Self care
The long hours and high intellectual, emotional and physical demands of a veterinary career can be tough to deal with, and many in the veterinary sector will struggle from time to time.
Using self-care tools can help to protect our mental and physical wellbeing.
What is self-care?
Self-care is about doing the things that are in your control to manage your own physical and mental wellbeing.
The choices we make (intentional activities) are thought to make a significant contribution to our wellbeing. This is good news because it also means that we have the power to make choices that can lead us to feel better. We cannot always change our personal circumstances or genetics; however, we can make positive choices which will help our mental and physical health.
Though self-care is a useful everyday tool, sometimes we need a bit more support than this. If you feel that you are struggling with your mental or physical health, then we would recommend seeking external support. This could be with healthcare professionals, with us at Vetlife helpline, other mental health or spiritual resources.
Self-care involves implementing healthy and sustainable strategies to manage our wellbeing, both in the short-term and long-term.
This diagram from the self-care forum represents the sliding scale of self-care, highlighting how self-care sits in relation to an individual’s health and wellbeing needs:
Learning to take care of your own wellbeing is increasingly being acknowledged as a moral imperative for caregivers – you will be unable to properly look after the animals in your care or the staff that you manage if you become too emotionally depleted.
In other words, as caregivers, the act of self-care allows us to provide the best care to our patients and clients whilst maintaining our own health in the long run, so we can continue to do our jobs to the best of our ability.
We have challenging careers. Many of us within the veterinary community may also recognise traits in ourselves such as self-criticism, high empathy and perfectionism. Coupled with the high levels of work demands and stressors we experience in the veterinary sector and in our personal lives, it can make coping challenging. But by making self-care a regular habit, we can help manage these demands and stressors.
Being aware of our own unique and dynamic needs is key. We cannot put self-care strategies in place before we understand what it is that we, as an individual, needs. This will look differently for each of us and at different times in our life, year, month and day.
As a result, building in moments of self-awareness into our day, to check-in with ourselves to figure out how we are doing, what our needs are is a great place to start.
Though many things in life may be out of our control, we can still make positive choices to improve our current wellbeing.
The 7 pillars of self-care
We can use these 7 Pillars of Self-care to guide regular check-ins and decision making. The needs fulfilled by these pillars often overlap, and you may find making one positive change in your life can help improve your wellbeing in multiple ways:
In addition, we recognise the impact financial stress can have on each and every one of us. If you are experiencing this, you may also want to go to our Debt Management page and check out what Vetlife Financial Support can offer.
Useful resources
References
- Cambridge Dictionary (n.d.) Self-care. Cambridge University Press & Assessment, updated 2023. Available from: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/self-care
- Green Cross Academy of Traumatology (n.d.) Standards of Care. Available from: https://greencross.org/about-gc/standards-of-care-guidelines/
