Moral Injury: The Silent Cause of Suffering?

Them: “Why did you leave?”

Me: “A combination of things, it’s complicated…”

Except, it turns out, it was in fact surprisingly simple.

With the benefit of hindsight and increased self-awareness, I can pinpoint the moment each of my significant life and career changes became inevitable. When the environment, the relationship, the behaviour, the decisions went from “this is OK, even if it isn’t ideal” to “this is not OK”.

Today I was listening to a brilliant podcast on change* which talked about the topic of Moral Injury. It’s a topic I became aware of and fascinated by in the sharper post-policing years of my work, as I unravelled my own experiences as well as hearing the stories of thousands of first responders I was coaching and spending time with.

If you haven’t heard of it before, here’s a few variations on a definition: “a traumatic experience emerging from the witnessing of or participation in an act of perceived moral transgression on the part of themselves or others” is what Wikipedia will tell you.

Early (1990s) work to define the concept went with “Moral injury is present when there has been a betrayal of what is morally right, by someone who holds legitimate authority and in a high-stakes situation."

A crisis of conscience. Someone trampling on your core values.

The first thing that stands out to me is that it’s all about perception. Just as we’re learning to see that PTSD is not confined to military contexts (and I definitely prefer the idea of swapping the D for Disorder with an I for Injury there too), the “high-stakes” element in Moral Injury is a matter of personal judgement too.

When I left policing, I was in a general state of burnout. Yes, I probably lacked the personal awareness of what would have helped that, alongside the wider cultural elements that didn’t help (who knew regular sleep and talking about the things we saw and did might be a better option that alcohol and “man up”). We also know that if the human brain is still developing well into our 20s, spending much of that decade seeing and doing traumatic or at least deeply unpleasant things is not the best fuel for healthy development.

Maybe I’m lucky, but those things didn’t ever make me want to walk away or question my ability to stay. What did hurt in a much more confronting way, were the actions (or lack of) by “leaders”.

Interestingly, here I think it’s important to say that to my mind there’s an equal and opposite positive force: when someone does what is morally right in a high-stakes situation. I can think of plenty of examples of people who I’d run through a brick wall for because of the way they acted when it mattered, or what they stood up for.

Unfortunately, those people aren’t always the ones you find holding the “legitimate authority”. Ultimately, I found that the people I respected were also trying their best in the face of a larger majority of key decision-makers whose actions were (choose from the menu) selfish, dishonest, cowardly, cruel, corrupt to name but a few.

When I moved outside of the traditional institutions and started trying to influence change from the outside, I found the same mix. Great people driven by doing the right thing and a belief in contributing to something bigger than themselves. Not so great people driven by ego, status and contributing to themselves. Sadly, you couldn’t easily match the right role to the right person, no matter how many conferences and surveys happen.

Policing was one spiky, raw example for me. I’ve had others in the corporate World too, and when I work with people across sectors the theme is consistent: what makes people join, grow, thrive and stay in any field is the ability to match a deeply personal sense of “what I’m here for” with the visible day-to-day experience of being there.

Injury Recovery and Prevention

So, how do you recover from such an injury? How do we prevent it in the first place?

In the podcast I mentioned, an interesting development was the idea of belonging as an antidote to Moral Injury. Feeling seen and heard by others with shared experience can go some way to relieving the perceived shame often associated with MI. Finding a new “tribe” that is more aligned to our values and standards.

I’m a believer that high levels of self-awareness are always the starting point when assessing any life or career crossroads. If you deeply understand your personal answers to the questions “what am I here for?” and “what am I willing to accept?” then you are in a strong position to analyse how well any environment matches them.

I also think that when someone shows you who they are, you should believe them the first time (thanks for that one, Maya Angelou). Too often I work with people who tell me they’ve seen the writing on the wall for months or years but were waiting for something to magically change.

Which leads to the final point that I find myself increasingly bringing to all kinds of coaching conversations: stay on your side of the net.

By which I mean do whatever you can to own, shape, influence the things you can – and let go of the need to fix others (whether that be systems or individuals). It’s easy when you’re passionate about a particular cause or piece of work to overplay your strengths and values. If what’s happening is beyond your willingness to accept it, move on and redirect that energy to a better fit.

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*The podcast is “A Slight Change of Plans” by Maya Shankar (which is great in general) and this specific episode is with Michael Valdovinos.