#93 - When You Can’t Be Your Own Consultant

Last week we heard from Thea Harting and one of the topics we discussed was Rabbit Speed Dating. This week we’re going to dive further into When You Can’t Be Your Own Consultant and talk about implementation with the animals in your life.

In this implementation episode, Emily and Allie talk about:

• When should you and when shouldn’t you be your own consultant
• How Allie's therapist just tells her things that she already knows and she loves her for it
• Why this episode is happening
• You don’t want a yes person
• Humans are cute little energizer bunnies

You can find the full episode show notes here.

If you have a dog that struggles with separation anxiety, know that you aren't alone. Our upcoming separation anxiety webinar will teach you foundation skills for teaching comfort home alone, how to know it's working, the puzzle piece that most people are missing, and so much more.

Join today at petharmonytraining.com/separation.

Transcript

[00:00:00] Allie: If you think you've tried everything already, that is very frequently a feeling that means we need to go seek help. We need to go get a professional. 

Or if you're like, I am just out of ideas, those two thoughts should be cues to you that you need to go seek help from somebody else. There are so many infinite number of tweaks that we can make to even one single strategy that if we think that we've tried it all, that means that we don't have an objective enough view of this, or we're missing some piece of the puzzle for this. Whether that's due to memory or just, we haven't acquired that skill yet. Welcome to Enrichment for the Real World, the podcast devoted to improving the quality of life of pets and their people through enrichment. We are your hosts, Allie Bender...

[00:01:02] Emily: ...and I'm Emily Strong...

[00:01:04] Allie: ...and we are here to challenge and expand your view of what enrichment is, what enrichment can be and what enrichment can do for you and the animals in your lives. Let's get started.

Thank you for joining us for today's episode of Enrichment for the Real World, and I want to thank you for rating, reviewing, and subscribing wherever you listen to podcasts. Last week we heard from Thea Harting and one of the topics we discussed was rabbit speed dating. This week we're going to dive further into when you can't be your own consultant and talk about implementation with the animals in your life and mostly you, the human animal, honestly.

In this implementation episode, Emily and I talk about when you should and when you shouldn't be your own consultant, how my therapist just tells me things that I already know and I love her for it, why this episode Is happening, you don't want a yes person, and humans are cute little energizer bunnies. 

So, I'm prettyty excited for this topic today because it is something that you and I and honestly the rest of our team say all the time, almost on a daily basis, that you can't be your own consultant. But I'm excited that we get to dive into this topic deeper in this episode and also talk about not just like you can't be your own behavior consultant, but what does that actually look like? Because it's not black and white. There's obviously a gray area to this, so I'm just excited to dive in.

[00:02:33] Emily: I am too. And I think one of the reasons that I'm excited to dive into this is because of how many professionals have said something to us, something along the lines of well, I can't imagine like you, you have so much expertise, I can't imagine that you have to refer out to anybody. And I would just laugh at that.

And I'm like, are you kidding? Like, no, that's not how any of this works, right? Or conversely feeling shame because they couldn't solve their own problems and they couldn't be their own behavior consultant. And somebody else told them something that they already know and they tell other people, but they had to be told that and they expressed the shame in that. And so, like one thing that you and I say over and over again to so many colleagues is like, the more expertise and experience you have, the more willing you are to reach out to your community, your network, and get help and support. And take a team approach to things, and stay in your lane, and recognize areas of expertise, and all of those things.

So, the more experienced and knowledgeable you are, the more likely you are to refer out, to get help, to add people to your client's support team, or to your own support team, and work collaboratively. So, I'm really excited to get to do this as a podcast episode because then we get to just say that to more people.

[00:04:02] Allie: Absolutely. And I know that we're talking about specifically your pets today, we're talking about you can't be your own consultant, but I want to mention that even if you are not a behavior professional, this is still true. I see so many pet parents who are not professionals trying to be their own consultant and getting frustrated when it's not working.

And then when they do bring us in they express that frustration, I'm like, yeah. A, you don't do this for a living, so you don't know all of the intricacies of this case, and B, even if you did, you couldn't do this. You can't be your own consultant. 

