animal industries, there are the bad and the good, you know, examples, and really depends on the practise and the. Legislation, the regulations in different countries, but for, for sure it plays a very important role in the sustainability and conservation of the oceans, right, because if you keep fishing, you know, and, and, and just eating, you know, wild catch, we end up, you know, there's already a lot of statistics showing up that you end up depleting really our oceans, right?
So aquaculture plays a role there in replacing, you know. This pressure from the oceans, you know, to produce food for everyone. And if it's done properly and if you know the right people with the right knowledge, it can be a great thing for everyone.
I think also, you know, your PhD was developing environmental tools to predict disease outbreaks, which hopefully also meant you know, prophylactic treatment became less likely. We're talking about this a lot now in small animals, you know, with the, the tendency was for us over the last 20 years to treat for worming and flea treatments every, every month, potentially even if, you know, there were no evidence of disease. So waiting until you know that there's something there and treating certainly in, in some areas, obviously vaccination different.
I think seeing more vaccination type treatments is gonna be better than using chemicals which can obviously in the, in the sea, it can leach into the wild environments as well, can't it? Yeah, for sure, so yeah, the work that I did was exactly based on the prevention, right? So in aquaculture different from terrestrial, you know, industries, .
The animals take a long time to show up when they are sick, right? When they show up, you know, they are under the water, it takes a long, it's not like you're seeing the animals all the time. By the time that they show up, signs of symptoms usually it's too late.
Most of the diagnostic tools that are out there in the Companies providing diagnostic are great and are important, but most of the time by the time farmers get results from diagnostic tools, it's too late. There's not much I can do. That's what the idea that I had was to use environmental DNAs really call is like what if we detect the.
DNA of pathogens in the water before actually signs of disease, you know, show up and then I integrate this with . Environmental information and also water quality information right because just knowing if presence and absence of a DNA doesn't mean that you know things are going to happen but when you integrate use this multitude of data in an interesting and you know understandable way you need to understand the system what's happening. It really can give predictions and you know give you I know .
It's kind of a forecast system I'd like to call that, you know, could can give indication that something might happen and then give a bit of a buffer so farmers could do, you know, something about it. That was pretty much the research I have been. So very much sort of molecular biology with potentially a bit of PCR involved in there as well.
Yeah, so my main work was developing QPCR, you know, essays for fish disease. Yes, most of the work in the lab was that, yeah. And I, and I, I migrate a bit also to, I really always like to bring, you know, ideas from different disciplines within the aquaculture.
Research, so I end up using digital PCR which is the most modern kind of, you know, detection for, I think QPCI will move to digital PR PCR at some point when the challenges, you know, are overcome. It's a lot more sensitive, especially for low copies of DNA, so yeah. And that's really key I think as a, obviously, I suspect, you know, you're very creative and inventive, but the.
If you like, the negative of that is that you also like to do other things, so to stay in a career for 2030 years. We, you know, I, I'm also sort of creative and I've been a vet for 25 years, practising, but then for the last 6 or 7, mainly just doing webinar vets. It is nice to sort of recreate yourself, which is obviously what you've done, you know, we were talking prior to this, the little virus that wasn't a fish virus but was a bit more land borne called coronavirus hit in the early 2020s, and I think it.
It made everybody think about purpose and why they were doing what they were doing, and I think this was also critical for you for moving from the the aquaculture industry where you were obviously, you know, an expert, a world authority, and then looking at some of these mental health issues that we're gonna talk about in more detail now. So tell us how that kind of happened. Was that something that.
Did you suffer from some compassion fatigue, and that made you want to try and help others, or how did it, how did it all come together? Yeah, yeah, it's quite an interesting story, right, because when you talk to people, oh my God, you had a great career, you know, you have a job, you know, and everything, right, what you're doing, right? But yeah, I think during COVID, a lot of people start questioning their what they're doing and with me was no different and I really, I was going through, now I know I was going to burn out already at that point.
I suffered from compassion fatigue early on for sure in the vet schools. I, I had, we didn't have that name then, but I'm sure I had it now that I understand more. And all those things also if, you know, questioning what are you doing, why are you doing this, and what's the impact really.
And at that time, you know, during COVID, I was in Hong Kong, working the vet school there. City University of Hong Kong. It was a great experience, a great opportunity, but at the same time, the, the purpose and you know, was not there anymore and I, I started questioning what I was doing and I said what can I do, you know, different and then was during that period also that I got interested in.
