Moral Injury

Richard Bolstad, 2025

What is Moral Injury Syndrome?

In a situation like a war, the lasting distress experienced by survivors cannot be explained simply as “anxiety”. While most treatments for survivors have focused on reducing panic attacks, hypervigilance etc., there is a growing awareness that the causes of distress in these people are much more diverse. Jonathan Shay (1994) first coined the term Moral Injury. The most commonly cited definition of moral injury is the “lasting psychological, biological, spiritual, behavioral and social impact” of moral “transgressions” – transgressions against the usual standards of human interaction. These moral breaches may be by the person themselves, or by others whose actions either were not stopped or could not be stopped. Carol Gilligan says moral injury is a “shattering of trust that compromises our ability to love”.

While not currently listed as a diagnostic condition in Psychiatry, moral injury may occur with or without PTSD, and often elicits the “moral” emotions guilt, shame, sense of betrayal, and anger. It’s healing therefore involves forgiveness, including self-forgiveness, and at a more spiritual level, creating a sense of absolution (being absolved or forgiven even for the “unforgivable”, based on stated regret and restorative acts aimed at healing relationships and atonement). Moral injury may be experienced as an injury not merely to one’s values but to one’s sense of identity or even to the “spiritual integrity” of the universe we live in. Frequently moral injury destroys the distinction between victim and perpetrator. Moral injury occurs in war, but also in medical emergency work, policing, etc.

The History of Managing Moral Injury

Moral injury is not a new invention, but our methods of dealing with it may need to be new. The man possessed by demons referred to in the Christian Bible, Mark 5:9 (a man who lives in the tombs, cutting himself with stones and crying) says “My name is legion: for we are many.” Using the word “Legion”, he is originally referring specifically to a Roman army. The modern interpretation of the word “legion” as meaning merely “a multitude” is just that – a modern misunderstanding. The name of his demon is “The Army”. After this man’s demon is released into a herd of pigs, Jesus tells him “Go home to your friends, and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and what mercy he has shown you.” This sounds very similar to modern psychotherapy interventions for moral injury, which frequently involve ritual release and reintegration with community.

This story is not a random one, because it reminds us that throughout history, it is often religion that has taken responsibility for dealing with moral injury. Indeed, the central rituals of most religions include symbolic acknowledgement of, release from, and commitment to restitution for moral failures. The Christian mass or communion, the Jewish Yom Kippur, the Muslim Istighfar, the Hindu prāyaścitta, and the Theravada Buddhist biweekly Uposatha ceremony are examples. As religious practice weakens its significance in modern societies, it may well fall to psychotherapists and other healers to take on this role and recreate meaningful community rituals of forgiveness and atonement.

Perhaps the greatest challenge in the handover of responsibility to psychotherapists is the tendency of psychotherapy to “individualise” healing. The story of Jesus healing above makes it clear that a person’s community must be involved in healing; that the story cannot be kept “secret”. We see the beginnings of such symbolic healing in Twelve Step groups and indeed the entire twelve step process can be seen as an attempt at creating a moral injury ritual. The core being steps 4-9:

  • 4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
  • 5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
  • 6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
  • 7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
  • 8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
  • 9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others. (Alcoholics Anonymous, 2025)

Even the perpetrators of history’s most horrific moral crimes have had to deal with this type of moral anguish. Heinreich Himmler, Reichsführer of the Schutzstaffel (SS) in Nazi Germany, often called the “architect of the Holocaust” admitted that seeing so many dead civilians was traumatic for his troops. In a famous 1943 speech he wavered between agreeing that the experience had “made us hard” and yet “we have suffered no harm to our inner being, our soul, our character.” As is usual for those who commit genocide, he attempted to justify this by explaining that the exterminated people “wanted to destroy us”. “Amongst ourselves, for once, it shall be said quite openly, but all the same we will never speak about it in public. …. I am referring here to the evacuation of the Jews, the extermination of the Jewish people. Most of you men know what it is like to see 100 corpses side by side, or 500 or 1,000. To have stood fast through this – and except for cases of human weakness – to have stayed decent, that has made us hard. This is an unwritten and never-to-be-written page of glory in our history…. We had the moral right, we had the duty towards our people, to destroy this people that wanted to destroy us…. All in all, however, we can say that we have carried out this most difficult of tasks in a spirit of love for our people. And we have suffered no harm to our inner being, our soul, our character.” (Himmler, 1943, in Smith and Petersen, 1974)