But even beyond working with pets, working with pet behavior, this is true in so many other areas of life as well. I have told my therapist so many times that she just tells me what I tell other people, and that is beneficial. I continue seeing her, and I will continue seeing her until the day that she retires, whether or not she likes it. And, well, I guess she can have some sort of agency in that. She likes me. It's fine.

Anyhow, but so many times I am telling her about a problem that I'm facing and she is giving me advice that I had literally given to somebody else that same day. Where I was like, oh yes, this is a thing that I teach, this is a thing that I've said, and I couldn't recognize that was the solution when I was the one having the problem, we're just so close to our own problems and our own situations that it's really hard to take that objective viewpoint. So, keep in mind that we're not just talking about really, you can't be your own consultant, but you can't be on your own therapist, your own doctor, all of the above. As Emily said, the more knowledgeable you are in certain areas, the more likely you are to reach out to experts and, and take that team approach.

[00:06:05] Emily: And I want to also emphasize that doesn't mean that you can never be your own consultant. So, we'll start this conversation by talking about when you can be your own consultant or your own, whatever, you can DIY it. You can bootstraps it, do it by yourself. And that is if it ain't broke, don't fix it. If everything's copacetic, if you're like happy and harmonious in your home with your pets and everything's working well, you don't need to bring somebody in because there's nothing that needs fixing, right? Like you're fine. Everything's fine. If everything's smooth sailing, you don't need to just go out and build a support network when you don't need anything. 

But the the majority of the time when we're talking about this, it's when somebody is struggling with a problem of some kind and they can't figure out how to rectify their situation. That's when we really need to start reaching out for help is when, we were stuck in some way or lost. So I think that's one that's one facet of you can be your own consultant, like you don't need to reach out for help. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. What's the other one, Allie?

[00:07:19] Allie: The other one is if you do have skills and a timeline. I think you need both of these in order to try to DIY it yourself. And so what I mean by that is, because we are talking to a lot of times professionals when we're having this conversation, professionals do have skills. They do know how to do things, and read body language, and do management plans, and all of that good sort of stuff.

And so we don't want to diminish those skills that somebody has, but the trick is to also have a timeline in which you're going to trial and eval by yourself, and have a very clear deadline for if I do not see improvement in X amount of time, that is when I need to bring in a professional. 

And I'm just going to go back to human mental health example. So for me, a few months ago, I had a medication change for my mental health and there was something very wrong in the first few days with that. I made sure I told everybody about what was happening. I made sure that they're all looking out for me. And I told each of them, if I am still talking about this in two weeks, I need you to tell me to go contact my doctor because I will not remember that it's been two weeks. I will think that it's gotten better when it hasn't. I don't have a clear objective way of measuring my own behavior in that state. And so, I told the people closest to me, including you, Emily, of course. Please look out for me in the next two weeks and tell me when it's time to do something.

And with that now, my doctor was not super happy that was the decision that I made. I'm not going to lie. I got a scolding for that. But I knew that it was going to be okay because I did have skills, and I had a very clear timeline of how long I was willing to trial and eval by myself, and I made sure that I had an objective way to measure.

Progress. So I guess actually, there are three things that you need. If you have skills, a timeline, and an objective way to measure progress, then try it yourself for a little bit because sometimes you can figure things out. But if in two weeks, a month, I wouldn't go further than a month, you can't. That's when we need to start looking at bringing in somebody else.

[00:09:48] Emily: I'm going to connect another dot because I have talked frequently on this podcast about the trial and eval I did with Brie our first winter in Seattle, when I discovered that I had a winter Brie and I did the really simple data collection of like, do nose work over my lunch break, and then like check if she's able to rest on the nest with me for an hour long zoom session, X if she can't. And that's how I tracked the efficacy of the nose work at lunch as a replacement for being outside and playing in the yard with Copper. And that was a really good example of this because I knew what I needed to track, and what, what I needed to trial, and what I needed to track. 

I had a timeline like, okay, obviously I need to, I can't let her go a month climbing the walls. I need to make sure that this is effective pretty quickly, and my objective way of assessing that is what did she rest on the nest through the whole meeting, or did she get up and start pacing? That's pretty clear and objective. I don't have to sit there and guess like, did she, or didn't she like, she's either on the, on the nest or she isn't.

