Someone recently told me about the term “Moral Injury” which is similar to Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and also comes out of studies of the military.
But where PTSD is about something that damages a person’s loss of sense of personal safety after a traumatic event or series of events, Moral Injury can occur when a person engages in something that violates their own moral code by being forced to do (or not do) something that goes against their own morals and results in loss of trust in their leaders/institutions/society:
PTSD is a fear-based nervous system response to life-threatening trauma, characterized by hyperarousal and flashbacks. Moral injury is a values-based emotional wound stemming from actions (or failures to act) that violate your deeply held moral beliefs, characterized by profound guilt, shame, and betrayal.
Now part of the DSM-V in a special section that could eventually become a formal diagnosis, “Moral Injury” has moved beyonds its military origins and is increasingly being recognized in healthcare, journalism, human resources as well as the workplace more generally and even within families.
Or as the great Gabor Mate says: “You have to have your eyes open to have your heart broken.”