RTT rapid transformation therapy, which is was created by Marisa Pier from the UK and as a client, I saw how powerful it was and I said, well, how can I become one? And I always like, like you said, I'm very creative. I love learning, I guess that's why also I went into research, right, reading, studying, and it's great, but also it can give you this bug of change a lot of time.
Which can be useful in many, many areas and many times, but it could also cause this disruption and, and you want you to change what you're doing. And so I, I went to do the training of RTT when I was already here in Singapore and when I finished the, the training, I did the training also to become a compassion fatigue, certified professional. How do I integrate all this with my previous work and that's when I had the idea of developing this programme, this support for veterinarians, vets, and, and people work with animals really because we know there is a lot of mental issues going on around, you know, the profession.
We need more vets, but vets are leaving the profession, and so if there is, you know, more support and especially here in Asia, I think there's a lack of support specific for veterinarians from someone that have been there and know how things are, are, you know, work, . Could be a good idea and that's what I decide to do. And so last year I quit my job and start my own business on developing this programme.
Very, I mean, it's very similar, I think where we could be twins, Giana, cos you were saying you, you know, you like change, tick, a bit disruptive, you know, tick, lifelong learner, tick, and creative tick. So we certainly share some, some traits as well. And I think it's also useful, you know, when I set up webinar that there was no online CE, you know, 14 years ago, nobody even knew what a webinar was.
I think being a vet and understanding the issues that we were having trying to get training, you know, it was expensive. You had to travel for it. There was a cost in time, there was costing money, there was costing time away from family.
There was an environmental cost in the carbon that we were coughing up when we travelled, you know, even short distances. And I think you've had a similar thing there where you've been able to be a part of the profession and say there is a problem here. You know, I need to solve it, be it an agriculture problem or now, you know, more mental health.
So I, I think problem solving is also maybe one of your traits as well. Yeah, yeah, for sure. I think being, you know, a scientist also, it helps with that that training, for sure, and, and yeah, like you said, there is a problem and I think this problem starts early on, .
Most universities you know in in training veterinarians are great in training on the technical skills, and that's great, very important, nothing wrong with that, but I think we are not well prepared for the mental challenge that the profession, you know, we, we facing the profession. I really believe that things should start. Changing there because we come to the profession right at least I remember me and you talked to many people because we love animals you wanna save animals and it'll be a glorious beautiful experience and even in the vet school, right, many things we experience are not that great, there is already a lot of issues on the mental side.
Because of the things you have to experience, right? They're putting down animals and those kind of things, and we don't like to talk about, we don't feel great talking about, it's not nice to say that, you know, you have to kill your patients. So there is a, a, a need, a gap of, you know, of, important, you know, support there within the vet schools, I believe, and I think there are schools and places that are changing.
I know in Australia there are some schools changing in that area, but is a is a . Big way to go, I think, you know, to help there and then so that's where I, I, I wanted really like you said about solving problems. Maybe that's where my, my new focus will be really to help, you know, professionals within the area to continue to be in the profession because there's no point of you being a great surgeon in 2 or 3 years you just quit because you cannot face the challenge and it's too much burden.
And many people are doing this a shortage of vets globally here in Singapore is no different in Australia as well. So to keep professionals within the profession, we know we need more support and that's my role here really to try to bring a bit of support by reprogramming how our mind works and bringing more resilience and empowerment. To help all these professionals out there.
Talking again about Lydia Brown, who's the fish vet that I, I know, also Royal College president a few years ago, we did a podcast with her and an American ex-soldier all around moral injury, which is another word in a sense for compassion fatigue, isn't it? Are you currently looking for a new role? Or maybe you're thinking about locuming but don't know where to start?
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Visit Simplyetts.com to find out how we can help. Tell me a little bit about how you would define compassion fatigue.
Sure. So yeah, quite interesting you mentioned about that. I wrote a blog post that will be out probably this week and the following for Vet answers the platform from Australia about more injury and more distress and one last year about compassion fatigue and burn now.
So if you want, I can give you a bit of a very quick, you know, definition for each of them. So compassion fatigue is more really this mental pain, this empathy. Exhaustion, right, the fatigue, the name comes from that, that we experience and that it really impacts our ability to empathise with others but also with animals that are suffering, right?
