Hello. It's Anthony Chadwick from the Webinar vet welcoming you to another episode of Vet Chat, the U K's Number one Veterinary podcast. And I always feel very privileged to, run the podcast because I get to meet so many inspirational people.
Today's, visitor is no exception. Gunilla Petersen, who is a veterinary surgeon based in the UK in Denmark and in Spain. She's actually learned the technique of trio location, not bio location, but anyway, good.
You're gonna explain all of that to us as to what you get up to, with a bit of background, first of all, but, good. I think again in Danish. I'm practising this without actually saying Good morning.
Is that close? Come on. Good morning.
Good morning. Great to great to speak to you. And welcome to the welcome to the podcast.
Thank you so much. It's great to be here, so yeah, obviously Danish qualified from Copenhagen in, well the beginning of or mid mid noughties and then have done some practise in the UK. But now, living in Spain, a coach tell us a little bit about about the journey about, how you find yourself now moving around a bit, but having a really fulfilling life.
So I was a bit like you. I know you said that you wanted to become a vet since you were eight years old. So for me, it was since I was four.
So it was the big dream. And I went into vet school 100 MPH. I was so passionate about it.
I loved it and we talked about gratitude. I was grateful for every moment. Sometimes there were some subjects where people would moan about, and I was just so excited.
I'm a vet school. I'm becoming a vet. This is my dream.
I came out of school exactly the same, and I went into veterinary life. The same with that passion and that dedication. The problem was that I just didn't have any boundaries.
I didn't see that I was actually burning myself out. And the way that I was, I just kept going. It just felt I think when you're in med school, it's the the more effort you put in.
Then you get your grades and you can kind of see there's a measurement of effort and there is a limit to what you can do. But once you're out there, there is actually no no limit. If you can just keep going, right, you can just have your phone on you all the time.
You can give your phone number to people you can just like. If you don't, you don't realise it. You can just work 24 hours, seven days a week.
And I actually had my own clinic in Spain with a business partner, and I did exactly that. I worked 24 hours a day. I had the emergency phone on me at all times, all weekends.
That was a Christmas Eve I spent at home with a power of puppy in my bathroom because I was trying to have a nice Christmas Eve. I didn't want to be in the hospital, so I took it home and I ended up dying anyway. But it was just insane.
And there came a point where I I literally hated what I was doing because I just I ended up getting a divorce. I felt very alone as well. I felt like there was so much going on in my brain constantly, and I just I just thought, Well, that med is just is too hard for me.
I need to I need to get out. How long were you in your professional life when that happened? It's not that long ago.
It was just before covid. Actually that I properly burned out. I was, Yeah, I was.
I think it was obviously running my own clinic as well. So having my own business with no business background, I have to learn on the go. My business partner was not that business inclined, so I was taking care of all that side.
Then the crack happened in 2008, 2009. So I then started lowing in the UK to bring in more money as I was running the clinic. I mean, it was insane at that point.
The thing is, I didn't realise that that was actually something wrong, that I wasn't coping. I went to the emergency room twice for heart palpitation and chest pains, and it was just pure anxiety and they didn't know that. They just said we can't find anything and I didn't realise that the state I was in was not normal, and it was not until I kind of got out of it and and started the journey of coaching, meditation, yoga, doing all these things, realising Oh, wait, There's something I can do about it that I then realised.
It's like when you have a headache and then it goes And you're like, Oh, that was actually a really bad headache. Yeah, and And what was the realisation to get you into coaching in the first place? Where were you?
Just miserable and and, ratty with everybody. I wasn't. I was, I was.
And nobody would have ever known there was something wrong with me. And that is something I found in beds that I coach as well. They literally have to take sick leave because they get panic attacks and can't get out of bed.
But nobody knows that some. They always the bright and happy people. And that's that was totally me.
But I thought right, I'm not feeling great. It must be the work is too much for me. I need to do something else.
