Wellness

Dr. Marie Holowaychuk joins Dr. Andy Roark on The Cone of Shame Veterinary Podcast to share her journey through burnout, mental health struggles, and recovery as a boarded critical care specialist turned wellness advocate. In this insightful episode, Dr. Holowaychuk discusses the realities of perfectionism, the martyr complex, and the challenges veterinary professionals face in balancing work, identity, and life outside the clinic. Marie opens up about her personal transformation, the pivotal role of boundaries, and strategies to prioritize mental health. Whether you’re navigating burnout, seeking wellness solutions, or striving for a sustainable veterinary career, this conversation is packed with actionable advice and inspiration for veterinarians, practice owners, and veterinary teams.

You can also listen to this episode on Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, Soundcloud, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts!

LINKS

Marie’s Website: marieholowaychuk.com

Mental Health Hub: revivingvetmed.com

Instagram: @drmarieholowaychuk

LinkedIn: Dr. Marie Holowaychuk

Dr. Know It All Card Game: https://drandyroark.com/product/dr-know-it-all-card-game/

Dr. Andy Roark Swag: drandyroark.com/shop

All Links: linktr.ee/DrAndyRoark

ABOUT OUR GUEST

Dr. Marie Holowaychuk brings a refreshing perspective to veterinary medicine, championing the wellbeing of veterinary teams with warmth and expertise. Based in Calgary, she’s a respected emergency and critical care specialist and a familiar name in the world of veterinary wellness.

Alongside her ER work, Marie is a prolific writer, speaker, and researcher. You might catch her hosting the Reviving Vet Med podcast or sharing insights in her monthly blog and newsletter, all geared towards supporting mental health in the veterinary community.

When she’s not at the clinic, Marie is a dedicated yoga and meditation teacher and wellness coach. She leads workshops and retreats for vet clinics, sharing practical strategies for staying balanced in a demanding field. Plus, she works behind the scenes on revivingvetmed.com, a go-to resource hub for veterinary professionals seeking support and guidance.

Beyond her professional endeavors, Marie finds joy in spending time with her daughter and beloved Standard Poodle. She stays active with strength training and HIIT, embodying the holistic approach to wellbeing she advocates for in her work.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Dr. Andy Roark: Welcome everybody to the Cone of Shame Veterinary Podcast. I am your host, Dr. Andy Roark. Guys, I am here with Dr. Marie Holowaychuk. She’s amazing. You’re going to hear in a moment. She is a boarded emergency critical care specialist. She is a Yoga instructor. She is a wellness coach, life coach.

She’s just, she’s such a fascinating person. I love talking with her about mental health and wellness and the state of the profession. And this is a great conversation. She is someone who really burned out and left medicine in, almost every way, shape and form. And then came back around she was the daughter of two veterinarians and now she’s back and she practices emergency medicine.

And I get to ask her, what’s different now than it was when you burned out and oh such a good conversation. Anyway, guys, this is great just, make you think conversation about that medicine life. Dr. Marie Holowaychuk. Let’s get into it.

Kelsey Beth Carpenter: This is your show. We’re glad you’re here. We want to help you in your veterinary career. Welcome to the Cone of Shame with Dr. Andy Roark. 

Dr. Andy Roark: Welcome to the podcast, Dr. Marie Holowaychuk. How are you?

Dr. Marie Holowaychuk: I am very well. How are you, Andy? It’s good to see you.

Dr. Andy Roark: Good to see you! For those who don’t know you, you are a fascinating person. So you are boarded emergency critical care specialist. You were on the faculty at Ontario vet college for a number of years. You have all kinds of, you have this, a menagerie of certifications around mental health, wellness, coaching.

You have a vibrant yoga practice, which is something I have always known and remembered about you. You do these wonderful retreats in Canada that I have always wanted to attend. Like you, you just do really cool stuff. Yeah, you and I met, I’m trying to remember where it was, I remember it was at the conference when we first sat down together, and you were talking to me about your interest in mental health, and it was pre-pandemic.

