I remember one night on BART, heading home after another long day. The train was mostly empty, lights buzzing overhead, and my brain kept looping on one thought: I can't keep doing this.
And almost immediately, another voice chimed in:
"You should be grateful. You have a good job. Good money. Job security. What’s wrong with you?"

Those thoughts didn’t bring relief. They brought shame. Not curiosity. Not compassion. Just shame.

That is what we are talking about today. The Gratitude Trap. What happens when telling yourself, “I should be grateful” is not really about gratitude at all, but a quiet way of keeping yourself small.

Welcome to The Lawyer Burnout Solution, the podcast for women attorneys who want to move from survival mode to a sustainable, fulfilling lawyer life.

I’m Heather Mills, and every week I share tools, strategies, and mindset shifts to help you reclaim your energy, confidence, and career.

Back when I was practicing law, telling myself that I should be grateful was not a one-time thing. It was a pattern.
I was working at a great plaintiffs’ side firm in Oakland with meaningful work and really good people. On paper it looked amazing.
But inside, I was exhausted and disconnected.

That same heaviness would settle in on the ride home. Not panic and not drama. Just a weight. My brain would start looping through the same questions: Is this it? Can I do this for thirty more years?

And then right on cue: “You should be grateful. You worked so hard for this. What is wrong with you?”

The next morning I would be back at it, competent, composed, reliable. And I was really good at my job. But there was a gap between how I looked and how I felt.
I was not questioning my job. I was questioning myself.

That phrase “I should be grateful” sounds thoughtful. Like you are being mature and self aware.
But most of the time, it is not gratitude at all. It is self correction.

It is your brain saying, “Do not complain. Do not be selfish. Do not rock the boat.”

I call this a moralized thought. Let me slow down here because it is an important concept.

A moralized thought is what happens when your brain takes a perfectly normal human experience and makes it mean something about your character.

So instead of thinking, “I’m frustrated,” your brain says, “I should not be frustrated. I am lucky to even have this job.”
Instead of “I’m tired,” it becomes, “I’m lazy for wanting rest.”
Instead of “This does not feel right,” it becomes, “Something is wrong with me for not appreciating it.”

It is not the feeling itself that hurts. It is the judgment layered on top of it.

And if this has been your pattern for years, it is not your fault. Your brain has been trying to keep you safe. It learned that being hard on yourself gives you a sense of control. That if you judge yourself first, no one else can.
That is a survival skill, not a flaw.

But here is the problem. Lawyers are trained to sort everything into categories. Right and wrong. Strong and weak. Good and bad. That is useful in litigation. But when you turn that same lens inward, it is brutal.

You start moralizing everything about yourself. How you think. How you feel. How you handle stress. And once you do that, your emotions stop being signals and start feeling like verdicts.
You stop asking, “What is this feeling trying to tell me?” and start asking, “What is wrong with me for having it?”

That is where so many lawyers get stuck. Not in the feeling itself, but in the shame for having it.

We do not come into the world doing this. We learn it.

Most of us were taught directly or indirectly that being grateful makes us good, and that wanting more makes us ungrateful.

Women especially get this message early.
Be agreeable. Be thankful. Be easy to work with.
Be grateful for the opportunity even if that opportunity is slowly draining the life out of you.

If you grew up in an immigrant family, you might have heard, “Your parents worked so hard for this life. You should be grateful.” And of course that is true. But the unspoken message is, “You do not get to want more than this.”

If you are a woman of color, that message often carries extra weight.
You are expected to stay composed and resilient, because showing frustration risks being labeled difficult or angry or unprofessional.

Even men get their own version.
You have done the right things. You have provided. You have succeeded.
So why would you want more?

Different words, same idea. Wanting more makes you ungrateful.

And when that belief gets reinforced by the culture of law, where overwork is a badge of honor and exhaustion is considered normal, gratitude stops being gratitude. It becomes guilt.

And sometimes what we call ingratitude is actually just exhaustion.
It is that moment when you have met every deadline, done everything right, and even small wins do not feel good anymore.
You are not ungrateful. You are empty.

So what does this look like day to day?
Maybe you have made partner. Or you finally got the promotion you were chasing. Or you landed at the firm everyone respects.

And you are sitting there thinking,
This should feel good.
I should feel proud.
But instead, you feel off.

A little disconnected.
Like you are going through the motions, doing all the right things, but not actually feeling anything.

You look around and everyone else seems fine. They are thriving in the same role that is quietly draining you.

So your brain does what it always does.
What is wrong with me? I should be grateful. Other people would kill for this job.

Maybe you do not even say it out loud because it feels too ungrateful to admit.

But here is what is actually happening.
You start to think the job is the problem.
You start wondering if you need to change firms, change careers, or even leave law altogether.

And maybe that is true. But sometimes it is not the job that is wrong.
It is that you are so burned out you cannot feel anything good right now.

When your tank is empty, even meaningful work feels meaningless.
Even success feels flat.
Even wins feel like one more thing to get through.

You are not ungrateful for the opportunity. You are trying to make sense of why something that should feel good does not.

And your brain’s best guess is, “This must not be right for me.”
But sometimes the real answer is simpler.
“I am too depleted to know what is right for me yet.”

Or maybe it is Sunday at 6pm and you feel that familiar tightness in your chest. You have done nothing wrong. You are prepared for Monday. Your work is solid. But your body knows what is coming.

You notice the dread.
And then here it comes again.
I should be grateful I even have a job.

Then the guilt piles on.
People are getting laid off. The job market is tough. What kind of person dreads stability?

But that thought is not helping.
It is using other people’s pain to shut down your own truth.