So I started a search for doing something else. I read Tim Ferris four hour work week, and I thought that sounds amazing. If I could just work four hours a week.
I feel much better. And then I started listening to his podcast books. He recommended and I found, Tony Robbins, who is a well known coach.
I joined one of his programmes and in the programme there was a lot of coaches that we were just chatting. There was a lot of groups and because I was in the state, I was in my kids when I were teenagers, I was not coping well at all with them being teenagers. There were so many ways I wanted them to be that they weren't.
If your parents, you'll know what I'm talking about and the coaches in the programme coached me on that and that's when my mind just blew in and I realised how much power I had over myself, my thoughts, my feelings and how that could change my perspective. Relationships with everything that was that was the realisation had the power of coaching going back. How could you have prevented the burn out in the first place?
Because obviously, you know, coach other people and the good I mean in a sense, you know, you've got coaches, you've got mentors you got counsellors. And when we get to the state, you know, we always have to go to a counsellor. But actually having that mindset of having a coach, you know, one of my the chair of my board, you know, we speak every week, and it's really good to be able to just share ideas and things with him.
So he acts as a sort of, coach mentor to me. And actually, it was really interesting. I was at a vet ed conference last year, and there was a lady from I think it was Cardiff or Swansea University who was following a group of vet students, and she was just seeing how they were getting on, you know, post qualification.
And just the fact that she was ringing them up every quarter made a huge difference to them because asking how they were going on, you know, is it normal that this is happening? Oh, well, that sounds like you've got a really strange, you know, set up at work because I think the work situation can have a lot. I just did a LinkedIn post yesterday because it was our 14th birthday and the Aha.
I just brought out AAA white paper on ST please. You know, it's all about the great attrition and just basic stuff about show appreciation to people. Make sure they're paid well, Modern medicine, good teamwork.
And then last week I was at a dinner speaking to a young vet who, you know, the the the one of the nurses used to slam the door in her face as a student on a regular basis and give her a black eye. And then we wonder why people want to leave the profession. So there's all those sort of things going on, isn't there?
Do we need to be doing more coaching, you know? Do do you like the look of some of the The bigger groups now have got graduate academies and things. Is that all moving in the right direction from a coaching perspective?
Are we becoming as a profession, more coachable? Do you think? I think it's a really good question.
I would have to see what they teach to be able to evaluate the effectiveness of it. I think we are probably 20 years behind human physicians. I know they, a lot of my peers that have coached, are physicians and are very successful, and they are coaching.
So in, at least in America, doctors are very much into coaching now. So I think having a coach is I would say I would say necessary, but it is incredibly helpful. Why is it helpful?
Because a coach can point out awareness. So you, for example, if I were coaching you, I just wrote a post about, for example, a bet I know that studied. I was his mentor for a few years.
He's been working for several years left. The clinic was three months off because he was felt a bit burned out, and now he was stressing about starting up in another clinic, and his brain was just completely internal vision around. Everything is new.
I don't even know where anything is. I don't know the procedures, the protocols, the comp, you know, his brain was just bombarding him with all these things that he didn't know. And and he said, I'm starting from zero, you know, And he was convinced that was the truth for him.
We talked before thoughts as fact for him. It was a fact. I'm starting from zero, and then I said.
But what do you know like, Why are you not at zero? And of course, he can face a catheter. He knows how to use a stethoscope.
He's spoken to owners before he could pick up a phone, he can interpret it blood panels. And once we started Oh, OK, Actually, there's a few things I I will probably take a couple of weeks to pick up on. But I have the basis.
So the number one thing I think about having a coach is the awareness. And I think to come back to your question, you and you said it was Is there anything I could have? What could I have done differently when I started burning up was the awareness that all these thoughts I had about I need to save everybody.
I need to help everybody, everybody. All the clients have to be happy. I need you know, all the animals have to survive.