It’s very pre-pandemic and you were one of the first people that I remember really talking about mental health and wellness before it really caught on and people were like, wow, this is a big issue. You were right up at the forefront of that. Why don’t you tell me a little bit if you don’t mind? Talk to me a little bit about your journey.

And, because here you are, and you’re a boarded criticalist, and you’re on the faculty, and then you decided you wanted to do something different with your life, and you started this sort of wellness focus in practice. Just tell me the story a little bit, Marie how that developed.

Dr. Marie Holowaychuk: Yeah, I was on faculty at OVC, as you said, and was loving it. I loved academia, the research, the teaching, the clinics, like the variety of it all. And I loved it so much that it was all I did. It was all consuming. At the time, nobody was really talking about mental health. Nobody taught us about self care and boundaries and work life balance and these types of things,

and so I just totally immersed myself in work. To the point where it just started to have a lot of impact on my mental and physical health. And I didn’t realize that at the time I started to have all of these health problems and feel really unhappy and disconnected. And I thought, wow, everybody around me looks like they’ve got it all together and they’re doing so well.

Like this just, Academia must just not be for me. I’m just not cut out for this because this doesn’t feel sustainable. And so I do what a lot of us do when we’re in a situation that doesn’t feel right. I just, I put in my resignation. I left and I didn’t really know fully what I was going to do, but I moved back closer to my family in the Western part of Canada.

And then I thought, I’m just gonna work as an independent contractor. I’m going to look, I’m going to speak, I’m going to do all these things. And just the same things continue to happen. The workaholism, the perfectionism, just working myself to the bone, to the point where, yeah, the burnout continued and it was a day where I was rushing around, had come back from a conference and was going to work elsewhere and I was in a bad car accident and it was like this wake up call, like physically and metaphorically, like you need to slow down.

You need to figure this out. And I used some of the money from the accident, the settlement to do my yoga teacher training and which you know about. And, from there, it just started me on this journey to wellness and taking better care of myself, my mental health, and then wanting to share that information with veterinarians in the form of retreats and so on.

Because, this was more than 10, 10 years ago now. So we weren’t really talking a lot about this back then. There was a lot of stats around, suicide and other things, but there was no solutions. And I thought we need to talk more about these solutions. And if I had some of these solutions in these steps earlier on in my career, I probably wouldn’t have and maybe I wouldn’t be where I am today and things would be very different, but here I am and that’s my short story.

Dr. Andy Roark: I think the fact that you were in a car accident, a severe car accident, and that’s what kind of gave you the opportunity to really explore wellness. The universe certainly has a sense of irony. Tell me a little bit more, because I don’t want to let you off the hook this easily. Tell me a little bit more about what your life was like as you were, as you were working in academia and you were a clinician and you say, Oh, I was doing these things and I thought everyone else had their life together.

And I go, Marie, you looked like you had your life together. you’re on the faculty. You’re brilliant. You are a brilliant clinician. You are so smart, so capable. Like every time that I have seen you, you strike me as the person who has everything. I can’t help but believe that other people saw that when they looked at you. But how were you feeling at that time? What was your life really like?

Dr. Marie Holowaychuk: It’s so funny how individuals can look one way on the surface and you really have no idea what’s going on underneath. I was having so many problems with sleep, like significant insomnia. I actually went through a cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia program while I was at OVC and it was transformative.

It really helped. I highly recommend it. It’s actually one of the only evidence based therapies to help with true insomnia. But that was taking its toll on my health, physically and mentally. I’ve always been a person who has struggled with mood and I have a mood disorder, depression, and it was, I think it was taking its hold a little bit more than I realized at the time.

Also, in addition to that, there was a lot of anxiety, like the Sunday, we talk about the Sunday scaries before I would go back on clinics on Mondays, on this Sunday night, just like again, anxiousness, can’t sleep, to the point where I was having a bit of panic episodes. And I just, I felt like I was on this hamster wheel I couldn’t get off of.

