I looked for the right thing in the wrong place for a long time

I spent years looking for the right thing in the wrong place. I'd like to bet that many of the people reading this have too, even if they don't know it yet.

It's 2016, the height of summer. The sun is going down, slowly, and golden hour has pretty much left. I'm still sitting in my scrubs, not that I ever wear anything else these days. I can hear the quiet murmur of my neighbours coming to the end of a family barbecue, saying their goodbyes, car doors slamming. For once, thank goodness, I am not on call, though it doesn't stop my body bracing for the sound of the emergency ringtone; that feels like my standard state now: wired but tired.

I'm scrolling my laptop again, twenty tabs open. Standard. One of them is the progress page of my CertAVP. I've just passed another case report with a mark of 91%. I feel nothing about it. Maybe a slight pang of relief: at least I don't need to find the time to resubmit. I don't even read the comments. I keep scrolling and tab-hopping.

I'm not even sure what I'm looking for online. Inspiration? Hope? Another qualification? The latter would seem ridiculous, especially as I am 95% through a post-grad certificate. Oddly, I don't feel how I thought I would by this point. I am mostly... unfulfilled. I still don't know every answer, I am still tired and still playing the big old game of "it'll be okay when."

I screenshot my result, better tell the world. I head to Facebook, open the home page and upload the image. "Can't believe it! I passed with a score of 91%, really loving doing my CertAVP." I close the laptop as it gently clicks.

That tiny moment was quite representative of a bigger picture. My life looked good from the outside. I had just bought a house. I was driving around in a then brand new 2016 plate car. I had a senior vet title at just four years out and was about to finish my certificate earlier than any of my peers. I lived with three beautiful dogs I loved to bits. I was in my gym era, heading towards the best shape of my life. And it felt empty. I felt lost and a bit disenchanted. On paper, I'd hit everything I thought I needed to feel successful, and the feeling wasn't there.

A few months before this, I'd hit one of the lowest points of my career, ironically, despite the external optics. I'd spent years worrying that what I'd built would come crashing down. Peace only felt in reach when everything was under control: no mistakes, no complaints, nothing to ruminate about. My mind was a master ruminator. It would make problems out of things that weren't problems. Everything would still be going swimmingly, and it would still find something to worry about. I didn't realise at that point that this is what our brains do as humans. I just believed every thought. I kept trying to arrange external circumstances to give me peace.

If I were to outline my plan and tactics up until that point, it would sound like I'd been meticulous, but really these were behaviours I put very little conscious thought into. They served a purpose, one I only understood years later. I'd stay late, every night. I'd say the to-do list never ended, but really it meant that if a disaster came in, I could at least try to help deal with it, or gauge how mad everyone else was about it. I was always learning and reading because I was worried someone might ask a question I didn't know the answer to, and maybe that moment might be proof. Proof that I really wasn't good enough. That I didn't fit in. I was a fraud. I ended up staying at the practice when I was on call, and some nights when I wasn't, because I was there late already. It wasn't uncommon for me to stay for a whole week at a time. I'd sacked off hobbies, friends, relationships and any part of me that wasn't vetmed-shaped.

As you can imagine, this was exhausting. I never switched off. I was living on Co-Op meal deals, barely saw daylight and was fuelled by Red Bull and hope. I was pretending it was okay. Then a week came that was the straw that broke the camel's back. A combination of tricky cases, client demands, colleague disputes and a body that was saying no. I hit breaking point. Not in a messy, explosive way, but in a way of having to finally acknowledge to myself that this was not working.

Let's rewind to that moment. I'm sat in the office at work, it's 5pm and I'm staring at the oversized clock on the wall. I can hear my boss' last client walking from the consult room to the reception desk to pay. She'd promised she'd come and talk to me, so I was waiting. I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror on the wall. My skin is pale and my eyes are tired. I didn't have the energy to worry about what it was about. She came in and sat down, wheels of the chair scraping across the floor as she took up a position nearby. "I'm worried about you," she said, "and I don't know what to do with you." She had been a supportive boss, and had tried a lot of things: taken me out for lunch, banned me from the practice on my days off in a kind way (I always found an excuse to visit anyway), and told me how appreciated I was. She had a different attitude to work, was at a different stage of career, and yet she was my only comparison. I knew what I had been doing wasn't healthy, but it had always felt temporary. It'll get better when I've got through this season. When I get my house. When I've started my certificate. When it's winter. When it's spring. Only now was I realising that none of those unwritten promises to myself had delivered.

