Latest / Six-Figure Chicks / Episode 30: Denette Cooke: Burnout and Boundaries, from Chemist to Vet
Transcript
- Mel C: Hey there, welcome back to Six Figure Chicks. I am delighted to have a fellow Six Figure Chicks from the Seven Cities book that is coming out. Danette Cook, thank you so much for joining us and why don't you share a little bit of your awesomeness with the audience? Denette O. Cooke: All right. Thank you. Thank you, Mel, for having me. I really appreciate the opportunity to be available and to chat with you today. I'm Danette Cook. I went to vet school a little later in life. I graduated as 32. After six years of practice, I opened my own hospital. That was 24 years ago. I've studied integrative medicine for about 20 years now, probably 600 credit hours, and my passion is to mix. Western medicine with integrative medicine, which was more about energy and healing and trying to make the best things for each pet, each parent, you know, so that we can help them live better lives. Mel C: Mm, I love that. And that's what we should be doing for everything and everyone that's in our life is like, how can we make life better for ourselves and other people and our pets? Denette O. Cooke: Right. That's right. Particularly our pets. joy. Mel C: never knew that I could love an animal as much as I did when I had a dog. I was like, my gosh. Denette O. Cooke: Right. Unconditional love and you're always a hero to your dog. Maybe not your cat, but always to your dog. Right? Yeah. Mel C: Yeah. The cats I know like their own time and their space. They're just like Denette O. Cooke: Yeah. It's different. Yin yang balance is what I call it, you know. Cats make Mel C: Hey yes. Denette O. Cooke: you feel like, you know, you're not the greatest thing ever and dogs make you feel that way. So that's good balance, right? So to do your own work, you know. What does my cat think, right? Mel C: Yeah. I love them. Yeah, for sure. Okay, let's kick it off with a fun fact that not a lot of people know about you. Like you kind of highlighted that you started a little later with your college, but what else? Denette O. Cooke: Yeah. I started a little later. I was a chemist, inorganic and organic chemist for five years. I had a degree in chemistry. And some of the kind of fun party facts, if I went out socially and you went to a party and people like, Hey, how are you? What you know, what do you do for a living? I'm like, I'm a chemist. And then you could just hear the air just s suck out of the conversation because they had absolutely nothing to say back. Like, what do you say? Like, I sucked at chemistry, you know, I got a D or didn't take I don't you know, they had just slowly walk away. So that's kind of fun, you know. Mel C: Well, I mean, I guess that's a great thing to put in if you want to end a conversation. Denette O. Cooke: When you say I'm a veterinarian, you know, you hear all the stories, which is great, but then you can't go socialize with everybody else. But it is what it is in the industry, you know. People love vets still and hopefully we can continue that pattern, but with our boundaries so they can love us, but not, you know, love us to death. How about that? Mel C: Ooh, I love that. So speaking of, you know, careers and being a vet and I'm sure it's a lot of energy and time that you put into something that you have so much passion for. But what's a big challenge that you've been faced with in the business besides, you know, having everyone all want all of your time because everyone Denette O. Cooke: know, the in in my chapter, the biggest challenge was getting to closing and all the hurdles that I had to do to get into closing. But as a practitioner, the biggest challenge was to learn boundaries for myself at work and personally. You know, so the professional boundaries were a little easier to come across. The personal ones were very difficult. So that's something that part of my nonprofit is to continue to help. Caregivers understand what is their job and what is not their job and how to support without over supporting or over controlling. So that's a little Mel C: Yeah. Denette O. Cooke: tidbit. Caregivers tend to be controllers. Mel C: I've seen you post a lot on the caregiving side and I think Denette O. Cooke: Mm-hmm. Mel C: we automatically think of caregiving and associate it with, you know, a parent or a another adult. Denette O. Cooke: Mm-hmm. Right. Mel C: but I believe, correct me if I'm wrong, that you kind of do both sides like that, you know, maybe parent, Denette O. Cooke: Right. Right. Mel C: but what about your pets? tell tell us a little bit more about what you're exactly talking about with that. Denette O. Cooke: so caregivers, I've I've kind of done some informal, you know, question and answer with a lot of my colleagues. Many of us were parentified. So we were put in the position of being adult-like before we should have been for serious, you know, maybe consequences, sickness in the family, mental health issues in the family, or whatever. So it's not uncommon for most caregivers to have either been popped out of the womb that way or They just kind of had to adjust where all that, you know, say responsibility was put on them at a very young age. And as they grow, as I grew, it just was, you know, Danette'll do it. We'll have Danette do it. She'll do it, you know, so you don't learn to go like, does do do I really want to do that? Not really. You know, so that's a big hurdle for caregivers. It's not unique to me. I've talked to many of them and it's similar. You know, so that's one way I can give back to say, I've l I've read self-help books for five years, people. Like it took me a while to learn that super caregivers are enablers and they're typically trying