I needed to work because it was like, almost like I was using it like a coping strategy, like an unhealthy coping strategy and I was deriving a lot of self worth from that work. And yeah, you’re right. On the surface, I was publishing all these papers and I had these grad students and was busy and had a lot of successes and I felt like I had no life.

I felt disconnected from my family. I wanted to have a partner and start a family and that wasn’t happening for me because I had no time for anything. Again, physical health challenges, I was working with my physician and a naturopath and they were both can you not see what’s happening here?

you need to slow down. I don’t know what you’re talking about. This is just a part of being a busy professional and everybody must go through this stuff. And then so much so to the point where I couldn’t see it any other way, like I just thought this is the way it is and clearly I’m not cut out for this.

And it just became too overwhelming. I know that there were times where I just wasn’t able to show up as the best version of myself and that unhappiness, it just really took hold. And I just had to make a change.

Dr. Andy Roark: I was talking to this veterinarian last weekend, and she said she knew that I had worked with a lot of doctors, I’ve been doing a lot of work with a lot of medical directors, and it was funny because I thought her question was so good, but she said to me, you work with all these young leaders, have you noticed patterns?

in what they struggle with or the challenges that they face. Meaning, as individuals, do you see these recurring issues again and again? And she totally caught me off guard because it’s a hard question, but I couldn’t think of a much more valuable question than the answer to. And I love that question was asked to me.

And I want to ask that to you. Marie, you’ve been working with so many people and so many vet professionals and your knowledge is so deep. You lecture. And then I really, I keep coming back to the retreats that you do. I’m going to get you to talk about them a little bit, but just as someone who really likes to know people and to work with people, like the exposure that you have to people to really have time with them and to get to know them.

I’m always envious of that. I just, I think that’s such a wonderful thing that you’ve created. And so knowing those things, I want to put this question to you. You’ve worked with so many people and you’re so involved with wellness and mental health in the vet profession. What are the patterns that you see when you think about our profession and the challenges that people face?

Dr. Marie Holowaychuk: It’s such a great question and it’s so many different things, but I think we can identify a few commonalities and themes that weave throughout and I’m sure a lot of your listeners are going to be able to identify with these. Perfectionism is a huge thing that is pretty pervasive in our profession, I think so much so that people just think it’s normal.

Of course we want to be perfect. We don’t want to make mistakes with our patients. And what if a patient dies because I made a mistake? Like everything has to be, exactly correct all the time. And what people don’t recognize is that perfectionism, that trait of perfectionism, is highly linked with depression, anxiety, burnout, and other challenges.

Because The more we expect perfection of ourselves all the time, which let’s be honest, it’s not realistic. The more pressure we put on ourselves to have those perfect medical records and all of our clients must love us. And we must always have the answer. And it’s an unrealistic expectation.

Dr. Andy Roark: Yeah. Never ends. Yeah.

Dr. Marie Holowaychuk: It never ends. I think some additional things that we can see are things like martyr complex or martyr syndrome. Some people talk about I’m going to take one for the team. Somebody has got to do it. Client calls at the end of the day, we’ve got an emergency clinic down the road.

There are other alternatives and yet we feel it’s no, I will stay late. I will miss my daughter’s soccer game. Somebody has to do it. I don’t want them to go to ER and wait for three hours. And that’s OK. If you’re making these decisions because you genuinely want to help and you genuinely want to be that individual, then great.

What often ends up happening is this martyr complex is in combination with victim mentality, where then we stay late. We do this and then we feel like, oh, I had to do this. There was no choice, like I am at the whim of my clients and their expectations. And, it becomes just this loop that people find themselves in, which is not good either.

 so I think those are some really big things that can happen. I think there’s challenges inherently too, with people not being able to set boundaries and maybe that’s tied a little bit into that martyr complex, but, a lot of veterinarians have a difficulty, first of all, identifying themselves outside of our profession.

