Moral Injury
How Does Someone Heal and Repair Moral Injury?
To think about what can be done in your life after MI, let’s begin with life before MI. What was your life (or your loved one’s life) like before the experience(s)? Did you see yourself as a generally good person? Did you believe that people can be good and kind? Did you have people who you could count on? Did you do good things for other people and generally expect them to be good to you? Were you comfortable getting compliments or thanks? Did you feel like your opinions and needs mattered? If you answered “yes” to at least some of these questions, you will need to find a balance between the new things you have learned about yourself and the world and the positive and trusting parts of your life from before. If you did not answer yes to any of these questions, treating MI will be more difficult and will need you to come up with new places for good connections with people, communities, and organizations.
One step toward healing MI is to balance the experience. To do this, you will need to try to reconnect with the people and activities that you care about, or be open to new relationships and activities that make you feel like you belong. Are there people that you look up to and respect that will understand what you are going through? Are there groups, activities, and relationships that share your idea of value, trust, and purpose? With the help others who care about you, you will have to try to be open to these experiences. These experiences can help you fix the main problems of MI by making you feel better about yourself or people in general.
Next is to bring back trust in your own humanity or humanity in general. In this world, everyone has some good and some bad in them. No one is good all the time and never selfish or hurtful. If everyone was defined by, judged, or turned away because their worst moments, there would be no communities. So, people with MI need to try to find places to add goodness in order to outweigh badness. People who hurt others are not necessarily looking for forgiveness for their actions, but they do not want to be defined by what they did. Instead, they want to be able to make up for it in some way. Although very difficult, people who suffer from others’ moral failures are helped if they can see whoever hurt them as just one person and not as people in general.
If You Did Something that Hurt Someone
The following may help you rebalance "goodness" relative to "badness":
- If you need to, own up to what you did with yourself. If you can, own up to it with people who care about you. Taking responsibility and feeling sorry can help you feel ready to make up for what you did by making a positive difference.
- If possible, talk about what you did, the harm it caused, and how you have been doing since to at least one caring, understanding, and wise person. If someone is understanding, they will know your goodness, tell you what they think, and give you hope and support moving forward.
- Make an action plan to do good for other people, to be understanding of them, and to make connections with people that are understanding themselves.
- Be patient and understanding with yourself. There is no set timeline for fast you need to balance goodness with badness. There may be stops, starts, and setbacks along the way.
If You Were Hurt By or Saw Someone Else's Acts
These steps may help you balance goodness with badness about the world:
- If needed, be honest with yourself and, if you can, share with at least one caring, understanding, and wise person about the harm done and how it has affected you.
- Use understanding people who can see the harm and the damage done to tell you what they think in a non-judgmental way.
- Create an action plan about things to do, people to spend time with, or groups to join that make the world feel like a better place. To do this, you at least need to be open to good deeds and trying to trust others. You will also need to try to be understanding about others who struggle with their own moral problems.
- With people who support you, try to do these activities and be understanding about your own struggles to rebuild trust and the struggles of others to be good.
This process does not need you to meet with a therapist or be active in a faith community, but both can be a good place to start. Try to list the personal and social resources you have, and use them if possible.
Sometimes, morally injurious events are also traumatic events, and people can also be suffering from posttraumatic stress symptoms. In these cases, therapies who treat posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) may be able to help someone address MI symptoms and their impact. However, many morally injurious events that lead to MI are not traumatic events. If you have a lot of problems because of MI symptoms and think you could use professional help to balance goodness with badness in yourself, others, or the world, you should try to make an appointment a general mental health or a PTSD clinic. If you describe these problems and say that you would like this kind of help, most clinicians will be able to generate a treatment plan to support those goals.
If You or a Loved One Need Help
Please contact the Veterans Health Administration. The VA has hundreds of providers who can help you with issues related to moral injury and other mental health issues. To find a VA provider in your area, click this link.
If you are having a crisis, please call the Veterans Crisis Line at 1-800-273-8255 and Press 1. You do not need to be enrolled for VA benefits or health care to connect with someone who can help.
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