She looked at me in silence. It felt like it lasted an age. I pulled very gently at my bottom lip whilst staring into the middle of the room. I could hear a pin drop. "I'm sorry," I said. She didn't even know what was going on internally for me, but my external world was enough to worry about. I hated the idea that I was causing someone else stress.

The next day I called the doctor and asked to book in an appointment. I didn't even really know what to say. I can't seem to leave work? Was I addicted to work? Was I too weak? How do I even begin to explain the complexities of this experience? I didn't know, but I knew I couldn't ignore it. So I was brave, and I went.

I'm sat in the doctor's waiting room, people watching. Everything is blue. Blue seats. Blue floor. Blue leaflets. Intermittently I can hear a rather obnoxious buzzer when the front door opens, and yet another person joins us. That is peppered with an older gentleman in the corner, coughing. Eventually, a middle-aged male doctor comes and shouts my name, and quickly retreats down a small corridor. I follow, and he gestures for me to take a seat.

I can't remember much of what happened next. I explained in a rather garbled word soup what was going on and how I felt. The doctor offered me time off, to which I was horrified. How would they cope without me? I couldn't do that to the team. How could I make money? That seemed like a ridiculous idea, and I said no. He did suggest I speak with the mental health team, potentially for some form of therapy. I said okay. I could do that without anyone really knowing what was going on, I thought. Deep down, I wanted to feel as though I was doing a good job, and I didn't know how this fitted in with that.

A couple of weeks later, life was no different, really. Certainly not worse, but no overnight miracle. Why would there be? Nothing had changed. I was cautious not to worry my boss further, and made an attempt to leave a little earlier a few times a week. I was waiting on the call back from the mental health team.

The call is due at 6:30pm. It's 6:20pm and I am still at work. I'd rather take the call here anyway; nobody else in my life knew. So here I am, back in the same office. I stare at my shiny black phone screen. The reception phone is ringing in the background, but mine isn't. I glance to the computer, wondering if there's time to do a quick call back. I feel a pang in my stomach. Am I exaggerating all of this? Is it really that bad? Do I just need to be a bit tougher? Am I wasting their time? Maybe I don't need this after all.

The phone rings eventually, and I pick it up, tentatively. The woman has a kind, Lancastrian accent. She explains she'll ask me a few questions, which she does, finishing with: "What's your aim to get out of this?" I hadn't really thought about that, so I'm a bit taken aback. "Errm... I'd like to control my mind better. I don't want to worry as much." The therapist said, "Interesting that you say control. I wonder if you have control issues, and I sense you're a perfectionist." I didn't say much else, but the words landed hard. I didn't repeat that to anyone else, but it sat in my mind. "I knew it was something wrong with me", I thought. She explained she'd book me in for a course of Cognitive Behaviour Therapy, every Wednesday at 9am for 45 minutes.

I headed home and Googled my new label. "Perfectionist." Nodding along to everything I searched. This is me. This is why I am this way. On some level it felt acceptable, an explanation. I found a post on Facebook and shared it. "Relatable," I captioned it.

I dutifully attended my appointments each week at 9am, with a late start organised at work. Sitting in the same MDF-clad treatment room at the back of a GP's surgery. I'm not sure I ever fully let my guard down. I was always ready to explain why her suggestion wasn't possible in the veterinary profession, or why I hadn't fully done that week's homework. I regret that now, and wonder how much more I might have got out of the experience. As the weeks went on, I grew a little frustrated. Surely I should be fixed by now? I felt like my Wednesday mornings might be put to better use, maybe writing up notes or getting some jobs out of the way. Equally, I was becoming genuinely fascinated by beliefs and how they affect our thoughts and behaviours.

CBT got me out of a hole. I started to question the validity of my thoughts, I took different actions, I had some tactics. It also spurred me on to dive deep into personal development, and in true Katie fashion, I wanted to be the best at that too. Things were a bit better, but I still had that feeling in my gut that something was missing.