They identify only as a veterinarian and let’s be honest, part of that, it doesn’t help when we go to a dinner party, we tell someone we’re a vet and then we have to talk about animals and their problems for the rest of the evening. 

Dr. Andy Roark: But also I always call people out on this because I’m that way too. I will tell someone i’m a vet and then I go. Oh now I’m gonna have to talk to him but the truth is I like that their eyes light up. I like that I’m valuable and you know what I mean? Like I’m just being honest, but I do the same thing. I’ll say I’m a veterinarian then I go, “Oh man.”

Dr. Marie Holowaychuk: Oh yeah. What have I done?

Dr. Andy Roark: But I know in my heart, I told them I was a veterinarian because I wanted to impress them or I wanted them to say, oh, I wish I was a veterinarian.

Dr. Marie Holowaychuk: You’re proud of it.

Dr. Andy Roark: I am proud of it, but I still, when I’m doing it I know that I’m doing it as okay, Andy, are you going to feed your ego or are you going to or are you going to tell them? I don’t know. Tell them I work with I don’t know. I’m a manager. I don’t know. 

Dr. Marie Holowaychuk: Totally. Yeah I’m a people manager, which is true. It’s like when I tell people I’m a yoga teacher, it’s not actually a lie. It’s just not all that I do. I think yes, there is this challenge in it. And again, it varies from person to person. I’ve talked to veterinarians who work in small towns and they love going to the grocery store and seeing their clients and having conversations and being recognized.

And, they don’t mind that. work life integration where everything meshes together. And there are those individuals who resent it. They say to me, I just want to go to the grocery store and not have to talk to not run into my clients and talk to them about their pets. And they really want their life more compartmentalized and separated.

And this is where the challenges come up because when you don’t know what you need and you just start to feel resentful and frustrated. It’s hard to fix it. And I think that was for me early on, too. I didn’t know all the things that my body and my mental health needed. And so I wasn’t setting those boundaries.

I wasn’t practicing self care. I wasn’t taking care of myself. And so those boundaries, that’s a big piece. How do you want to structure your life? What are you okay with in terms of outside of your, daytime job as a veterinarian or overnights if you’re an overnight ER doctor, but whatever your work is, what are you okay with

outside of that. And again, for some veterinarians, it’s hard to shut that off. Like they, they can only see themselves in that way. And they feel like that’s a lot of pressure or that they feel like they’ve lost themselves outside of work. Like they have no identity other than vet med. And then when vet med doesn’t go well, Then it’s what else do I have?

And who am I as an individual? And everything can fall apart with that board complaint or whatever might happen. So there’s so many different things and I, have other thoughts, but I wanna hear what you think. 

Dr. Andy Roark: I think you’re spot on. I think you called out the big ones. I think perfectionism is spot on. We’re seeing more and more of the research that’s coming out now, and it talks about the mental health status. And it’s interesting when you look at sort of mental health challenges in people in the vet industry versus the general population, the actual numbers of sort of mental health challenges are not that different from the population.

However, we are more likely to have severe mental health challenges which I think is definitely noteworthy. We’re also more prone to neuroticism than other industries and other groups of people and neuroticism often manifests as perfectionism. And so I, when you were talking about perfection, I think you’re spot on.

And so it’s funny, even before you mentioned that you mentioned about yourself, that you were a perfectionist and and obviously when I see someone who’s boarded and has been very successful in all these ways, like you’re wired in a certain way that, if you frame the game in one way you’re wired to be successful.

But in another way, it just, it’s so speaks to me. And I’m sure that a lot of us have those same feelings of, I have decided that this is the game that I’m playing and I’m going to play it really hard. I’ve had that earlier in my career. I was in my thirties. I had people who would say to me like, look, Andy you’re really burning at both ends.

And I was like I’m fine. This is what it is, this is what it means to be working in the job that I’ve taken. And I don’t know. I think it’s hard. It’s hard to look at ourselves.