That was literally my thoughts, and and that is obviously as a fallacy is not possible, right? You can't do it. But if you're convinced you have to, that is the most stressful position you can be in talk us through with your coaching.
Is that done virtually? Is it face to face? Is it in groups?
Is it 1 to 1? Is there a particular system that you follow? So I coach 1 to 1.
I also do I do webinar workshops. I could do those in person. I like 1 to 1 because people can be really vulnerable.
And physicians, I find and vets especially don't like being vulnerable. We don't like to show something is wrong with us. And I feel when people come to me that they are showing a great act of courage just to speak up and say I think I need some help like we're not really good at that.
So I caught virtually on Zoom and because I travel a lot, it would be impossible to have in person sessions anyway, because I live between three countries. And that's the way I do it. I.
I offer a lot of free sessions just so people can try it out because I think it's it's great to try. Like once you've been coached, it's you might just get blown a bit. Yeah, What sort of system are you using?
Cos obviously you know coaches. Whilst you're not counsellors, you must presumably bring in some of the strategies and and some of the work that you know councillors have have created in the past. I presume we work very alike.
The difference between a therapist and a coach is a therapist can obviously can treat everybody. We can do the same, but we don't tend to work with people that are nonfunctional. So if somebody has severe depression or they can't get out of bed, you know that they're not functioning.
They're not getting up. Then that's for therapist. We can work together still, but they they would need therapy and maybe a psychiatrist as well we work with.
I think that the the the kind of coaching I work with is cognitive behaviour. So it is that awareness of your thoughts, question in them. Do you want to keep those thoughts?
And the other big area is being aware of the feelings we're having and being able to process them and and just realise that life is 5050. Our life is never going to be 100% happy. Be OK with that.
Accepting that and being able to to cope with the other 50%. So this is cognitive behavioural therapy C BT, isn't it? And and do you think that, there's a danger that, you know, I suppose from, from A from an evolutionary perspective, We've kind of been hardwired to be slightly pessimistic, haven't we?
And is that the Lions and the Tigers, on the whole have left London now so I can walk down the streets and be reasonably happy that one is not going to attack me. But we still have those worries, don't we? A lot of people worry a lot, and a lot of those things never happen.
But there's those thoughts become almost like facts, don't they? They do. So we were saying before, there's like we have 60 to 80,000 thoughts a day.
80% tend to be negative. Exactly for that evolutionary reason that if the grass is moving, I better assume it's a lion. Because if I assume it's a rabbit, then my genes are not gonna continue forward.
And I do see vets do this a lot, so, like they will come in, for example, because I do nights so the day vets will come in and they'll check the diary. Oh, this is coming in. He's coming back.
I wonder if the treatment didn't work. Oh, no, this is coming. I need to operate.
Do I know how to do this? I have to look, you know, and they just worry like maybe that 20 appointments and they worry about every single one of them. And then the animal comes in, and half the time there's it's not half as bad as the result.
Yeah, exactly. They come in to say they give you chocolates. I don't know, you know, or the operation that seem really complicated is, you know it's not that bad, like, once you're in it, it's not that bad.
But the problem with us is that we tend to humans in general, want to control right? We want to control the outcome. We want to control the end result.
But I think especially in biology and especially in bed me, it is so unlikely that you can control ahead of time what is going to happen, right? Because shit hits the fan all the time in bed and the ability to be able to adapt and not freak out and and be a bit OK with OK, now this is happening. Let's just do this instead then And also not worry about it beforehand.
And also not beat ourselves up about it after that's a big one. Yeah, it is. And and of course, we have that one.
You know, awkward client who comes in. We've had 30 lovely, lovely clients. So we tend to go home and talk about the nasty one and and then can almost inflate that.
As you know, all clients are troublesome, whereas actually, the majority are, you know, are are are lovely and and no problem. But can we get into trouble if we're kind of saying, you know, just be happy all the time? I.