You are not ungrateful because you are burned out. And your burnout does not disappear just because someone else has it worse.

Two things can be true.
The job market is scary right now,
and the way you are working is not sustainable.

That is the Gratitude Trap.
Those moments when gratitude stops being honest and starts being a way to silence yourself.

So what is really happening when you tell yourself, “I should be grateful”?
It is not about gratitude at all. It is about protection.

When I say safety, I do not mean physical safety.
I mean emotional safety. The feeling of being accepted, of not rocking the boat.

Most of us learned early that if we seem grateful, people relax.
Teachers like us more.
Parents worry less.
Partners feel appreciated.

So we start performing gratitude to keep things smooth. It is not fake. It is protective.
It is your nervous system saying, “If I stay pleasant and thankful, no one will be disappointed or upset with me.”

That pattern does not disappear when we grow up. It just moves into our work life.

At the office, you tell yourself to be grateful for the job, the paycheck, the security.
Because the moment you start to question it, something inside you tenses.

You remember what happens when people think you are ungrateful. They pull away. They judge. They stop trusting you.

So “I should be grateful” becomes a kind of safety behavior.
Not because gratitude is bad, but because you are using it to manage risk.
It is your body’s way of saying, “If I stay grateful, I will stay safe. I will belong.”

The problem is that when you spend years managing safety that way, you lose touch with what is true.
You do not stop being grateful.
You stop being honest.

That is the real cost of the Gratitude Trap.
You protect your belonging, but you lose connection with yourself.

When you have spent years shutting down your truth with “I should be grateful,” you start to lose touch with what you actually want.

When lawyers tell me they want a new job, they usually say things like,
“I just need a better boss,”
or “Once I make partner, things will calm down.”

But when we dig deeper, what they really want sounds more like this:
“I want to feel calm.”
“I want to feel like myself again.”
“I want to feel appreciated for who I am, not just for what I produce.”

Those are not job titles. They are emotional states.

And you cannot earn them through performance.
You create them by changing how you relate to yourself.

It is not about fixing your job before you can feel okay.
It is about reconnecting with the part of you that learned to stay quiet. The part that believes gratitude means you do not get to want more.

What you are really craving is not a different office or a different boss or a different career.
You are craving peace.
Permission.
Relief.

You want to stop proving your worth and start feeling it.
And that begins when you stop confusing gratitude with disconnection from yourself.

Let me give you an example that is not about law at all.

A client once told me she stayed in a relationship for years even though she knew it was not right.
Every time she thought about leaving, her brain jumped in with that familiar voice:
“You should be grateful. He treats you well. You may not find someone better.”

She was not staying out of love. She was staying out of fear.
Fear of being alone.
Fear of being judged.
Fear of wanting too much.

She called it gratitude because that sounded nobler than admitting she was afraid.
But what it really was, was scarcity.
This quiet belief that she had to settle.

When she finally saw that, something shifted.
She did not just leave the relationship. She started relating to herself differently.

She noticed the small moments where she minimized her own needs.
Instead of shutting them down, she practiced listening.
Small steps.
Speaking up a little sooner.
Trusting her judgment a little more.
Offering herself the reassurance she used to wait for from others.

She stopped using gratitude as a way to disappear.
She started using honesty as a way to belong to herself again.

That is what real abundance looks like.
Not pretending everything is fine, but trusting that what you want matters and that you are allowed to have it.

There is another piece we need to name.
It is hard to feel grateful when you are burned out.

When your body has been running on stress for too long, your emotional range starts to narrow.
It is not that you do not care.
It is that your system has been stuck in survival mode.

And in survival mode, your brain does not register joy, curiosity, or appreciation.
It is too busy scanning for threats, trying to keep you safe.

So if gratitude feels out of reach right now, that does not mean you are broken.
It means you are depleted.

And you cannot access gratitude from depletion, at least not the real kind.

Once your body starts to recover, once you get rest and breathing room and some genuine safety, real gratitude starts to return on its own.

You do not have to force it.
You do not have to fake it.
It just comes back.

Because underneath all the stress, you still care.
You have always cared.
You have just been too tired to feel it.

Real gratitude does not silence you.
It does not shrink you.
It does not ask you to pretend you are fine.

Real gratitude expands you.

It sounds like this:
“I am grateful for this job, and I am ready to relate to it differently.”
“I am thankful for this opportunity, and I can admit it is not sustainable the way it is.”
“I am proud of what I have built, and I am allowed to want rest too.”

That is real gratitude.
It holds two truths at once, appreciation and honesty.

If your version of gratitude makes you smaller or quieter, pause and notice what you are afraid might happen if you told the truth instead.

Real gratitude does not punish you for having wants and needs. It works with them.
It says,
“I am thankful for what I have, and I am also ready for what is next.”

Gratitude is not meant to trap you.
It is meant to help you see clearly so you can take the next step that feels right for you.

Here is something to try this week.

The next time your brain says, “I should be grateful,” pause and ask,
“What if wanting more just means wanting a feeling and noticing which one I am craving?”

You do not need to fix anything or make a plan.
Just notice what comes up.

That small pause is where honesty starts.
And from that honesty, real gratitude begins to grow.

When you stop using gratitude as a way to stay safe, it can finally become what it was meant to be.
A way to connect with yourself and your life.

If you have been caught in the “I should be grateful” loop, your next step is not to fix your job.
It is to rebuild your relationship with yourself.

That is the work I do with clients.
Learning how to rest without guilt.
To feel proud without overperforming.
To want more without shame.

If you are ready to explore what that could look like for you, you can book a free Stress Reset Call at heathermillscoaching.com/call.

Thanks for listening, and I will see you next time.