to help so much, you're controlling that other person's ability to help themselves. And that's a big a big key to get across. Mel C: Yeah, and help, you know, yourself. Like we only Denette O. Cooke: Mm-hmm. Mel C: have so much time in the day. They talk about that in business all the time, but they don't talk about your personal side of like, you know, like what what Denette O. Cooke: Yep. Yep. Mel C: do we do if we're working until eight, ten o'clock at night and then we have to do it all over the next day, every day. Denette O. Cooke: Right. Or pour yourself into your work so you don't have to go home and deal with your personal life. That's a classic move, right? Workaholic, Mel C: Yeah. Denette O. Cooke: so I don't have to deal with it. So the newer generations have a better life work balance out of the gate. They're they're seeking that out of the gate, which you know, kudos to them. it just makes it hard to fill all our positions in medicine, you know, and that's not just veterinary medicine, that's all medicine. Mel C: Hmm. So thinking back to, when you were younger and Denette O. Cooke: Mm-hmm. Mel C: maybe going through the education part of your, you know, mastery, like what would you say to your younger self if you could talk to her today? Denette O. Cooke: And I say this to young people today, you know, men and women, is one, don't put so much pressure on yourself, right? You don't have to have it all figured out right away. Nobody does. It's just look at the next opportunity that comes your way. Take advantage of that opportunity, learn and grow from the one thing that's in front of you. Enjoy the process of the lumps as well as the bumps, as well as the joys. And then see how that just fits with your soul. If it's like that feels pretty good. Then the universe will provide another opportunity that will be on top of that. And when you're at my age and you can look back, you can see how they were all linked together. So for younger people, they may not see that link now, but I would say just don't put so much pressure on yourself. Enjoy the process and just let opportunities come and embrace them and don't fear a change or something new. That's how we grow. You know, to get to growth, we have to go through some fear and some some. Uncomfortable feelings as well. Mel C: Yeah. And talking about kind of uncomfortable for some people, you touched on it lightly earlier about your nonprofit, but Denette O. Cooke: Mm-hmm. Mel C: what does that mean to you and what's your goal with getting the message Denette O. Cooke: Right. Mel C: out there? Denette O. Cooke: When I opened my practice twenty-four years ago, I wanted to do something completely different, you know, practice medicine to help the animal and therefore the owner. Not necessarily as a big money maker. It's all about the the bottom line, which all businesses it's about that. But if we take more time and actually go through the process and treat the individuals correctly, the bottom line will take care of itself. And so I've kind of proven that with my method, my business method, that we do very good medicine, we enjoy our job, people don't want to leave, we don't have staff turnover because we really are taking care of that individual pet, you know, and advancing our surgeries and skills and whatnot. So that's kind of the basis of it. And now that I'm at this point 30 years later, I can now give back to say there's a better way here locally for mental health. All of us in the profession, not just veterinarians, veterinary assistants, technicians, rescue volunteers, people that work in all the healing animal services that they provide the community. So it isn't just veterinarians, it's all of us collectively together. So we're working on that to get the community more social with each other, have different money-making drives. We have like a tattoo startup night come in and Know we're gonna do some different things with the nonprofit funding it to have people be able to attend and enjoy, you know. So mental health initiative is a big thing. So people could reach out, say, I have a need, go on to the drcookvet.com website. I have anonymous surveys to know where our needs are in veterinary medicine, mental health here locally. And if I'm in in trouble, we can also have them say that I'm in trouble, I need some help. And then we will help direct them to local professionals that they can meet on one-on-one. And if they can't afford the co-pay, the nonprofit will cover that so that we can do what we can to help, you know, help people communicate together because nobody understands like another vet person when you're going through these troubles, and then also support them mentally to get them to the place they need to be, or take some continued education classes with scholarship to help mentorship them. To grow them in the profession, that's that's my passion now. Mel C: Mm. And so what is the biggest problem that you're seeing that is stopping people from, asking for help or seeking out mentorship? Denette O. Cooke: That's a great question. And part of that is in my survey of the say 10 to 12 people. you know, money is a problem, you know, if they don't have the money. Getting the nonprofit's name out there is what I'm trying to do now. So this book is really timely. Thank you, Mel. and socially, we're trying to put something on. We're gonna do a hockey night at the Norfolk Admirals, and we're gonna sponsor one of the be the main sponsors so we can get a lot of Like veterinary appreciation night, but with other things to market and strategize. a lot of people are burned out. And sometimes with burnout, the best thing to do is get together and chat about it. And me too, and me too, and me too. And what did we