The rationale that “these people wanted to destroy us” does not actually shift moral injury however. Clinical psychologist Yossi Levi-Belz talks about his experience working with soldiers involved in the genocide in Gaza. “I’m a clinical psychologist, head of the Lior Tsfati Center for the Study of Suicide and Mental Pain, and a faculty member at the School of Therapy, Counseling and Human Development at the University of Haifa. I’m involved both in therapy and in research. For many years I’ve studied topics related to mental pain – suicide, moral injury, trauma and growth following crisis…. We found that 30 to 40 percent reported experiences consistent with moral injury. Overall, the Gaza war has led to high levels of moral injury – partly because we entered it driven by powerful feelings of revenge and anger. When those are your motivations, you may make choices that later cause you to ask, “What have I done?”” (Levi-Belz in Shani, 2025)

Levi-Belz explains how fragile the rationale of “We had to do it for our own survival” is. “I’ve heard harrowing stories about soldiers who came into this war with clear values, but once inside – driven by rage and revenge, and coping with appalling sights – acted with great harshness toward Gazan civilians or West Bank residents. Only when they returned home did they truly grasp what they’d done – and they couldn’t believe it…. Our society is wounded on multiple levels, by many painful events. Our survival instinct pushes us to endure trauma, shake it off and keep going – because there’s no other choice. We appear strong, but it’s not true resilience. Real resilience depends on processing what happened to us, and we simply haven’t done that for years. … Troops came to me and said, “I gave the order to destroy hundreds of homes.” At the time, they believed it was necessary. But when the dust settled, they realized: “I was responsible for the deaths of thousands.” That’s when the rupture comes.” (Levi-Belz in Shani, 2025)

Yehudit Karp is a former deputy attorney general and a member of several Israeli organisations speaking out about the war crimes in Gaza. She points out that moral injury is not caused merely by the horror of what soldiers have seen outside, but their horror at what they have been inside.  “Moral injury is a term from the field of psychology that describes a mental wound that derives from the gap between deeds committed and one’s moral beliefs. A civil moral wound is one that is caused when a person sees their country crossing moral boundaries in its acts, with most of its citizens remaining indifferent or even supporting these acts. This wound isn’t caused only by the destruction in Gaza and the violence committed under the aegis of the army in the West Bank, but stems from the hatred and denial that have spread among us: This includes indifference to the suffering of others, and the silencing and normalization of the brutality and acts of revenge. It is also linked to the moral obtuseness contained in talk of flattening, expelling and annihilating, in expressions denoting a dehumanization of an entire people. Something deep has broken here, not only along the border, but within our hearts. It seems that we have learned to feel only our own pain, losing the ability to feel the pain of others, whose whole world has collapsed due to our actions.” (Karp, 2025)

Confronting Evil, Inside and Outside

Yehudit Karp argues that healing from moral injury must begin by acknowledging that the injury has occurred, which means acknowledging that the acts that were observed and the motivations that led to those acts were contrary to the morals that human beings almost universally seek to live by. “In order to heal from this wound, it is not enough for our hostages to return or for our soldiers to come home. As long as our hearts are insensitive to the suffering inflicted in our name or among us, something in us remains broken, requiring repair…. This process must include breaking away from racism, ultra-nationalism, a sense of superiority, militarism and the reliance on force, as well as from the cult of victimhood and sense of persecution. It requires a bold process of self-accountability. A recognition of the responsibility for the destruction and killing we sow around us, and the understanding that a prolonged domination of another people does not protect us. On the contrary, it endangers our security and erodes our souls.” (Karp, 2025)

At first, the person suffering from moral injury resists confronting this reality because the pain would be so overwhelming. To continue pretending with them that what they did and what they observed was “right” is to deny their own humanity and to leave them utterly alone when they finally face these truths at some future time. Jenny Mizrahi is the mother of Israeli soldier Eliran Mizrahi, who committed suicide in June 2024 after his return from Gaza. She explains “What he saw over there in Gaza injured his soul. You see all the bodies over there and all the blood. It hurts your soul.” What is important to notice is that in his time in Gaza, Eliran had appeared to be not only proud of his actions, but also appeared to be enjoying himself. “After his death, his D9 partner, Guy Zaken, told a parliamentary committee they were often shot at and they ran over hundreds of bodies. Yet they filmed themselves smiling and singing to send to their families. Eliran shared some of those videos on social media.”

