166: It's Not Burnout. It's Fear. Dr Sarah Golding on vet burnout, imposter syndrome and getting your confidence back

Everyone says burnout. But Dr Sarah Golding thinks a lot of us are misdiagnosing ourselves.

When vets come to her ready to walk away from the profession, they arrive with a vocabulary: burnt out, overwhelmed, imposter syndrome. Not one of them opens with the word Sarah reckons is often actually doing the damage:

Fear.

Fear of failing. Fear of the money conversation. Fear of the board, the Facebook post, the Monday morning debrief. And the big one, the one that shows up in almost every list she asks vets to write: fear of criticism, mostly from each other.

Every fear you carry into a consult room was handed to you somewhere along your path - often by someone with good intentions - a teacher, a mentor, a friend.

So we get into what to do about it. How to run a debrief that lets someone put a mistake down instead of carrying it for a decade. Why "don't worry about it, mate" is just as unhelpful as shouting. The difference between practising defensively and practising to help, and why clients can sense which one you are within seconds. Sarah's "debrief and dump it" process, complete with the literal bucket in her clinic that gets burnt at the Christmas party. And a small structural fix for the money conversation that has all but ended adult tantrums at her front desk.

Dr Sarah Golding is a mixed practice vet in her second decade, principal practitioner and co-manager at Gowrie Vet Clinic in NSW, and this year a finalist in the NSW/ACT AgriFutures Rural Women's Award for her mentoring work through The Vet Mind Mentor.

Somewhere in your career there's a case that wrote a rule about what you're good at, and what you avoid. This episode is about going back and reading that rule properly.

Resources and links

• Sarah's work: The Vet Mind Mentor - the Resilient Vet Mastermind and mindset course, plus a free strategy call. Instagram: @thevet_mindmentor
• Close to 700 clinical episodes with full show notes: thevetvault.com (click "clinical content")
• Connect26, Greencross's conference, Brisbane, 7-8 November. Open to everyone in the profession. 20% off with code VETVAULT20: book here
• Vets on Tour - Italy 2027 and the Serengeti with Prof Jill Maddison and Prof Dave Church: vetsontour.com

Topics and time stamps

03:01 - Fear in veterinary practice

06:23 - What feeling are we chasing?

09:28 - Guilt, disconnect and early burnout

11:58 - The six categories of fear

13:33 - Where our fears come from

14:30 - Mid-roll: Vet Vault updates

16:05 - How we gift our fears to colleagues

20:02 - System failure vs personal failure

21:55 - The itty bitty shitty committee

23:16 - Healthy caution vs paralysing fear

26:22 - The debrief and dump it process

28:24 - Accountability without shame

34:56 - Imposter syndrome as hidden fear

36:11 - Are vets more scared today?

38:22 - You don't need all the answers

40:02 - Defensive medicine vs helping

46:03 - Consult room formula and money conversations

54:45 - The changing fear behaviour activity

1:01:57 - Schedule anxiety and work-life balance

1:03:20 - Wrap-up: podcast picks and final thoughts

1:08:22 - Advice for the new grads of 2026