And it happens from this experience of seeing, hearing, and experience others or animals going through suffering or trauma. So it's also called secondary traumatic stress because it's secondary. We are not the ones facing the trauma, the suffering we are experiences.
Second one. Going through that, right? Burnout is most general exhaustion, right, that happens and we, we, you know, if you feel trapped in the work we are doing, you don't feel any purpose anymore.
The motivation to work is not there anymore. You feel a bit negative towards the place of the work we are doing. And burnout usually happens in any kind of profession.
Compassion fatigue is more in this kind of professions where you experience seeing here others going through suffering. Moral distress is more related to the and I believe that moral distress actually. Is the trigger the starting point of both of the issues.
I could be wrong, but I think it has a big component in them or this stress has to do with this. Moral dilemmas and ethical values we've been challenged, right? So the things that we believe and very strongly are usually challenged by the pet owners, the company we work or even by colleagues, right, and really affects us that we end up making decisions and actions that really do not align with what our values.
And can then develop in the moral injury which is really the psychological part of the issues. So I think they are all intertwined and happen together in some way because I think moral distress with euthanasia convenience euthanasia is quite common and, and it's present out there, but we don't talk much about it, right? So and I have some ideas of how.
Clinics and companies and a project that I'm trying to develop here, how we could, you know, tackle some of these issues. Yeah. We've had an attitude at Webinar vet of trying to, you know, regenerate hope.
I think hope and faith to some degree has been lost in in er the last number of years. And and part of that is obviously, you know, if you turn on the television to watch the news, you know, war in Yemen, war in Ukraine, war in Israel, Palestine, these are stories that don't actually cheer people up when they watch the news, so I think it's, It's so important that we also see the positive, you know, as a vet, I, I, I'm no longer practising but did 25 years, and I really enjoyed my time as a practising vet, you know, it was, it was a very satisfying career. I'd wanted to be a veteran when I was 8, so it was very vocational for me.
I, I also, you know, as well as loving animals love people. Does that help, do you think, cos you know, you were talking earlier about, you know, you love animals, etc. And often.
There is that deep love of animals to come into the profession, but then of course, most of our interactions, verbal interactions obviously come with the people. Are we as a profession, sometimes we struggle maybe more with our interactions with people and does that also add to the burden, do you think? Oh yeah, for sure, because I think, you know, even with compassion fatigue when I say we we impacts our ability to empathise with others and and and animals, I think it's more actually the the humans that we struggle more like the shelters, for example, we talked to, you know, Oh my God, you know, all the, the challenge that, you know, to empathise with the person that abandoned an animal, for example, that's the hardest part for sure, and, and in many other situations and like you said.
We are wired for negativity, right, and that's how our brain works. We have around 60,000 thoughts a day. Most of them are negative.
There's a, there was a purpose in the past when you used to live in the bush, you know, in tribes, but these days, right, most of these negativity are more a perceived threat, right? So it's more like we interpret things that are not actually a threat, a threat. And being constantly on looking and reading and you know, the negativity also does not help.
No wonder we are all burned out and you know, stressed most of the times. So, the important thing is really to raise awareness about our thoughts, right, because if you can catch when we are being the negative, we can change that. That's how the principles of RTT work really.
So be aware of your thoughts and change that to a more positive one. And this is not about just being happy all the time. It's really about working with your mind, you know, empower your mind to be more resilient and .
Dealing with challenges and issues in a different way. The challenge, the difficulty stress and the suffering is not going to go away, but the way we face it and deal with it is different when you are empowered to do that. Hm.
My irritating habit that I had as a young child was I tended to go around asking all the adults. I could see my my favourite question was why? Why do we do this?
What, what is about why, why, and they would get quite frustrated by me. I was maybe a bit too inquisitive and so on. But I think if you have a purpose and if you are purpose centred, you know, with your business, with your own life as well, that can really help with, you know, you're not necessarily going to be happy all the time, as you said, but maybe content.
Do we sometimes, you know, also from television to see these perfect lives, these reality televisions and think, oh my goodness, my life is so far away from that. I don't have a private jet, I don't have a, a, you know, a yacht that I can that I can take out of the harbour. I is that also then impacting into.
We, we end up having this, this envy rather than just saying this is my purpose, this is what I want to do, and I'm gonna be really focused on that. So is it a is it a lack of focus that can turn us into these very negative thoughts as well? Yeah, I think the, the social media is great, you know, for some things but not so much for others, I guess, right?
