Doctors frequently receive accolades for their perseverance. This has turned into a trendy term in healthcare, hailed as a universal remedy for physician burnout. It’s mentioned in keynote speeches, wellness initiatives, recruitment campaigns, hospital HR communications—truly, it’s ubiquitous. “Feeling burnt out? Enhance your resilience.” Yet, I contend that this focus on resilience often misses the essential point. Moreover, it can inadvertently strengthen the notion that if you’re experiencing hardship, you simply lack enough resilience.
But what if the issue isn’t actually a deficiency of resilience? What if the manner in which we discuss it contributes to the problem?
As a psychologist dedicated to offering therapy to doctors—and as the partner of a physician myself—I’ve listened to numerous doctors who exhibit remarkable resilience.
They’ve endured grueling training, 28-hour shifts, profound sorrow, moral injuries, and the relentless demand to maintain composure and competence amid suffering. Many cope by pushing through, compartmentalizing, or minimizing their own requirements, as the profession seemingly demands. Yet, despite their significant endurance, they often find themselves facing burnout, anxiety, or feeling emotionally drained.
Even then, they might ponder: shouldn’t I be able to cope with this?
When we present burnout as a matter of personal resilience, we overlook the larger context. More importantly, we shift the responsibility back onto the individual, implying that the answer lies simply in exhibiting more grit, mindfulness, or deep breathing.
It’s akin to giving someone a leaking boat and, as they’re desperately trying to remove water, advising them to improve their swimming skills.
This perspective subtly dismisses the systemic issues that contribute to burnout:
– Unsafe staffing ratios
– Overwhelming documentation requirements
– Rising productivity targets amidst diminishing support
– A culture that discourages vulnerability and emotional expression
– The constant dread of litigation, adverse outcomes, or being branded as “difficult” for speaking out
Physicians do not burn out because of a lack of strength. They experience burnout because they are expected to endure intolerable circumstances, often with limited support or recognition.
In this scenario, resilience creates a paradox. The more you withstand, the less likely the system feels compelled to change. The more you “bounce back,” the greater the expectation for you to endure. What may appear as strength can transform into a trap.
In therapy with physicians, I consistently hear similar narratives:
“Everyone advises me to care for myself, yet no one is alleviating my workload.”
“I attempted additional yoga. I still feel suffocated.”
“They engaged a wellness consultant, but our call schedule remained unchanged.”
These are not indicators of personal shortcomings. They are entirely rational responses to a system that frequently confuses performance with well-being and perceives suffering as a failure of willpower.
This is where therapy can present a different perspective. Not a superficial fix. Not merely another item on your to-do list. But a place to pause and genuinely inquire: What am I feeling? Why is this affecting me so deeply? What if it’s not solely my issue?
Therapy, particularly from a professional familiar with the medical culture, can assist physicians in articulating what’s genuinely occurring, both internally and externally. It’s a setting to disentangle your emotional reactions from the systemic pressures surrounding you. To comprehend the exhaustion not merely as an individual challenge, but as a result of profoundly misaligned expectations and relentless institutional demands.
Therapy does not eliminate burnout. However, it can validate your experiences in a way that’s often rare in a medical culture and broader society that fixates on presenting resilience as a panacea for burnout. Therapy can aid you in recognizing how your coping mechanisms—perfectionism, compartmentalization, people-pleasing, overfunctioning—may have initially facilitated your success, yet may now be exacerbating your difficulties. Additionally, therapy can provide space to process and mourn: for patients you couldn’t save, for aspects of yourself that were sidelined, for a vision of medicine you once cherished.
It’s also an environment where you are not required to be the authority. You don’t have to explain or rationalize. You don’t need to keep it all together. That, by itself, can be incredibly restorative.
Sometimes, the reason doctors seek therapy isn’t due to a full-blown crisis. It’s a subtle awareness that something is amiss. It could manifest as a loss of meaning and purpose, a persistent irritability that lingers, or an overarching sense of numbness and disconnection from your own existence. These are frequently the initial indicators of emotional fatigue. And too often, they go unnoticed until something compels a pause. Something like a health emergency, a relationship conflict, or a clinical mistake.
But it doesn’t need to reach that threshold. You don’t have to wait until you’re depleted.
What physicians require isn’t yet another lecture on resilience. What they truly need is acknowledgment—that their suffering is legitimate, that it is tied to real and often unalterable demands, and that it merits more than empty platitudes.