Veterinary Business

Knowing yourself better can improve emotional intelligence

vetreportApril 14, 2015

Veterinary work involves a range of often conflicting feelings, so a session showing delegates how to increase their emotional intelligence and flexibility hit all the right notes at BSAVA Congress. Leadership coach Anne-Marie Svendsen Aylott told the audience that it is one area where learned skills can quickly become life changing.

That we are ruled by our emotions at times is not unusual, but learning to understand and re-frame emotions can lead to better practice environments and interpersonal relationships. “I see it all the time that as people learn better communication skills, as they work on resolving their personal problems their emotional intelligence changes dramatically,” she said.

Anne-Marie, who runs leadership coaching company Purple Cat Coaching, stressed that understanding one’s own emotions was crucial to building that intelligence along with better quality and more resilient interpersonal relationships. “I focus on self awareness and self management,” she said. “Unless you know what you are feeling, you have no chance of being able to control that emotion, how you express it or how it influences other people.”

People develop emotional habits, but their skill in handling emotions can improve over time, given discipline. “We know that the brain is incredibly plastic,” said Anne-Marie. “Do I typically express my emotions in a particular way? What habits have I fallen into? Depending on how much time, focus and energy you put into it, it can take anywhere from three weeks to a year to change a habit.”

She offered advice for those eager to investigate and scale up their emotional intelligence. Firstly, drink more water. Drinking more means extra toilet breaks and increased opportunities to think through feelings without being interrupted.

Thinking back over the emotions encountered in different situations then allows people to begin recognising ‘triggers’. “What is it that gets you to have a predictable reaction and emotion,” she asked. “You might have a trigger for feeling sad, angry or frustrated, but in order to change things you must first know about them.”

Filtering out information is another vital skill. Read outs from functional MRI scans show that the brain receives 11 million sensory inputs per second, but only a few are consciously registered.

“You have choices about what you allow through, how you programme what you think and what you focus on,” said Anne-Marie. “One way of doing that is distraction. If a situation triggers a response then remind yourself about the menu for tomorrow night or what you are going to do on your fun day out.”

Cutting down on the tendency to ruminate on a situation is another Anne-Marie recommendation, as going over negative emotions or situations is linked to depression.

As a person’s ability to manage their emotions, express them and manage the emotions of those around them gets better it leads to improved life satisfaction, personal relationships, work and academic performance, among other things, said Anne-Marie. “It is about choosing the emotion in the moment and saying ‘I know I am feeling angry right now, but it is not going to help the situation if I express it – let me redirect that anger into something different’.”

This talk was part of the innovative programme at BSAVA Congress that not only expands the clinical horizons of veterinary professionals but also now seeks to help support the management and personal challenges of working in veterinary practice today.