My, my question for you is short of a car accident. If you’re someone who feels like you’re unhappy, or you’re starting to feel these things, or you recognize that, I love the way you put this martyr complex where you’re, sacrificing yourself, but you’re not happy to do it, or you want to do it in the moment, but then you go home and you feel like a victim, you feel like you were taken advantage of. That is such a common

 mentality in our profession. If you have the self awareness to see that in yourself and you say what she’s saying I see in myself.

I know it’s going to be very different for each person, but Marie, how do you start to get out of that mindset? Like you’ve clearly been on a journey and that journey is going to be very unique to you. But you work with so many people and you see so many people I’m sure who are having these realizations of this is me. This is my life.

How do people take the first steps and starting to get some perspective and believe that they can at least change how they identify themselves?

Dr. Marie Holowaychuk: I think you’ve hit the nail on the head right there, which is, it’s that awareness, right? That is that perspective. And the way that we often get perspective is by connecting with other individuals. So that can be peers that we connect with, and we have open and honest conversations about what we’re experiencing.

Ideally, we do this in a safe space. Like I want to be careful about online engagement because sometimes that can go off the rails. And then when there’s not a mental health professional present, it can be dangerous. A safe group of individuals that’s moderated by a mental health professional.

The veterinary hope foundation is one that offers these, quote unquote support groups. for different cohorts. They can be specialists. They can be parents in vet medicine. They can be technicians or managers. They run these cohorts where they’re, where they have these discussions about these topics like perfectionism and boundaries and burnout and other things.

And there is oversight by a mental health professional to number one, feel like you’re not alone. And number two, start to see maybe yourself and some other people and then once that’s mirrored back to you, it’s oh my gosh, like I can identify with that. I think there’s other professionals that can be helpful. There’s a lot of certified coaches now in the veterinary space, who have done a lot of training to be able to ask the right questions to illuminate self awareness and individuals so that they can come to these realizations. They already know it. If they don’t consciously know it, it’s there. And then of course I would not be a mental health advocate if I didn’t recommend that everybody consider some form of mental health support in the form of counseling, therapy, you name it.

There are social workers, psychologists, psychiatrists. There’s so many mental health professionals who can be of support and offer mental health support. That reflection, that perspective, they can illuminate those blind spots. They can ask the right questions. They can offer support, for me, it’s literally been a decades long journey utilizing each of these different mechanisms to get myself to where I am. And I’m by no means like a finished product. I am still a work in progress. And it just, it comes with that continual experience, reflect, better understand, and then do better from there and change. 

Dr. Andy Roark: Therapy tools are so easily accessible today, there’s things that bother me about technology in our world today and how ubiquitous, and there’s other things where I say, I’m sorry, I can’t argue with that. That’s great. That’s wonderful, it’s a wonderful advancement.

It’s just, these resources are so available. It’s just, I think that’s a wonderful thing. I want to ask you I want to ask you a personal question now about where you are because I think this is really interesting as well. So you’re back and you’re doing emergency shifts now and so you’re back, you continue to practice.

You also have a young daughter at home. I think you have a mother of a four year old. What do you know now, Marie, going into the clinic that you wish you knew? When you were in it full time and I know that’s probably a lot but imagine yourself for a moment. You’re here. You’re seeing a shift think about how your perspective is different now than it was then are there key differences in just how you approach your day that you wish you knew or you didn’t know at that at the beginning?

Dr. Marie Holowaychuk: Such a great question, and I think we could talk for an hour on this. I, my perspective has changed so much, and I know you can relate to this as a parent and not to diminish anybody who is not a parent out there, but it goes back to what I said before about our identity and just recognizing

there is more to life than vet medicine. And don’t get me wrong, I, like you Andy, I am so passionate about vet med. I live and breathe vet med and I have since I was little because both my parents are veterinarians. And at the same time, knowing that I am a mom, I am a friend, I am a daughter, I am, so many other things outside of that space.

It just helps me to keep it a little bit more in perspective. When I have a challenging client, when a patient dies, when a case doesn’t go well, when I don’t have all the answers, it’s just, It just keeps me a little bit more level and a little bit more real. And it’s hard to put it into words but that’s a huge thing.