Right. So, that example that I use so often is another example of what Allie was just talking about with. You don't need another consultant if you have the skills, the timeline and an objective way to measure what's happening. You can DIY that. 

[00:11:12] Allie: So, we've tried something, we've hit our deadline, we are not making the progress. That is one time that we decide that we can't be our own consultant. The other situations in which we usually make that decision is when there are safety concerns. That can be physical safety concerns, that can be behavioral, or emotional safety concerns.

If there's a safety concern, that's a time that we need to reach out. And whether that's a safety concern for the individual pet we're working with, or for anybody else that they interact with. The other times, and this kind of goes back to having skills because we don't know what we don't know, and sometimes we just forget that things exist in this world. 

That happens to me regularly where I'm like rooting around in my basement and I'm like, oh, look at this thing. I loved this thing! Cool! And then we'll proceed to forget about it for another six months until I find it again. If you think you've tried everything already, that is very frequently a feeling that means we need to go seek help. We need to go get a professional. 

Or if you're like, I am just out of ideas, those two thoughts should be cues to you that you need to go seek help from somebody else. Because there's no, there's really no such thing as trying everything. There are so many infinite number of tweaks that we can make to even one single strategy that if we think that we've tried it all, that means that we don't have an objective enough view of this, or we're missing some piece of the puzzle for this, whether that's due to memory or just, we haven't acquired that skill yet.

Along those lines, if, because I'm sure you, our listeners are researchers in your life, or you wouldn't be listening to this podcast. Let's be real. Like you are doing the things you're like on the Instagram accounts. You're like in the podcast. You're reading the blogs, all of that. If you are interacting with content or interacting with a respected professional, and that respected professional presents you with a solution that you hadn't thought of that should be a cue to you of, Ooh, I do not know something about this. I need to go learn it from somebody else.

[00:13:37] Emily: Yes. And that's the whole reason we're having this implementation episode. That is the thing that happened when I was interviewing Thea, right? Is that she was just talking about speed dating and introducing rabbits and the different ways to do that. And I realized that she was talking, oh, this is something that I am not doing for Bundini because I thought that. I, I had come to terms with the fact that he was going to be a solo bunny. And as Thea was talking, she was presenting ideas and information to me that I didn't already have. I didn't know those things, and I was like, oh my God, this relates to me. I see how this can actually be relevant to me and my, my bun. And so of course, Reaching out to Thea would be the smart thing to do to have her help me troubleshoot how to integrate a second bunny into the home, right? 

So, that last point that Allie just talked about is why this whole episode is happening, because that happened to me in the middle of the interview with Thea. So, If you need a case in point, I refer you to last week's episode. For me, the solution was easy for who to work with once I recognized that I needed an objective third party to help me with my bun. The obvious answer is Thea, because I know her, I'm in community with her and I respect her expertise, and she was the one who had the information that I lacked. So it, it makes perfect sense that she is the person that I'm going to go to to be my bun bun-havior consultant. Sorry, I couldn't help myself. No, I'm not sorry. I own my pun. My bun-havior consultant. Get over it, Allie. Excellent. 

[00:15:29] Allie: I'm not under it. 

[00:15:32] Emily: I'm glad that you accept my pun. But when it's not that clear cut, when you didn't get the major aha moment from a specific person, it can be a little trickier figuring out who to reach out to for help. So, there are a couple things that we recommend when people are asking us like you know, how do we get how do we know who to seek help from? And I think it really boils down to three things. 

The first is you have to trust them, right? It is It's not going to go well if you don't trust the person that you're asking. But trust is not enough because we can trust our friends, or family members and they're not necessarily going to be the right guides for us. So there are two other really important components that we recommend you look for. 

The first is that a professional should treat you as a client. And what I mean by that is, Allie and I have made mistakes in the past where when a colleague has come to us for help. We've assumed knowledge, and skipped the foundational stuff that we would have given to any client, and we just tried to skip to the end because we were afraid of insulting the person by having them do the basics. But as Allie discussed earlier, you can know the basics and not recognize the basics in your situation because you have no objectivity when you're in the thick of the thing, and it's your life and your pets, and you're emotionally distressed about it. So, skipping to the end, because you're afraid of insulting the, your colleague, is actually doing a disservice to them. So, you want a professional who's going to treat you like a client, start from scratch, and work you through the basics first, before escalating the troubleshooting to maybe the little more, the hairy details, right? The finer points, the nuances. 