And, and this idea of always thinking that people's other people's life is perfect, right? This has been put out there and if you really Know that most people, you know, we struggle with different things we never know what people are going through and people always have some, you know, issues going that we just don't talk about, right? Nobody likes to talk much about what's happening there.
But, if you really can, you know, focus more on ourselves, like comparison, I think I used to compare myself all the time, took a long time to work on that. Compare ourselves with others and, you know, like you're saying, you know, this person has this and that. I think it's the worst.
Think we can do to our mind because it really, you know, put us on the, there's no hope for me, right? What, what I'm going to do because, you know, this person, the other person's life or with no ideas. But like being focused like you said on your purpose, on your why, right?
Know your why makes a huge difference. That's what the all the the shift that I have to do, you know, in the last 5 years that have been working on those things. Why I'm doing what I'm doing, right?
We most of the time we don't even ask why, what, what's the reason I'm doing it. We end up in this, in this matrix, right? And doing because that's what is expected from us.
I already have a good job and I'm getting paid well and so I expect that, and that's what my family thinks that I should be doing. But is that what really I wanna do it, you know, and why I'm doing really? Is it just For to get famous is that, you know, because of there's something else out there that I never ask about.
So yeah, knowing your why and the reason you're doing something is really, really important and it's part of the process of really Finding find finding fulfilment and you know, enjoying what you do for sure. Hm. Just going on to, and we've talked about it a bit, but perhaps just bringing it into the rapid transformation therapy.
You obviously talked about going through it as a client, but then saying, oh my goodness, I really am excited about this, I want to bring this to other people. Tell us a little bit about what it's actually trying to achieve, and maybe some of your own, you know, personal experiences with it. Yeah.
So, so like I said, it was a method created by Marisa Peer that is based on hypnosis, but it's not the traditional hypnosis, right concept. It incorporates different therapeutic methods like CBT positive psychology, then involves neurolinguistic and concepts of neuroscience. So it's very powerful, I believe because it incorporates the best of different techniques.
And then works it and it, as the name it says rapid transformation therapy because it is rapid in the concept doesn't mean that you do one session and you know most depending of the cases, right, it, it can be faster than others, but the concept is that really going to the root cause of what the problem is and you know change and reframing and really empower your mind, you know, to, to be more resilient to deal with whatever you have to do in a completely different way. So there are different kinds of therapies out there. I'm studying, for example, a masters of counselling now, and this talk therapy is great and I think it can help people, but sometimes it takes a long time for a person really to go through the suffering, the pain, and what Marisa creates is a method that's a lot faster.
That really goes to the root cause of the issues and really transform people's life. And I'm, I'm the, the, the example of how it works, you know, I've been to different kinds of therapies and different methods and this one was the one, the one that really helped me. That's why I decided you really to, to experience to, to share with other people as well.
So yeah, that's basically the concept of RTT. How would you say it changed you? Going through it as a process and then obviously now, you know, as a teacher.
Sure, I always have been very negative, very critical myself, perfectionist, and what it change and from, you know, upbringing and experience as well, but what it really does is really learn you how to talk to yourself and how to communicate with your own mind. So it was a long process of reframing how I talk to myself. So if I make a mistake would be you and dumb, be the idiot, you know, this this self talk that you have the tendons to do naturally without being aware of, but the words have power and these words can really impact your life in different ways.
You're not aware of that. So was really this how it's changed more was this part of the process of me embracing this change of going through the process of how I talk to myself, how I reprogram and, you know, be aware of what I say to myself, what I do, and then changing little by little and then from from. It took a while, of course, but now, you know, I don't see things in the same way that the challenge, the difficulties there, but the way I face it, the way I deal with it, is, is very different.
I'll give an example of something that happened with me like, you know, 3 weeks ago I was on a trip to Borneo, Malaysia, and on the way back there's this connection of flight. And the first flight was delayed, so the second one would compromise different companies and said, oh my God, how am I going to do? And I want to get home.
I didn't want to be stuck there in Malaysia anymore. You know, natural responses like the threat response, your heart rate goes up. I'm going to do and I have to run from one point to the airport to another, talk to different people to solve the issue, and if I'm not there in time, what I'm going to do.
