Takeaway
Because we listen to patient stories with empathy, it’s important to release suffering that isn’t yours. Shedding this weight through practices like reflective writing can help sustain your ability to care.
Lifelong learning in clinical excellence | April 20, 2026 | 2 min read
By Carolyn Roy-Bornstein, MD, author, writer, speaker www.carolynroybornstein.com
As clinicians, we bear witness to great suffering. We sit with our patients, absorbing their stories of illness. We take in their trauma and loss, their grief and pain. Dr. Rita Charon, the founder of the modern narrative medicine movement and director of that program at Columbia University, tells us that we doctors must develop a porousness in order to absorb these stories of suffering. And I agree. We must hold these stories in order to understand our patients and their illness journey, to arrive at an accurate diagnosis, and to choose the appropriate treatment.
But we can’t keep carrying them. We must recognize that this suffering isn’t ours. It belongs to our patient. We need to learn how to release it. To lay it down. I believe the answer to this dilemma, the key to this ability to be effective listeners while not drowning in others’ despair, can be found in the very permeability that allows these stories into our hearts to begin with. To maintain our own emotional health, we must learn to sit with these stories but let those parts that don’t belong to us continue to flow through us without snagging, landing in our own hearts with no way out, weighing us down. At the same time, we must hold onto their meaning: the lessons learned and wisdom gleaned from this doctor-patient relationship.
Reflective writing can be that back door. That filter that allows stories to move through us, settling the pain on the page while preserving the essence, the meaning inside the interaction. Writing is therapeutic in so many ways. Ever since Dr. James Penneabaker published his famous studies linking written emotional disclosures to improved physical health, scientists have been proving again and again the healing power of narrative. Writing helps us process grief, heal after trauma, and unleash creativity as a pathway to flourishing. In healthcare professionals specifically, writing helps us increase empathy, gain valuable perspective in our journeys as physicians, and explore and process our relationships with our patients.
At the core of resilience and wisdom is this reflective capacity, this ability to think deeply about our experiences, this metacognitive space where personal experience informs clinical practice. Reflective capacity is crucial in developing critical thinking skills, in attaining diagnostic accuracy, and in fostering professional competence. Reflective writing has been shown again and again to expand our capacity for reflection, thus increasing our ability to provide excellent clinical care.
In my new book, “A Prescription for Burnout: Restorative Writing for Healthcare Professionals,” I unpack the science behind the healing power of words. I help clinicians reconnect with their deepest values and rediscover the meaning and purpose that drew us to this work in the first place. Having healed myself after a family tragedy through my own reflective journey, I know firsthand how writing can transform grief, trauma, and professional disillusionment into clarity, self-awareness, and healing.
Together we can set down our absorbed suffering. Together we can deliver excellent care.
This piece expresses the views solely of the author. It does not necessarily represent the views of any organization, including Johns Hopkins Medicine.