So, that is one of the things to look out for. The other thing that you want to look for is somebody who can be honest, but compassionate with you. And what I mean by that is you want somebody who's not going to just tell you what you want to hear because a lot of times, the things that we need to hear are not necessarily things that we want to hear. And so, it's you don't want a yes person. You don't want somebody who's just gonna boost your ego and, tell you all the things that feel warm and fuzzy. You want somebody who's going to be honest with you about the realities of your situation. And also, they need to be compassionate about it. So you, you can be both honest and compassionate. You should be both honest and compassionate. There is a way to tell you what you don't want to hear, but do it in a supportive way in which they listen to your pain points, and they compassionately guide you through troubleshooting those pain points so that you can have a realistic appraisal of what needs to happen in a way that also supports you, and your pet, and everybody else involved. So those are really the points that you're looking for when you're trying to decide who to reach out to get that help.

[00:18:45] Allie: Along those lines, you want a professional who is going to treat you like a client, and so let's talk about how to be a client when you are a professional, because it can feel weird when that shoe is on the other foot. And so, one of the things that I do when I am coming to somebody for help is I pretend to just forget everything that I know about this subject.

Just assume that I have a whole bunch of logical fallacies going on, I have a whole bunch of things that I need to learn, and I am prepared to be wrong in this situation. So, a few episodes, we talked about having a growth mindset, and this is one of the number one things that you can do to be a client.

And actually, let me back up for a second of why do you want to treat yourself as a client? And It's because Emily talked about a professional is going to do you a disservice if they try to skip you to the end, you will also do yourself a disservice if you try to skip to the end. Because a professional who, I'm just going to assume whoever you're going to choose is a reputable, respected professional who has been there, done that, like, this is just another Tuesday for them helping you with with your pet.

That person knows how to scaffold the skills that you need in order to get to the end. And so if you're just trying to rush to the end, you're going to miss all of that scaffolding. We actually had this beautiful example in PETPro just the other day where one of our mentees who moved up to Enhanced our, our program beyond PETPro, and she got to a module where we talk about skill building and all of this, and she was like, Oh, my gosh, this is amazing. I wish I had this knowledge in PETPro, I would have asked questions a lot differently. And Emily, you had the most beautiful response to this, we couldn't because you needed the skills that we were scaffolding in PETPro to be able to hear this lesson and truly understand and absorb what we were saying in this lesson, it would have hit so different if we had given this to you earlier. And of course, I mean, this mentee is just like a wonderful human being. And she was like, Oh my gosh, yes, you are so right. It's amazing to see how far I've come when I know the questions I was asking there and you're right. I wouldn't have been ready for this lesson at that point.

Your professional knows how to scaffold those skills for you, and so you need to let them lead you on that journey. And there are going to be parts of that journey where you're like, yeah, I know this, yeah, this is easy, that's okay. Still let them lead you on that journey. And the way that you're going to do that is starting with growth mindset and with communication.

I think, and Emily, I'll just speak for myself. I don't know about you, I know that when I first started seeing other professionals as clients, I had it in my head that I didn't have to communicate with them as much, they would reach out to me when they had a problem. I made a lot of assumptions about what our communication would look like.

And I was wrong. I was just wrong. And that was one of the ways in which I learned that I have to teach even my colleagues who are paying to work with me as my clients. Make sure that your consultant knows how you like to communicate, and make sure that you're communicating with them for the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Like I personally love when clients reach out to me with problems, now, I also love when they reach out to me with just like happy things, and success stories, and all of that. I live for that stuff, but I really appreciate when clients reach out to me with problems, because one, that tells me that they feel comfortable enough in our relationship to be vulnerable with me, and that is a thing that is absolutely necessary in that consultant client relationship, and it means I can help them! I can't help if I don't know there's a problem! 