"You become what you think about." Written in white letters on a black background, with a greying man in a suit, in a cursive font. Jim Rohn. A friend had shared this on her Facebook page, with a link to a video. Before I knew it, I was down a rabbit hole. Rohn. Nightingale. Robbins. Carnegie. Promising that I could achieve whatever I wanted, if I just believed it enough. If I just tended to the garden of my mind stringently enough, it would come true. This was a welcome distraction, for a while. In here, somewhere, must be the fix. If I can create something amazing in my life, then that peace, that satisfaction, will surely come. For the first time in a while, I felt excited. I read anything I could, watched endless YouTube videos and was set on changing myself.

Vision boards. Houses in Palm Beach. Newer cars. Money. Fame. Fortune. That must be it. For six weeks, this was my focus. Achieve more. I researched, visualised, meditated, future journaled. "If the why is big enough, the how will become apparent" and all the rest of the quotes that go with it. I bought no end of books. I was fantasising about a life that wasn't yet mine, in the hope that if I got there, I'd eventually feel like a success. Enough. Admired. Accepted. Valuable. Maybe I'd have enough money to walk away and find peace. I didn't say it out loud, but it was a driver.

A month went by, and life really wasn't any different. The novelty was wearing off, and the frustration was seeping in. I couldn't just think positive and focus on good vibes (spoiler: this wasn't how it worked). Was this another thing I'd failed at? What was I missing? What was wrong with me? I felt as though I couldn't stick to anything. Nothing was working for me. Something still felt like it was missing, and I was the problem.

Back to that moment with my laptop, in the summer of 2016. I was convinced there was an external answer, somewhere. Another thing to add to my value. Another qualification or achievement. A secret formula that would make me into this miraculous human who knew everything, never made a mistake, never asked for help and was inherently loved by all. I never said that out loud, but it's really what I wanted.

I felt as though I'd tried everything. EVERYTHING. Of course, I hadn't, but it felt like it.

What I came across next, through what felt like chance, was a group programme. A chance mention in a book, it felt right and I was booked on.

I'm never going to claim to you that that experience changed everything overnight and forever. But it was a massive perspective shift, and a starting point to a different way of living.

I realised I had been looking for the right thing in the wrong place. Looking to feel valuable, worthy, enough, in the hope that those feelings would bring me some form of peace and a moment to catch a breath. Because up until that point, being able to breathe, really breathe, was dependent on everything externally being perfectly lined up. I'll be enough when I've got the house. When I've got the car. When I have the qualifications. When every patient walks out the door and everyone's happy, all of the time. When I've got enough money. When I own all of the nice things.

And there I sat in that group, listening to eight other people talking about their worries, their concerns, and how they'd felt not good enough. And sequentially around that table, I could see that each of them had something that I thought would make me feel enough. There was the beautiful, slim social media manager, and I'd convinced myself: if only I could be a bit slimmer, be a bit prettier, I'd feel enough. She didn't feel enough. There was a lady whose family ran multiple businesses, whose son owned a helicopter, who had a level of wealth completely outside my awareness. She didn't feel enough. A happily married couple, stuck together through everything. Neither of them felt enough. A man who ran his own business and drove a car much fancier than mine. Who didn't feel enough.

And it wasn't a realisation about myself, initially. It was that I could see this incredible group of humans, sat around the table with me, and not one of them valued the others for what they had or what they'd achieved. I valued them for who they were. For the fact that they were there, listening to me, seeing me. And for the first time, I thought: maybe I might be valuable too. Not valuable because I'm a vet. Not valuable because I have a certificate. Valuable, because I'm me.

I came to realise that I had always been enough. Born enough. We all are. I know that might sound like a platitude that lives on a poster, and years ago I would have cringed at it too. But I had never genuinely connected with the idea that I was born valuable, that we all are. We don't look at a baby and say: "They're okay, but they'd be better if they were a bit faster at surgery or had a few more post-nominals." And yet, fairly early on, we start to be taught that value is something you earn from external things. We have human needs for progression and growth, but sometimes we conflate our experiences with our meaning.

