The guilt you feel for taking your own vacation days may not be yours at all. Palliative care physician and certified physician development coach Christie Mulholland breaks down "hidden guilt," an old guilt that often starts in childhood, gets recruited by medicine, and then gets exploited by a system that benefits when doctors never set a boundary. If you feel guilty for calling in sick, going part-time, or simply saying no, this conversation explains where that feeling really comes from and how to stop letting it run your decisions.

⏱️ Chapters:
0:00 Introduction
0:24 The guilt that has nothing to do with a mistake
2:37 The childhood wound most doctors never trace
3:56 When being good enough becomes a compulsion
4:49 How the system turns into your parent
5:39 Medicine doesn't create this guilt, it recruits for it
6:45 The straight path from guilt to burnout
9:01 What a coach hears that you can't
11:18 Start with the vacation days you never take
13:56 The part-time decision that triggers the most guilt
14:57 Take home messages

About this episode:
Christie Mulholland, a palliative care physician and certified physician development coach, returns to unpack a concept she credits to psychiatrist Laurence Blum: hidden guilt, the disproportionate and often irrational guilt many physicians carry that has nothing to do with a clinical error. She traces its roots to childhood, sharing her own story of growing up with a father who sometimes fell short, and explains how children learn to become fixers and compulsive achievers to control disappointment. That same drive, she argues, is what medicine quietly recruits for, and what administrators and insurers exploit when they inherit the psychological authority once held by a parent. She describes the path this creates when it goes unaddressed, a straight line to burnout, more errors, and doctors who stop advocating for a system that only changes when they push back. Drawing on her own experience in psychoanalysis, she walks through how she coaches physicians to hear the guilt, interrogate where it came from, and turn awareness into action. She offers concrete first steps, from using every vacation day to weighing the financial, professional, and emotional readiness required to go part-time or take a sabbatical. She closes with a simple practice: the next time guilt shows up, pause and ask whether it is proportionate, accurate, and actually yours.

🤝 Partner with me on the KevinMD platform:
With over three million monthly readers and half a million social media followers, I give you direct access to the doctors and patients who matter most. Let's work together to tell your story.

➡️ PARTNER WITH KEVINMD: https://kevinmd.com/influencer
➡️ SUBSCRIBE TO THE PODCAST: https://www.kevinmd.com/podcast
➡️ RECOMMENDED BY KEVINMD: https://www.kevinmd.com/recommended

#PhysicianBurnout #PhysicianWellness #PalliativeCare