The Angry Client

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This blog is dedicated to my nephew who will undergo complicated surgery this week requiring a team of surgeons. He is just shy of thirty and such a kind and gentle soul. Underneath his gentle nature is a strength I am in awe of. 

Often we find ourselves trapped in the world of meism where we are preoccupied with ourselves and how the world affects us. Meism predominates in our younger years, however, remnants of it stay with us forever unless we work hard to ditch it. In meism we are in our third chakra, our ego, and we remain isolated and lonely. Meism keeps us from connecting to others in any real way. It prevents us from being able to act compassionately. We see ourselves as separate. Life becomes about protecting ourselves, our families, our businesses, and our things. We cannot possibly understand what others are going through because we are so wrapped up in our own suffering. There are some people that live their lives in this realm but most of us just sink there from time to time. 

The simple fact is that life is hard and no person escapes the difficulties of life. That is certain. For me, I created a world in my mind where every other veterinarian business owner was thriving and I was the only one struggling. This world, born of my ego, was a world of untruths and gave me permission to feel sorry for myself. If I am the only veterinary business owner battling the fatigue of owning a business, then what need would I have to reach out to others? My ego won and kept me isolated from the healing effects of togetherness. 

Living in that lonely world prevents us from really hearing what others are saying and often those things are worth listening to. Perhaps it is a client or employee with a wonderfully, different perspective. It behooves us as business owners, doctors and humans to be able to hear them. This is listening with our hearts. I wish I could go back to some extremely tough conversations I had in my career and instead, be an observer of the conversation. In that way I could detach from my ego and listen with my heart. The benefits of this would be that my ego would remain unbruised, I validate the other and lastly, problematic issues would be resolved so much quicker. 

Think of the meanest, nastiest client you can think of and how painful it was for you to interact with that person. Maybe even just having this thought brings up intense feelings of anger. It can hurt personally so much that we are unable to stop feeling the hurt for even a moment to imagine how much pain that client must be in. We can walk around with pain and not explode on others normally, so how much pain must this client be in to no longer even be able to hide it? It is safe to assume that they are suffering intensely. 

I am not giving clients a free pass to be jerks to us but when we listen with our hearts, we receive several benefits. We no longer see this as a personal or professional attack but a display of intense pain. Now our compassion can kick in and we can hear what the client is saying. Through the anger there might actually be informatIon that is beneficial. Typically, if the client feels that we are hearing them, it will de-escalate their anger. And listening with compassion prevents us from reacting. Quick reactions are directly from our ego and get us into trouble so often. 

When you find yourself the focus of an angry tirade, breathe deeply and slowly, listen to what they say as best as possible with your heart, understand that they are clearly in pain far deeper than this single event, and finally when you are ready, respond appropriately. We simply have no way of knowing what they had to deal with that morning. Perhaps it was an anniversary of a loss or they just got fired from their job. Maybe it is something they are not even aware of. If you approach them this way, you may easily mend the relationship, or it might be time to lovingly escort that person out of your business and out of your life. You can live a life of compassion while never being a punching bag for someone. When you escort them lovingly out of your life, you are free of any and all guilt. Release it and get on with your day. All their pain, their anger, their grief is not yours to carry regardless of how much they try to make it yours. 

But release is much easier said than done. I know of my own experience of ruminating on a client’s anger for days, months or sometimes years. This served no beneficial purpose and in fact had the effect of making me so angry that I didn’t want to give anymore of myself. Looking back I was defensive of my meism. By not letting it go, I made it all about me. That anger or frustration is a toxin that has to be released. It poisons us and over time creates compassion fatigue. Join me in the compassion meditation available soon on my Spotify Podcast to help guide you on a release of these toxins to make room for forgiveness.

While my nephew prepares for such a huge surgery, it is a gentle reminder to me that we have no idea of what others deal with daily and how much suffering they are hiding. One safe assumption is that every person has some degree of suffering because life is so truly difficult. In this way we are all connected. We are united in our singular desire – to live a joyful life. With this recognition, we appreciate others as us, not they or them, and it becomes easier to stay on our own path of healing by keeping compassion where it belongs, in our hearts. 

Find me on The Veterinary Compassion Fatigue Project Spotify Podcast, my website, Facebook and YouTube @TVCFP. Let’s keep talking about what we face in the veterinary and animal care world and ways that we can help each other. Reach out if you have a particular topic you would love to hear about. Subscribe to hear updates on our annual restoration retreat to be launched in Spring of 2025. As always, I hope you find what you are looking for and share it with anyone who needs it. 

With love and hope, 

Dr. Erin Holder