I know we were talking prior to the pan to the podcast about Victor Frankl's book. You know, perhaps talk a little bit about that. How do we it It can be bla a saying somebody who's in a bit of a pit, you know, just be happy.
It's not as simple as that. I understand. But, you know, gratitude and positive thinking can get you through a lot, can't it?
It can. So Victor Franklin, for those who don't know. He wrote a book called Man Search for Meaning.
He was a psychiatrist that ended up in Auschwitz, and he had this big purpose, which was finishing this book. He wanted to write about mind and horrible things happened to him. His family got killed.
He had a pregnant wife that got killed, you know, it was just horrible. And he still managed to to not be positive in that moment, of course. But to find purpose, he came out, He remarried and had Children and had a life after that.
So I like when I fell down to compare myself to him. And I'm like, Just because, you know, the operation didn't go as you wanted or you got to complain. Your life will never be as bad as this man.
And he was still, you know, he still managed to carry on. But I think, like you said, it's not. It's not helpful for someone who is in the hole to say Just be positive, but there's two aspects of it.
One is being aware of what thoughts are bringing you into that hole. And are they true? So if you're telling yourself like all the clients are terrible to me.
Actually, when I coach people, then we realise, like you say, it was actually just one client. But he just feels so much because your brains tend to focus on that. You get tunnel vision.
The tunnel vision appears because when we start getting stressed, our then our animal brain takes over. It wants to protect us. It wants us to focus on this wrong.
One thing that might be going wrong now, because again, the lion you don't want to stop smelling the flowers and be grateful for your kids when the lion is running behind you, and that is literally the feeling we have. When we get a complaint that somebody's yelling at us or we really scared about going into an operation, we get tunnel vision. So being aware of your thoughts then and say, actually, it's not that bad, you know, or am I really?
Is this really true and just shake them around a bit? That can help a lot, so it's not switching them for positive thoughts, but just the awareness of are they even true, the thoughts that I'm thinking and the SEC? The second aspect of it is what is called affect labelling, which is being aware of the emotion you're having and that awareness alone they've done MRI scans and I've shown the amygdala, you know, they could see the change.
Just say you're feeling stressed right now and then you say to yourself, I'm feeling stressed. I'm feeling this. I'm feeling the other and the amygdala calms down.
So just being aware of what emotion you're having and then say OK, of course, I'm stressed to have all these cases and just realise that that can be a big help. And that is something I find us. Vets are really bad ass because we are very action minded.
It's like we just need to work more and just get this over. We just need to get this over with so often I will coach someone and they are feeling terrible. And I will say so how are you feeling right now?
And they'll be well, what it is, is that that client he said, I'm like, No, no, this is things you're thinking. But what do you think? What are you feeling right now?
And it takes us a long time to just drag that out. And again, you don't need to change that feeling for something else and be positive. But just being aware of you're feeling this thing because I'm thinking this and then you can shake it up a bit.
We just push our feelings away. Whereas I suppose as somebody if you if you're feeling stressed, if you recognise that and then just say in a typically British way, I think I need a cup of tea, then that will solve a lot of problems. Are you currently looking for a new role?
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I have to tell the lion story, actually, because, I went through a difficult time in the turn of the century and divorce and then 2005, I felt like I deserved a sabbatical, so I went for about 2.5 months to Africa, and I travelled around Africa pretty much on my own. I had a couple of people joined me at different times, and, I went pretty much on public transport.
I. I bought a car off a friend and that blew up in the middle of a nature reserve. A game reserve where you sort of stuck in the car until somebody comes and gets you.
And then, I'd read a book about a guy called George Courtney Salo, who was a big game hunter in at the turn of the century. And then when the war was declared the first World War, there was also a war because Tanzania was German, East Africa, and Kenya was English or British East Africa. So he was about 65 at the time, in a sense, too old to fight.
But he he got involved in the fighting and was killed and, where he was buried. He was a big game hunter, so he shot a lot of elephants and lions in his time. They have a a gravestone, and the lions lie on the gravestone as if to say, Well, we got you in the end kind of thing, you know?