So make sure that you are communicating with your consultants. Make sure that they like, just like they don't want to assume that, you know, something, make sure that you're not assuming that they know something. So we really need to have this two way street there. And because if you are a professional, one of the lovely thing, I mean, I absolutely adore working with colleagues and other professionals as clients, because one of the things that I can do is be a little bit more forthright in my communication of just like, okay, so, emily, tell me how you like to communicate. Tell me, like, does this cadence work for you? How do you learn best? Because a lot of times they've done a little bit of that work already because they're in the behavior space. I can also do that with with like my mental health, human mental health, professional clients, teacher clients, all, anybody who's in that behavior space often has a little bit of that knowledge of themselves as well. I just appreciate when I can have a blunt conversation about communication. Super meta. 

The last part of this is I mentioned that in the beginning when I was trying to consult other professionals that I made assumptions about communication, I also made the incorrect assumption that I could space out their sessions longer than I could with somebody else. And honestly, with my professionals, I tend to like meeting with them more frequently than I do my regular pet parent clients. 

For a couple of reasons, my professional clients tend to move faster because they're like, they're so invested. They're doing the work daily. They've already built training into their schedules. And so they, we don't have to like figure out how to build training into their schedules. Like we often do with regular pet parents. And so, professionals tend to move faster. And when somebody moves faster, I need to see you more frequently, or we can go be going down this path that we do not want to be going down for way longer than we want to not be going down it.

So, make sure that you are following your professional's recommendations as far as how regularly to meet with you. And like I said, for my professional clients, I tend to want to meet with them more because of how quickly they're moving. And let's be real. If I have a client who is also moving that fast, I also want to meet that client at that pace too.

It really is more dependent on how quickly somebody is moving. And that is often based on how skilled they already are.

Now, the second reason that I tend to meet with professionals more frequently is because they are just little energizer bunnies where they get done with their homework and then they're like, what next?

And then they start trying to be their own consultant again. And that's the whole reason They started with me in the first place was so that they didn't have to be their own consultants. They try to just do that next step, fill that time, all of that. Whereas for my, my typical pet parent and clients now, sometimes they do the exact same thing.

And again, so it doesn't matter per se if you are a professional or not a professional. Professionals just tend to have the skills and the drive and motivation that require more frequent meetings. Sometimes my regular pet parents do as well, but more typically they don't or not to the level, I should say, that a professional does.

I have, my clients are very motivated. It just looks a little bit different. And so when we have, a month in between sessions and you finished everything in the first two weeks, that's two weeks to get yourself into trouble doing something else. Because remember, we were talking about your professional is purposefully scaffolding your plan for you, which means they know.

where you are going. They know where we're going. You can always ask them. They may give you an abridged version so that again, you don't try to be your own consultant and get down this little path that you should not have been on. But that's one of the reasons too is, is when you move fast and you have just spare time, sometimes you get into trouble with that spare time. I know I do.

[00:27:11] Emily: What are you doing on this service road? How did you get here? Service roads are not for the general public, friends. I've had that experience a few times where I'm like I should have met with you more frequently because. Now we've got to get back to the main road, and that's gonna be some additional work.

[00:27:28] Allie: Right? We have to travel backwards down that service road again, go back to the main road. Okay. So today we talked about when you can't be your own consultant and a few times that you can be your own consultants, but when you can't, it's typically because you've tried, it's not worked, there are safety concerns, you're out of ideas or somebody presented a solution that you haven't thought of, like what happened to Emily during the episode last week when that happens.

Make sure that you choose a professional who's going to treat you as a client and be honest and compassionate with you. And that goes both ways. You also need to know how to be a client yourself, which includes approaching with a growth mindset, having open, honest communication, and meeting with your professional as regularly as they recommend you to. 

Next week, we will be talking with Ryan Cartlidge about building community through crucial conversations. 

Thank you for listening. You can find us at petharmonytraining.com and @petharmonytraining on Facebook and Instagram, and also @petharmonypro on Instagram for those of you who are behavioral professionals. As always links to everything we discussed in this episode are in the show notes and a reminder to please rate, review and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts a special thank you to Ellen Yoakum for editing this episode, our intro music is from Penguin Music on Pixabay.

Thank you for listening and happy training.