Mental Health officers in the Israeli army acknowledge that moral injury, rather than PTSD (Post Traumatic Stresss Disorder) per se, is the main problem leading to suicide. “The IDF says supporting its service members is a top priority and it invests significant resources in doing so, including deploying mental health officers in all military units. Tuly Flint was one of those officers. A clinical social worker and expert in trauma therapy in his professional life, and a lieutenant colonel in the military reserves, he was deployed to offer psychological support to troops who served in Gaza. Last year, after treating many soldiers and becoming exposed to the extreme suffering of Gazans, Tuly came to the conclusion the war had no purpose and it was a crime against humanity. So he refused to continue to serve in the IDF. “At the beginning of the war what we usually saw was simple PTSD. People who talk about the horrors they saw in the first few weeks with the massacre of Hamas,” says Tuly. “But since the second month of the war, people started talking about what takes place on the Palestinian side. “Even people that were not talking about Palestinians’ rights, or anything like that, they started talking about the fact that they saw bodies of children, of old people, of women.”” (Lockwood, 2025)

To confront the truth (that they have participated in or been unable to stop events that are utterly unacceptable to them) requires finding some powerful reason why they should carry on living rather than simply kill themselves. It requires understanding that their self-harm does not help the injured, even if the injured may understandably desire such punishment: punishment perpetuates the cycle of revenge and moral injury. To pass the moral injury back to the original victims of the moral crime is not a solution, it is the problem.

There is an important understanding here: events like the genocide in Gaza and the Holocaust are not merely a moral injury to those who were victims of cruelty or perpetrators of cruelty. By observing these events, all human beings suffer moral injury: all eight billion of us. Moral injury is not so much about a new “client group” who need specific help. It is a reframe of how to live all our lives in an imperfect universe.

Creating Cleansing and Re-Humanization Rituals After Moral Injury

In 2010, in Singapore, Xiuping Li and colleagues had 80 students write about a recent decision they regretted and felt emotionally distressed thinking about. Half of them were then told to seal their written recollection in an envelope, and all the students were then interviewed to check how they felt about their decision. They thought that what was being studied was their response to writing down their story. Actually, what was being studied was their response to placing that story in an envelope. Although students who had sealed the envelopes did not know that other students had not, those students (the envelope group) consistently felt less negative about the event than the control students who just handed in their recollections without an envelope. In follow up research, the change did not occur with students who sealed an empty paper in the envelope, and nor did it occur with those who simply paper-clipped the pages with the problem on – so it’s not just the mere act of doing something to a written recollection, or sealing anything in an envelope: it is specifically enclosing the emotionally laden material in the envelope that is beneficial.

Li, Wei and Soman conclude “Our results show that the process of alleviating negative emotions can be facilitated by physically sealing emotionally laden materials. The experiments demonstrate that abstract mental states, such as psychological closure over a negative event, appear to rely on the sensorimotor experiences brought about by the simple act of enclosing. Moreover, we have shown that the metaphorical act of enclosing and sealing influences the memory, in the sense that the recollection of the emotional details of an event becomes weaker. This seems to suggest that physical experiences interfere with cognitive entities such as memory and retrieval. Finally, the experiments provide scientific evidence of the effectiveness of metaphor therapy for emotional healing.” (Li, Wei and Soman, 2010) Every student of Milton Erickson’s work knows that he focused on metaphorical acts as solutions to many of his clients’ problems.

Charles Laughlin and colleagues have postulated that such processes, which are the core of ancient rituals in every culture, engage the body actively enough to distract conscious processing of a traumatic event and to allow more direct processing of the symbols presented. Rituals include marriages, funerals, penances, prayers, fasting, lighting candles and fires, pilgrimages, sacramental meals, ritual washing and anointing with oils, gift giving, award giving, singing, watching plays and movies that tell symbolic stories, and many other activities which you may well have indulged in. At the extreme, these rituals are even designed to change people’s state of mind: even 60 years after I stopped singing them or agreeing with their words, Christmas Carols create a sense of inspiration and dare I say “devotion” when I hear them. Such rituals are designed to “reframe” otherwise mundane events and signal their psychological and social significance.