So I wanted to go and see this particular area. It's called the Salo Game Reserve. It's the biggest game reserve in in Africa.
And then I I'd read another article about Lake Talla, which is even more sort of, you know, it's in. It's in salu, but it's in the middle of salu, so it's quite remote. Most people go to the Serengeti.
I was there in Salo, and, we we got a a driver to take us down there from Do es Salam. You know, there just just the the small group of us. And I'm, saying to Kenneth Oh, I need to go to the toilet.
I'm just going to go to that bush over there and have a W. No, you're not. No, no, no.
There's a group of tigers and lions in there. I went, Oh, OK. This is where it's good to have that pessimistic brain.
I live to tell the tale. I think they might have looked at me and decided there wasn't enough meat on me to to make it worth a while anyway. But, who knows?
That's Another good thing, of course, is to take time, isn't it? Sometimes I think, as you said with you, the person that you were coaching to take that two or three months off in between jobs or even a month off or use your holidays take days off. You know, we're all as you say, I'm a bit the same as well.
Action driven, very purpose driven around a lot of the environmental stuff that I see at the moment. You know, realising that we've got to move quickly on this. And yet at the same time, you've got to look after yourself.
You've got to take that time where you know, you do disconnect. You turn the phone off. You don't look at social media.
We are very, very connected, aren't we? I look at my attention span now, compared to when I was at school and university when I was studying. And I can't concentrate nearly as long as I could have done 30 years ago.
Life has got physio, hasn't it? It has. And I know a for when we do coaching and we say these things like, take time to, you know, breath, work, meditation, coaching journaling is a bit.
That's for someone who's listening that not ready for coaching just yet. I would say journal journaling is the next best thing because that's when you can see your thoughts. And when people say to me, Oh, but I don't have time for that.
I would say those of you who say you don't have time for that are the ones that need to do this because you need to learn to prioritise. And you need to learn to slow down because the faster if you're in that position that you don't think you have time for anything and you try to move faster, you're not gonna get anywhere. You're gonna be like a hamster on a wheel, and things are just gonna get worse.
Ask me how I know, right? So that is that, like taken. But the problem is when we in this space of as for me personally, with my anxiety, like I couldn't when I was off, it was when I felt worse because then I couldn't work myself out of.
I couldn't just solve problems all the time. I think I was at that at that point. Addicted to solving problems with my patients.
I needed to solve that all the time. And otherwise I wasn't feeling great. I needed to.
So when we ever had time off, I would often just get sick because that's when my body could finally relax. So that's another thing. If somebody notices whenever they're off, they just tend to get these cold fevers and and and feel terrible when they're off.
Then that's another sign that you should definitely start evaluating yourself and your priorities. It's almost making sure that you do it on a regular basis that you don't get to that level. I know I've had a very busy couple of months since the beginning of the year, and I've not got down to lunch, the nature reserve or at the beach as much because of the busyness.
And I now realise, you know, next week I need to have some time just to do those things, because that's what brings me joy. You know, when I can go out and watch the nature and see the flowers and see the birds, et cetera. So yeah, it it is self care, isn't it as well it is, But I think there's busy and there's busy, right, because I can have a 13 hour shift where we don't stop.
It's rare because I'm in a nice, quiet hospital, but, when we have them and everything is working, I can work 13 hours not stopping, not peeing, not drinking, and I don't care. It's fun, right? The anxiety and the stress for me comes when something is not working.
It's It's everything that's going on in my head. That nurse doesn't like me. This is not working.
I'm sure the owner doesn't understand blah, blah, blah. You know, it's all that underlying conversation and my brain trying to solve all these problems that haven't even happened yet of that. I think I need to solve and I need to control, such as keeping people happy.