So the tendance would be for me to freeze, probably cry, get angry, and you know it. So what I did at that moment, that's when I saw, oh my God, that's really powerful. I just calm my down by introducing some exercise that I teach people a lot in calming down my breath.
I think everything is worked out. You know how to solve this problem, you know that it's going to work out. Just calmly talk to people and do what I have to do.
And that's what exactly happened. So instead of being on the negative side, nothing's going to work. I'm not going to get home and how, what I'm going to do, you know, and all those things.
I went on the positive side. OK, so if I talk to this person, they they connect with the other company. And as soon as I get out of the aeroplane, I run to the, you know, there was someone there waiting and, and exactly that's what happened.
So it's a very simple example, right? But we have to tend to go to the negative and get angry. So that's how I, I'll I show, you know, to you with just an example of how this works.
And, and actually it is a problem of that we are perfectionists, or many of us are, whereas actually in my life I've found that when I've failed, I sometimes I've often learned more than when I succeeded, so failure is a part of life and we have to embrace failure, don't we? Yeah, failure and mistakes are actually where you learn. I, I never really learned.
Anything if I remember by doing it perfect first time and you know I don't so we have to embrace imperfection because you know we are all flawed. We are not perfect, you know, all humans have issues and and perfection does not exist. I think actually, you know, we, this is like a a concept that, you know, someone put out there and And I think learning from mistakes, you know, from failure is, is the best lesson really, you know, can do like in research, for example, with the people who used to work with me, I used to say all the time, go to the lab and make as many mistakes now when you are learning this technique because later on when you're really running the experiments, I don't want you to be doing that.
But if now you learn, you make mistakes and you question and know where it's coming from, later on you'll be better off doing what you have to do. And I think as an inventor, I remember Thomas Edison failing numerous times and creating the light bulb. But he carried on and he learned from each time, you know, he, he made those mistakes, didn't he?
Yeah, for some in research we have to, which was a big challenge for me like being perfectionist, right, so has been this thing that. You have to try many times and things are not going to work and you repeat things and then they not work and then you do it again and again, you know, the process of writing, for example, scientific articles, the process of writing, editing, changing, and editing again, and it can be frustrating. I remember how angry I used to get with myself, right?
You know that's not right and. And we have to remember that also our behaviours or our thoughts are not us, right, but we associate with, make a mistake, that's us. Actually it's not, you know, it's something we did, it's not us, it doesn't reflect that I'm a bad person because I made a mistake.
So having to, you know, to dissociate this idea that a mistake or failure is us, represent us is very important and and very powerful concept to bring to our lives because it really can change the way we deal with anything. And I think to kind of finish off. We, we have to be loving ourselves and kind to ourselves before we can go out and love other people and be kind to other people, don't we?
That's, so that's the sentence that I use sometimes of my talks that I don't remember the author now, but it says this quote, if your compassion does not include yourself, it's not complete, and that's basic what it is and you know, care providers, animals or humans have the tend to give too much and not believing that we we deserve or we are worth of, you know, caring as well. And that's a very important concept. You cannot work on an empty tank, right?
You cannot give from an empty cup. We know that, but unfortunately we, we are not really kind to ourselves and everything has to start there. When you start being more kind and there's the science behind this evidence base, a lot of evidence there how compassion.
And you know, empathy are important for many reasons and help us in so many ways in lives. And if you want to be the best with animals, for example, we need to take care of ourselves. We cannot just give, give, give, and never replenish our tank.
Gianna, thank you so much for agreeing to come on that chat. It's been lovely speaking to you about aquaculture, about sustainability, about compassion, fatigue. Mental health, they're all really important areas and yeah, let's hopefully keep in touch.
Thank you very much, Anthony. It was a pleasure and I really enjoyed this conversation. Thank you very much.
And just as a, obviously we can put some pieces below the the podcast, but Forever Animal Warrior, I think is, is that the name of the company? Now the company is through self healing online, so my idea was to work for myself online, and I have, yeah, the website I can share and the programme that I'm developing is the Fur E Animal Warriors. So it's a support programme for veterinarians and people work with animals.
And forever F U R E V E R. Yes, they forever, yeah, Thanks once again, Jana. Thanks everyone for listening.
I hope to see you on a webinar or a podcast very soon. This has been Anthony Chadwick from the webinar vets. This has been that chat.
Take care.