Laughlin says “Ritual drama involves the expression of a society’s cosmology via enactment of elements and relations making up the cosmology (Eliade, 1963:19). Participation in the drama commonly induces alternate phases of consciousness (so-called ecstatic states, trances, visions and the like) in which experiences arise that are later interpreted as verification of the cosmology. The role of the mystical adept or shaman in guiding, enacting and interpreting the ritual, and later in interpreting transpersonal experiences, is crucial…. Participation in full-blown ritual dramas, as in the ancient Greek mystery plays, is an encounter with esoteric mysteries, with a developmental sequence of experiences that gradually unfold, mature and become more global in significance…. The shamanic principle may be further understood structurally as the intersection of two subsidiary principles. First, inherent in biological systems appears to be a drive toward wholeness (“health,” “healiological,” “holy,” and “whole” having essentially the same root meaning). This holistic imperative may be reflected in experience as levels of successively more integrated consciousness (Maslow, 1968, 1969) and may well progress as an alternation between differentiation and reorganization of neural structures in ontogeny (Piaget, 1971a, 1977; Jung, 1971).” (Laughlin, McManus, Rubinstein, and Shearer 1986).

I am suggesting that we could intentionally design our trainings in personal development, specifically our NLP trainings, to create this effect, which they are undoubtedly already triggering, and which expert psychotherapists such as Milton Erickson and Virginia Satir already utilized. Michael Winkelman (2010, p. 227) suggests that the effect of such rituals is biologically similar to the process elicited in the brain by OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder), and that compulsive behaviours may indeed be an attempt at triggering such emotional healing, mediated in the hypothalamus. Further evidence for the biological basis of such ritual is its presence in our nearest biological relatives, the chimpanzees, who perform the same “quasi-religious” ceremony each time a rainstorm occurs. “Lawick-Goodall (1971, 52-54) used the term “rain dance” to characterize the behavioral dynamics of wild chimpanzees in response to a thunderstorm. Following a loud thunder burst, the alpha male began to stagger rhythmically, swaying from foot to foot and vocalizing (pant-hooting). He then ran up and down the hill, followed by other males, who flailed branches as the females, and young watched the display.” (Winkelman, 2010, p. 233).

Once we understand the way that symbolism links into our brain’s natural way of operating, then all the universal elements of earlier “shamanic” cultures kind of make neuroscientific sense. Winkelman explains “Although well-being is related to development of attachment, this can create a false self that involves identifications to please caretakers, producing dissociation from aspects of self that they disapprove of. This begins a psychological abandonment of the true self that manifests later in life in anger, frustration, and loss of access to one’s own creative potentials (Gagan 1998). Shamanic journeying can heal these developmental mental traumas and re-establish contact with one’s true self through “power animals” that represent dissociated aspects of the self. These power animal relations can nurture the traumatized aspects of the self and provide important substitute attachment experiences. Journeying allows a reframing of early traumas, particularly those that are still dissociated. Power animals encountered in shamanic journeying may be recovered as manifestations of “lost souls,” reactivating lost potentials and dissociated aspects of self.” (Winkelman, 2010, p. 219). Winkelman is suggesting that people may be intuitively drawn to animals who symbolise the qualities that they want to enhance more in their lives. Look at the pictures and music you surround yourself with, and you may well see the same process at work.

However, in all cultures, this use of healing ritual has a social component. Winkelman says “A core aspect of shamanism emphasized by Eliade was that ritual, which was on behalf of the community and that the entire community was expected to attend. The effects of community rituals on social life and individual physiological and psychological states are key aspects of shamanic healing. This healing dynamic reflects the primary social psychological functions of religion-meeting needs for belonging and comfort and shaping individual psychodynamics and psychophysiological logical responses in bonding the individual with others in society. Shamanism is a primordial form of group bonding, one with roots in the collective rituals of our ancient hominid ancestors (Winkelman 2009; Winkelman and Baker 2008; also see Chapter 6).” (Winkelman, 2010, p. 223) … and … “The therapies of shamanistic healers are typically realized in collective ceremonies involving the participation of the local residential group (e.g., the entire band in hunting-gathering societies). Collective social integration produced by shamanistic healing practices through the participation of the local community strengthens group identity, exerting an influence on well-being by enhancing community cohesion through reintegrating patients into the social group. The relationship of social support to morbidity, mortality, and recovery indicates that social relations can have prophylactic and therapeutic effects.” (Winkelman, 2010, p. 225)

We can see that modern cultures have often done away with many of the social arrangements for collective healing rituals, with the notable exception of charismatic religious groups, religious retreats, and … personal growth workshops. The vestiges of social celebrations in military parades, Christmas speeches, and Valentines day gift-giving, for example, are sad echoes of a greater tradition of festivals. When I go to Japan in the summer and see whole communities, all ages, dancing and singing together at Obon festivals, to the sound of loud rhythmic (shamanic) drumming, I am reminded what we have lost.