For example, I think a lot of us think that we are responsible for other people's feelings. That's something that was big for me. So you have an euthanasia, you have something that goes wrong, whatever and the client is really upset or really angry and we I felt I needed to solve that.
No, that was kind of my problem. I took it on me. And that is stressful because obviously I can't do anything about it.
People upset like it hasn't give them a cup of tea. I could try and talk to them, but I can. Then I need to let them grieve, right?
That's their process, not mine, and realising that that takes a lot of stress away. So the anxiety, I don't think, comes as much of being physically busy as in all the business in our mind, but also so if you're if you're busy but you're having fun, then you're OK with taking a break. You don't feel you need to keep going.
If you feel like taking a break, you take it. But when you have anxiety and stress, you don't see the need. You can't you can't see that you need a break.
Even if that makes sense, I think worry is the big one. My mom was a big worrier, and I earlier on in my life was and then I decided I should just stop it because I think there's a bright spot that notice that the Bible pretty much 365 times and it says something along the lines of Do not let your hearts be troubled. Don't worry.
Because actually, it's corrosive, isn't it? Because most of the things, as you said, you know, is that nurse not liking me, you know, Does the boss not think I'm doing the job very well or, you know, will that dog die? You know, because I've given it, I've I've done something that maybe I think isn't the right thing.
The reality is most of those things never happen. And yet we worry about them and it's corrosive. And, you know, obviously as a as a Catholic, we say, Well, if you're really worried about something, pray about it, and that will help.
So, you know, having that sort of spiritual element also can can sort of just help give people a bit more on the meaning side as well, Can't it that they are cared for in a in A in a greater way? I like that thinking. Yeah, I'm studying Buddhism right now because I really like the whole just let think, accepting things as they are and not trying to change.
I think you ask about, maybe books I've read before and one of them one of them that, the authors I really like is Byron Katie. She's got something called the work, and it's literally about accepting what is right, and that doesn't mean you don't want to change. So, for example, let's say a family member gets horribly sick and is going to pass away.
You can't do anything about it. You have to accept that that's going to happen. You can still grieve.
You can still give them turmeric and cucumbers if you think that's gonna help, like, do what you can. But you need to accept at some point that this is it. No, and not fight that reality and that if you transfer that into Vet Med, so if you have a a manager that is insecure, lacks confidence, lacks experience and is coming to you from that, you know, from that base, then obviously he's not going to be a great manager, But can you accept that this manager is never going to be ideal?
And these are the reasons why. So do you want to accept it and keep working for him and just get along with it and just do your best to kind of not take his feedback too seriously. Or do you want to change jobs but staying in your job, not accepting how he is wanting things to change every day.
Complain about it, you know, to your peers and to your husband. Now he said this he did this blah, blah. I just complain, complain, complain and again, like worrying what's going to happen, not accepting what is.
I think that is a big thing as well. So Byron Katie, her work is is marvellous for that. For accepting what is, and also.
But I think feeling that you are being taken care of, like, kind of assuming that that God universe, whoever you believe in is kind of, you know, everything will be all right in the end. You know, if you can come in with that base as well. I think it's very helpful.
Gunilla, it's been great to speak to you. If you get a good walk down to the beach today, as I said, I'm in the middle of London, so my beach is is not as warm as yours anyway. But I'm going to have a little walk through Hyde Park over to the QE to Queen Elizabeth, the second centre, where I'm going to be doing some stuff on sustainability which rocks my boat.
So doing things that you're passionate about, I think also, as you said, helps to keep us all happy and purposeful, doesn't it? Definitely. Yeah.
Find your passion. Yeah, It's been great speaking to you. Another LinkedIn friend I I who knows?
As I go out to the airport at Malaga next time to see my friend, I might just turn left instead of right. So watch out, you're more than welcome. Great to speak to you.
Take care. Thanks again for all the work that you're doing, you know? Well, thanks everyone for listening.
This has been vet chat. Hope to see you on a podcast very soon. Take care.
Bye bye.