I learned early on that I was invisible unless I was extraordinary. For me, in that time, that was doing well at school. Being the smart one felt safe. Achieving things felt like a reason to be seen, and I really wanted to be seen (and loved). I also learned early on that we were from a family without a lot of money, so I spent so much time striving, thinking the enoughness would be in the thing I didn't yet have (money). And I realised, eventually, that all of the strategies I'd found made sense when I was young, but they didn't make sense anymore. I never chose the environment I grew up in. I never chose the behaviours that made sense back then. I never chose the beliefs they built, and I didn't choose the identity I was handed. That identity kept me safe for a long time.

But somewhere inside it, I lost track of who I actually was. The things I genuinely liked. The way I naturally moved through the world when nobody was watching and nothing was at stake. The version of me that existed before she learned to perform.

What I could start to reclaim was the understanding that I had always been enough. And it wasn't just about me. It was realising how many other incredible people were carrying stories of not being good enough, because every single one of them, at some point in time, had been handed something, either momentarily or repeatedly, that told them they weren't. We'd be forgiven for thinking that value is external. That's what we've been promised.

I had been playing such a big game of "it'll be okay when." When you achieve the certificate. Get the house. Get the car. Get the degree. Get to a certain size. I was a woman of the nineties, growing up being told I'd be a little bit more valuable if I were a bit slimmer. These were stories that were handed to us way back when.

And I would have been resistant, for a long time, to the idea of just being enough. Because I was so attached to growing and being productive. I know why. That's what I was praised for. That's what stopped me from being invisible and ordinary. That's what meant I got the thing I really needed: to be seen.

Here's where it gets interesting in the context of veterinary medicine specifically.

We've been trained in a culture that says: the more you know, the faster you are at surgery, the better your clinical skills, the better a vet you are. And in some ways, of course, that matters. Clinical excellence matters. But what we've collectively missed in all of that is something much harder to quantify: the light that we have. How we treat ourselves. How we treat other people. The ability to notice and sit with the small joys. To stay with ourselves when things are hard. To reach out for support when we need it, without it meaning we've failed. The moments of connection that make such a profound difference, not just to our colleagues but to our clients and our patients too. The difference we make that so often goes completely under the radar because we're relentlessly pulled back onto the treadmill, the pursuit.

And I understand why. As humans, we have genuine needs for progression, for growth, for challenge. Those needs are real. But we can hold both. We can hold one foot in the "I am growing" camp and one foot in the "I am already enough" camp. They are not opposites.

I say this as someone who loves creating things, someone who is energised by building and thinking and problem-solving. Sometimes that's my own downfall. Sometimes that's my own kryptonite. The productivity trap is one I know intimately, and it's still one I can quietly slip back into sometimes. The "it'll be okay when" game, a little older, a little more dressed up, but recognisable if I'm paying attention. And when I notice it, I don't berate myself for it. I just wake up. I think: oh, there I am again. Let's come back over here.

That's the practice. That's the slow way, and the slow way is the only way. The miraculous handover of suddenly knowing you're enough doesn't exist, and anyone telling you it does probably has something to sell you. What actually exists is a process. Moments. Repeated small choices to treat yourself differently. Kindness extended inward, not just outward. With help, when needed.

The bucket metaphor has stayed with me. You can pour more and more things into a bucket with a hole in it, and it will never fill up, because the problem was never the amount you were pouring in. It was the hole. And the hole, in this case, was the belief that I wasn't inherently valuable. That I needed to earn my place in every room I stood in.

Plugging the hole doesn't mean stopping growing. It means that everything you build has something solid underneath it. Not something precariously balanced on the next achievement, the next milestone, the next title. A foundation. The work I've done over nearly a decade since that summer with the laptop has been built from that foundation. Why I dared to start sharing openly. Why I dared to make a career pivot. Why I dared to trust what was unfolding even when I couldn't see the whole picture. Why I co-founded Vet Empowered in 2020, because I could see how many of my colleagues were in that same spiral I'd been in, looking to feel worthy through the accumulation of more.

And I still sometimes get kidnapped by my tendencies. I'm not going to pretend otherwise. Then I wake up, and each time I remember a little sooner. I know now that I could walk away from all of it and still be more than enough. Because my value is at a level of being, not a level of doing. And that, genuinely, changes everything.

