Why physicians struggle with caregiving and how to cope with grace

As physicians, we are trained to care—for patients, colleagues, and our communities.

When it comes to caring for our own aging parents and ill family members, most of us find ourselves overwhelmed, overfunctioning, under-resourced, depleted, and isolated. More often than not, we find ourselves assigned the caregiving role—explicitly or implicitly—because we’re “the doctor in the family.”

We think our medical training should make caregiving easier. But the opposite is true. We know too much—and worry more. We spot every red flag—and catastrophize. We give expert advice—and feel frustrated when no one listens. We shoulder decisions we were never meant to make alone—and we blame ourselves when things don’t go well.

We approach caregiving like we approach medicine: with excellence, responsibility, and a deep desire to help. Caring for our parents isn’t a clinical role. It’s deeply personal, emotionally fraught, and often identity-shaking. We tend to overpersonalize while simultaneously holding anticipatory grief. We fear making a mistake or offending. We frequently judge ourselves, them, our colleagues, and the care system.

Mindfulness and coaching have become lifelines in my own caregiving journey—and for many of the physicians I coach. This is not because they remove the burden, but because they help us carry it differently. Mindfulness invites us to stay present with what’s here—grief, tenderness, anger, love—and meet our feelings and our habitual narratives without judgment.

Coaching helps us unhook from guilt, perfectionism, overresponsibility, and internalized pressure. It helps us interrupt long-held beliefs that it’s our job to handle everything seamlessly and perfectly. Mindfulness and coaching tools offer clarity when we’re clouded by urgency. They create space for perspective and grace. They remind us that being human is not a weakness—it’s a strength in our caregiving journey.

Nothing has gone wrong if we are exhausted, resentful, uncertain, or overwhelmed. We are navigating a profound and complicated chapter. What’s needed is extra support, not additional pressure.

To care for our aging parents well, we must also care for ourselves and each other well. We must practice acceptance, not perfection. Set realistic expectations.

Everything flows much better when we notice when our nervous systems are in overdrive—and know how to pause to reset them.
When we learn to manage our energy like the precious resource it is and to fill our emotional and spiritual wells and not just run on empty, we can remain running the marathon.
Caring for aging parents is rarely a sprint.

We can choose to empower ourselves with awareness, discernment, and mindfulness and mindset tools, so we can navigate this chapter, and the caregiving dilemmas and inevitable setbacks, with pause, presence, patience, grace, and love.

We can’t fix the broken health care systems or change the aging of our parents. When we break ourselves due to exhaustion and frustration, no one benefits. The healthiest way for physicians to show up for the caregiving journey is with presence, perspective, and mindful awareness and intention. Only then can we honor the journey, show up with love, while also using our medical training and knowledge in helpful ways.

Jessie Mahoney is a board-certified pediatrician, certified coach, mindfulness and yoga teacher, and the founder of Pause & Presence Coaching & Retreats. After nearly two decades as a physician leader at the Permanente Medical Group/Kaiser, she stepped outside the traditional medical model to reimagine what sustainable well-being in health care could look like. She can also be reached on Facebook and Instagram.

Dr. Mahoney’s work challenges the culture of overwork and self-sacrifice in medicine. She helps physicians and leaders cultivate clarity, intention, and balance—leveraging mindfulness, coaching, yoga, and lifestyle medicine to create deep and lasting change. Her CME retreats offer a transformative space for healing, self-discovery, and renewal.

As co-host of the podcast, Healing Medicine, she brings self-compassion and presence into the conversation around modern medical practice. A sought-after speaker and consultant, she partners with organizations to build more human-centered, sustainable, and inspired medical cultures.