Gratitude That Doesn’t Ignore Burnout

For the physicians who keep showing up when everyone else goes home.

You scroll past photos of families gathered around tables.

The commercials talk about slowing down, savoring the season, being thankful.

You glance at your own schedule—another stretch of call, another weekend shift—and think:

I am grateful. But I’m also tired.

That tension doesn’t make you cynical.

It makes you human.

When Gratitude Feels Heavy

In medicine, gratitude often becomes a performance.

You’re told to focus on the positives, to remember how meaningful this work is.

You’re reminded how lucky you are to have a job that matters.

All of that is true—and yet it can feel hollow when your body hasn’t had a real day off in weeks.

A 2024 JAMA Psychiatry study found that female physicians have a 53 percent higher suicide rate than women in the general population.¹

Another analysis in Mayo Clinic Proceedings (2025) reported burnout levels still at pandemic highs, especially among hospital-based specialists.²

Those numbers don’t describe a workforce that lacks gratitude.

They describe a workforce running on depletion.

The Biology of “Always On”

Burnout isn’t laziness, entitlement, or ingratitude.

It’s a body stuck in survival mode.

When you move from one crisis to the next without recovery time, your nervous system stops distinguishing between emergencies and everyday life.

It keeps the alarm switched on.

Adrenaline feels normal.

Stillness feels wrong.

That’s why gratitude practices often fall flat for physicians—because your physiology hasn’t caught up to the idea of safety yet.

You can’t feel thankful while your body still thinks it’s in the trauma bay.

Real Gratitude Starts with Regulation

Gratitude isn’t supposed to erase pain; it’s meant to exist alongside it.

But to feel authentic, your nervous system has to be calm enough to register goodness.

That’s where EMDR comes in.

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing helps the brain re-file unprocessed stress so the body stops reacting as if the crisis is still happening.

It isn’t about talking—it’s about completing unfinished biological business.

In a 2023 Frontiers in Psychology review, healthcare workers who received EMDR showed rapid reductions in secondary traumatic stress and improved sleep within four sessions.³

That’s what regulation looks like at the cellular level: cortisol drops, breath deepens, presence returns.

Once the body settles, gratitude becomes real again—because you can finally feel it.

Holiday Reality Check

This week, most people will gather.

You’ll cover shifts.

You’ll eat in call rooms, or maybe grab a protein bar between cases.

Someone will thank you for “being a hero,” and it will land somewhere between pride and ache.

Here’s the truth:

Gratitude and exhaustion can coexist.

You can love your work and still resent missing your family.

You can be proud of your calling and still long for quiet.

And none of that makes you ungrateful.

It makes you honest.

A Different Kind of Thankful

Maybe gratitude this year sounds like:

• “I’m thankful my body carried me through another year of medicine.”
• “I’m thankful for the team that has my back when things get hard.”
• “I’m thankful I still care enough to want this to be sustainable.”
• “I’m thankful I can finally admit that I’m tired.”

And maybe—quietly—

I’m ready to heal, too.

Gratitude That Includes You

The system runs because you do.

But you deserve to run on something other than adrenaline.

An EMDR Intensive is one way back:

three to five half-day sessions, confidential, schedule-sensitive, designed for physicians who can’t afford another layer of weekly rescheduling.

You don’t have to “quit medicine to find peace.”

You just have to give your nervous system permission to rest.

If you’re covering call this holiday, thank you.

If you’re off, may your rest actually reach your body.

And if you’re ready for gratitude that includes you—

🩵 Schedule a Strategy Call Here

Citations

1. Gold, K.J. et al. (2024). Suicide Among Physicians, 2017–2021. JAMA Psychiatry.
2. Shanafelt, T.D. et al. (2025). Burnout Among Physicians — 2025 Update. Mayo Clinic Proceedings.
3. Tarquinio, C. et al. (2023). EMDR for Healthcare Workers: A Systematic Review. Front Psychol, 14, 1168452.