I also learned, somewhere along the way, that I had spent most of my career assuming everyone else's emotions were my responsibility. That made a kind of sense when I was young, when the adults around me were unpredictable and staying vigilant felt like the safest thing I could do. But I carried that pattern into my adult life, into my clinical career, into every relationship. Worrying about upsetting my boss. Worrying about the client who was unhappy. Worrying about the colleague who was struggling. Always managing the room, long before I'd managed myself. Learning to separate that out, to understand that I am allowed to have needs too, and that being a compassionate person does not require self-erasure, has changed how I show up. For other people, yes. But mostly for myself.

Part of that curiosity, for me, was learning about my nervous system. Understanding that so much of what I'd labelled as weakness, over-sensitivity, or character flaws were actually completely logical nervous system responses. That the hypervigilance, the always-on quality, the bracing for disaster even when everything was fine, were not evidence that something was wrong with me. They were evidence that my nervous system had learned, very effectively, to keep me safe. It was doing its job. It just hadn't received the memo that the threat had passed. And the same is true of the inner critic. I don't vilify it. That voice, the one that picks apart the consult on the way home, that whispers you're not ready, that scans the room for signs that someone's unhappy with you, it wasn't trying to sabotage me. It was trying to protect me. It learned its job a long time ago, in circumstances where that vigilance probably made a lot of sense. The problem isn't that it exists. The problem is that it's working from an outdated script, and sometimes it's quite sneaky about the way it creeps into your thoughts, dressed up as logic or high standards or just being realistic.

What I've found, over time, is that I don't need to get rid of that inner critic. I just need to give it a new job. To recognise it when it shows up, to understand what it's actually worried about underneath the noise, and gently redirect it rather than either obeying it or fighting it. Learning to work with my nervous system rather than against it, to treat it with kindness rather than frustration, to notice when I was dysregulated and come back to myself with patience rather than a metaphorical clip round the ear, was genuinely one of the most useful things I ever did. And somewhere along the way I learned something that sounds almost too simple: settle the body first. Before trying to think my way through something, before attempting to reason with the inner critic, before making any decision from a place of stress, just settle the body first. It doesn't have to be elaborate. It just has to be enough to bring you back into yourself. That shift changed a lot. For my wellbeing, yes. But also for the quality of every relationship I have, professional and personal.

These muscles have got stronger. Slowly, with patience and sometimes help, with a lot of honesty, and with a lot of willingness to sit gently with the version of me who still sometimes believes the old stories. To reassure her that she was always enough. That little Katie, the one who learned that being smart was the only way to be seen, who worked so hard to be extraordinary because ordinary felt like disappearing, who decided quite early on that she needed to earn her place in every room, she wasn't wrong to do what she did. She was clever and she was brave and she was doing the best she could with what she'd been handed. Reconnecting with her, really sitting with her rather than running from her, has been one of the most tender and important parts of this whole journey. It took time. It took care. It took patience and support and a willingness to be honest about things I'd have preferred to keep moving past. She deserved to be seen then. She deserved kindness then. And it turns out, the best person to give her that, eventually, was me.

I want to name a few things clearly, because I think they matter:

I wasn't broken. I didn't need 'fixing'. I needed understanding, and support. I was a human, and my experiences made sense. I needed to learn there was another way.

I was never a perfectionist. I picked up perfectionist tendencies as behaviours, strategies that made complete sense at the time, ways of keeping myself safe when safety felt conditional on performance. There is a difference. One is an identity, something fixed and intrinsic that you either are or aren't. The other is a learned response, something that made sense once and can be understood, worked with, and gently updated. I wasn't flawed in my wiring. I was adaptive. And understanding that changed how I related to those tendencies when they showed up.

I also wasn't a control freak. I was someone who was trying to feel calm, and the only way I knew how to get there was to remove all uncertainty. If I could just know enough, do enough, prepare enough, then maybe nothing bad would happen and I could finally exhale. The problem was that uncertainty is not something you can permanently eliminate, in veterinary medicine or in life. What I found instead was a different kind of certainty. Not certainty about outcomes, but certainty about myself. Knowing I was enough regardless of what happened. That I could handle things. That I didn't need everything to go perfectly to remain okay. That certainty turned out to be far more reliable than anything external I'd ever tried to control.