And it has also forced me to be much stronger with my boundaries. Before it was just the work would just bleed into the night. I would be working on the couch and then I would, be working in bed and then checking my emails and it was just never ending. And part of that is academia. There’s no kind of fine limits around everything.

It’s not like we work shifts and and so on. But I’ve learned that we all need time and space in our day and in our life to shut that veterinary brain off and to be fully present with our loved ones, our pets. our neighbors, whoever it is that lights us up and enriches our lives. And the, like I said, being a mom, like I am now, it’s just, it’s forced me to do that because I have to get her from daycare and I have to take care of her at night.

She’s sadly not self sufficient at the age of four. Darn it. I wish she was a little bit more, I’m just kidding. But all that to say it’s really enforced that for me and I am so grateful for that 

Dr. Andy Roark: Oh man. That’s such a great answer your identity is different and it totally makes sense how parenthood would frame that up. And again, it’s not necessarily, it doesn’t have to be parenthood. I think, oh, that’s such a great answer because it really does change how you see yourself.

And I, think I’ve been really enjoying practice recently. I was really happy in life recently. I think that’s a big part of it is. My relationship with my kids is really good and strong, but also like I, I have these other things that I do that I put a lot of weight on and I, I, it sounds silly, I garden, I like to work in my yard.

I like to garden and things like that. I did a I did an interview with someone who works for me. Just earlier today, we recorded the 300th episode of this podcast and Kelsey was talking to me and she said, oh, thank you. She said it meant a lot to her when she started working with me and she would hear me say things like, guys, I’ve got a hard stop at four because I have to get my kids from, from school or from daycare or whatever.

And I never thought about that. That was just as it’s like sometimes that’s what it’s got to happen. You know what I mean? Like I didn’t like the bus is not running or whatever. And you just say, I have this heart, this hard stop. But before that, when you’re young, it’s. It’s easy to let work just take over everything and not push back against it. So anyway, I love that marie.

You’ve got a retreat for practice owners coming up in February. You’re lecturing all over the place. I’m sure I can’t list all the things that you’re doing but let me open the floor to you and say where can people find you because you’re so interesting you’re always doing just different things. What’s the best way for people to follow your journey and see what sort of things you’re doing and where

you’ll be?

Dr. Marie Holowaychuk: Yeah, I am most active on LinkedIn and Instagram. So those would be the top places, whatever your social media fancy is. That’s where you can find me. If you are lucky enough to not be on social media and that’s been a boundary for you, then I applaud you. And I encourage you to check out my website, mariehollowaychuck.com or revivingvetmed.com, which is a hub of resources and podcast episodes and blog posts, all. In the name of promoting mental health and wellness in our profession.

Dr. Andy Roark: Outstanding. Thanks for being here, Marie. I really appreciate you guys. Thanks for tuning in and listening. I hope you guys enjoyed it. Take care of yourselves, everybody.

Dr. Marie Holowaychuk: Okay, bye.

Dr. Andy Roark: And that’s what I got guys. I hope you enjoyed it. Hope you got something out of it Thanks to Marie for being here. Thanks to you for being here gang Take care of yourselves and if you find yourself in a place where Marie was talking about where you’re like I am wildly unhappy and I just feel like i’m always working and i’m not making space for myself I pause for a beat and and I want you to stop and take care of yourself.

And if you need to step away or you need to talk to somebody, please do that. It’s not a weakness to accept help. And that’s a lesson I learned the hard way in my life. But we don’t always have to be the ones who help every now and then, even the strongest of us need a hand. Give yourself permission just to get some support if you need it.

Just, even if it’s just getting your perspective straight, take time. I don’t want you guys to be successful today or next week. I want you to be successful for the longterm. That’s just something I always aspire to support you guys in as we go forward. So anyway, that’s enough for me. Take care of yourselves.

And I mean that. Talk to you later. Bye.