do? And sometimes just having others to listen to us, vent and come up. Sometimes that silver lining might be a little thread that, you know, I didn't think of that, you know. And now that helps me not take it so seriously, maybe, and walk away from it. Just Mel C: Yeah. Denette O. Cooke: for a cu you know, just even for a few minutes, it matters. Mel C: Most definitely. And exactly what you're saying with the Me Too is the Me Too movement is something so powerfully positive now I think like we're Denette O. Cooke: Yeah. Right. Mel C: turning that into something that we want to be able to talk about proudly of going that's what the books are here for six for your chicks is for us to share our stories so other readers can go wow my gosh she's going through the same thing our yeah Denette O. Cooke: Right. Right. Not unique. It's not unique. Mel C: we're not alone and you know that's what we are why we are sharing our stories and like you've only just begun this journey in the six figure chicks sisterhood movement and Denette O. Cooke: Yes, yes. Mel C: have you been able to like recognize or see changes already in yourself and or wanting to be more out there share the message Denette O. Cooke: Yes, I have, you know, on online, socially. you know, normally with my Facebook, it's kind of just private and friends. I'm like, public, public, public, public. You know, these people can't hurt me. They're my friends, you know. So yeah. And and encouraging people, I try to do that at work because things can be very negative. It's easy to to go down a negative path, but my my mantra is you cannot heal an animal from negativity or from fear. You cannot make them better if you're fearful of what could happen if, because that's anxiety, right? I'm worried about what's gonna happen if I start this medicine, because that's a possible side effect. Your anxiety's already stopped that animal's ability to get better. So if you're negative all the time as a person, life is bad, life is hard. It's hard to put that into an animal and make them better. Because it is somewhat energetic, and that's part of the integrative medicine and the traditional Chinese veterinary medicine. The first, the first time I attended an acupuncture class, the veterinarian teaching was a neurologist at the University of Florida, Roger Clemens, and he said, physician first, heal thyself. Period. And I recoiled. Because what do you mean? Nothing wrong with me. Totally something wrong with me. It was Mel C: That's a full stop. Denette O. Cooke: totally something wrong with me. If I did if I took care of myself, then I could do better acupuncture. So of course the caregiver said, well, I want to do better acupuncture for the animals, so therefore I must have to take care of myself. But see, it should have been the other way around, right? I want to take care of myself because I want to take care of myself, not because of the animals. But I'm not alone. Most caregivers feel that same way. And I'm not just talking veterinary medicine, anybody who's a caregiver. in any discipline feels that same way. Mel C: Yeah, most definitely. So when you're in that funk, what's a great song that you can share with everyone that you use to get you out of the funk or get you pepped up? Denette O. Cooke: It's it's it's a out of the funk one and it's the hype by twenty one pilots, you know, and it's pretty much, you know, don't don't believe the hype. Everything's really gonna be all right, you know, and so just kinda I like alt nation, alt music because it's like eighties techno and dance had a baby, you know what I mean? So it's kinda like bringing the eighties back. So that's my genre. But yeah, don't believe the hype, you know, trust yourself. One One day at a time, one opportunity at a time, learn what you can and the next thread will come to you. The ancients always say, you know, when the student's ready, the teacher appears. And so for most people, they're missing that. They're missing to have the open student head and learn what they can. They we block too much energy to allow that to happen sometimes. So that's what Mel C: Yeah. Denette O. Cooke: I would say. Mel C: Most definitely. I love that. And yeah, final thing, where can people find you? I know you're like sprouting up, being visible on all platforms, but what's the best Denette O. Cooke: Right. Right. Mel C: place? Denette O. Cooke: So the best place would be say I would say my personal Facebook, which is Dennette Cook, and then also Dr. Cook Vet on Facebook. That would be lovely. So they can keep up with the messages. I kind of share both personal and professional back and forth. and then I have other businesses with you know, cookvet dot com, the the actual veterinary business side of it. So Those healers are going to help me launch that nonprofit and we're gonna see where we take it. Get all that young, young energy that excited about vet medicine and let them take it to the next level. That's my goal. I lead the way, they really do all the the be the beautiful work. Mel C: Yeah, and that's you're just laying the the groundwork for other people behind you to be beside you. Denette O. Cooke: Yep. That's right. Right. Mel C: yes. So thank you so much for all that you do and I Denette O. Cooke: Thank you. Mel C: cannot wait to share your story with the world. And Yes. Denette O. Cooke: Right. Thank you, Mel. Thank you for this series. This is a awesome series and I really appreciated the opportunity and that I was thought of. I really appreciate that. So that's part of that thread, right? I was ready. Mel C: You got Denette O. Cooke: And here you come. Yeah. Mel C: Yes. And with that, together we rise, together we change lives. Until next Denette O. Cooke: That's right. Mel C: time.