And personal development, when I stopped using it as a race or a route to worthiness, became something I actually enjoyed. I love learning. I love growing. I love the process of understanding myself and the world more deeply. But there is a significant difference between growing because you're curious and alive and want to have an impact, and growing because you're terrified of being found out. One comes from a kind place. One comes from fear. I know which one is more sustainable. I know which one I want. The things I've gone on to do, the career pivot, the speaking, co-founding Vet Empowered, the fellowship, winning awards, the MSc, none of them started with me sitting down and deciding to achieve something impressive. They were byproducts of following what felt meaningful and true from a place that was, mostly, settled.

Self-compassion wasn't a soft option or a consolation prize for people who couldn't hack it. It turned out to be the most practical thing I ever learned. It's what allowed me to make mistakes without unravelling. To try things without needing them to work perfectly. To keep going, not because I was forcing myself, but because I genuinely wanted to.

I want to say something about getting support, because I think it matters and I don't hear it said clearly enough.

I am a wholehearted advocate for therapy. For coaching. For any space that helps you understand yourself better and move through the world with a little more ease. I've had support at various points in my life and I'd have it again without a second's hesitation. But here is the distinction I want to draw clearly: I have never since walked into a support space from a place of being broken. I have walked in as someone who is already enough, who wants to understand herself better. That framing changes everything. It changes what you're looking for, what you're willing to be honest about, and what you're able to receive. I've proactively walked back into therapy many times - and I realise the privilege to that - and this outlook has helped me do that.

Going to therapy, or to coaching, or to any form of support, is not an admission that you're not good enough. It is one of the most self-respecting things you can do. It says: I matter enough to invest in understanding myself. That is not a small thing, particularly in a profession that has historically rewarded self-sacrifice and treated asking for help as a weakness.

But please, choose wisely. This is important. Not everyone who holds themselves out as a guide has done enough of their own work to sit in that role safely. Look for someone who leads with their humanity, not just their credentials - and of course, finding someone qualified is important. Someone who can hold you in difficulty without needing to rescue you. Someone who understands the difference between coaching and therapy, and who won't blur those lines in ways that aren't in your interest. Someone who isn't making your growth about their own sense of worth. Someone who isn't promising you a transformation they can't deliver, or whose confidence in their method far outstrips their curiosity about you as an individual.

The best support I've ever received came from people who were doing their own work alongside their professional practice. Who had sat with their own discomfort, who knew what it felt like to look at the hard stuff without flinching. Who weren't projecting their unresolved things onto my journey. You deserve that standard of care. It is not a high bar. It is the minimum.

So this is me daring to say it plainly.

Maybe the thing you've been looking for isn't in something more external. Maybe the certificate, the promotion, the impressive life on paper, those things are not going to hand you the feeling you're chasing. Not because they're bad things to want, but because they were never the source.

You are one in 400 trillion. The odds of you being born as you, exactly as you are, are almost incomprehensible. I'm not saying that makes any of us more special than anyone else. I'm saying it might be worth pausing to consider whether the thing you've been looking for has been there all along.

That doesn't mean giving up on growth. It doesn't mean lowering your standards or checking out. It means building on ground that is actually solid. It means progress from enoughness rather than towards it. It means the difference between filling a bucket that holds water and one that doesn't.

And it means that how you treat yourself, how present you are with the people around you, how you sit with yourself when it's hard, matters just as much as anything else you've built or will build.

Maybe more.

If any of this has landed and you want to explore it in a space that knows the veterinary world from the inside, Vet Empowered exists for exactly this. Award-winning, veterinary-led, trauma-informed. Over the years we've worked with hundreds of veterinary professionals across the UK and beyond, and built a community of people who get it, because they're living it too. We start not with big goals but with getting you back into relationship with yourself. And that changes everything from there. You can find us at vetempowered.com.

Or maybe this is enough for now. Maybe this is just the reminder you needed that you're already enough to take the next step, whatever that step looks like for you.

Either way, I hope you take it.

Katie x

(And remember, there's always someone to speak to via Vetlife 0303 040 2551 if you're UK based)