The way that people describe profound experiences on personal growth groups and alternative healing training courses, suggests that these are already fulfilling this missing function. Andrew Newberg and researchers at The Marcus Institute of Integrative Health at Thomas Jefferson University show there are changes in the dopamine and serotonin systems in the brains of retreat participants following standard Christian retreat procedures. (Newberg et alia. 2017). The study, funded by the Fetzer Institute, included 14 Christian participants ranging in age from 24 to 76. They attended an Ignatian retreat based on the spiritual exercises developed by St. Ignatius Loyola who founded the Jesuits. Following a morning mass, participants spent most of the day in silent contemplation, prayer and reflection and attended a daily meeting with a spiritual director for guidance and insights. After returning, study subjects also completed a number of surveys which showed marked improvements in their perceived physical health, tension and fatigue. They also reported increased feelings of self-transcendence which correlated to the change in dopamine binding. The post-retreat scans revealed decreases in dopamine transporter (5-8 percent) and serotonin transporter (6.5 percent) binding, which could make more of the neurotransmitters available to the brain.

Examples of metaphorical acts useful in moral injury include:

  • Testimony and Release: Reading and then burning descriptions of events, of emotions and releasing of emotions (forgiveness).
  • Use of Talismans: Carrying an object such as a stone, and pouring emotions into it, then washing it.
  • Pilgrimage: Going on a pilgrimage and leaving something that needs to be left or returned, and/or retrieving something that needs to be retrieved.
  • Soul Retrieval / Recovering Exiled Parts: Many NLP metaphors such as Time Line Therapy™ (James and Woodsmall, 1988) and Core Transformation™ (Andreas and Andreas, 1994) teach ways to metaphorically journey to the place and time where moral injury occurred and to recover positive meanings and a sense of integrated self. Internal Family Systems is an example of another model of psychotherapy which involves this process centrally (Schwartz and Sweezy, 2019).

Actions of Restitution and Atonement

However much these symbolic acts may comfort a person, their comfort happens because they allow the person to embody the change of heart that they symbolize. It is therefore incongruent to think one can simply “say sorry” and get on with life. Our moral compass cannot be fooled and our lives need to embody the change in practical ways. These can be summarized as actions to remedy the damage of the past (restitution) and ways to create a better future.

  • Service for those injured in the past: Engaging in community service, perhaps caring for those injured in the war and their families.
  • Actions to protect the future: Creating a public memorial place to remember and commit to a better future, creating educational services to prevent such events.

Restorative Justice is an international movement which models such approaches from Native American justice systems and is increasingly utilized by governments including my own to deal with personal crimes ranging from theft and sexual abuse to murder. “Since 1989, New Zealand has made restorative conferences the hub of its entire youth justice system.” (Zehr, Amstutz, Macrae and Pranis, 2015, p. 8). Restorative Justice is more than just a new response to individual wrongdoing though. It sees crime as a social injury that requires a social healing process. “In this worldview, the problem of crime—and wrongdoing in general—is that it represents a wound in the community, a tear in the web of relationships.” (Zehr, Amstutz, Macrae and Pranis, 2015, p. 31). This means that acts of restitution and atonement cannot be simply chosen by the person who has the moral injury, and who may indeed be the person who perpetrated an immoral act. Usually the actions decided on in restorative justice are negotiated in part by the community and in part by those who feel wronged. “A meeting allows those harmed and those causing harm to give faces to each other, to ask questions of each other directly, to negotiate together how to put things right. It provides an opportunity for those who have been victimized to ask questions or to directly tell the one who victimized them the impact of the offense. It allows those who have offended to hear and to begin to understand the effects of their behavior. It offers possibilities for acceptance of responsibility and apology. Many of those who been victimized, as well as those who have offended, have found such a meeting to be a powerful and positive experience.” (Zehr, Amstutz, Macrae and Pranis, 2015, p. 38).

How does this play out in a genocide? Consider the story of “The Girl Who Stole My Holocaust”, a book by Noam Chayut. Chayut was an officer in an elite Israeli army corp, until he had a life changing reversal of his worldview. He founded “Breaking the Silence” (שוברים שתיקה), an anti-occupation movement created by similar former soldiers. He says that he grew up proud of his status as an Israeli Jew, and of the Holocaust which he “inherited” the right to. One little girl, looking at him in terror in the Palestinian territories, opened his heart. “I understood only much later what that scrawny girl in light-colored clothes had taken from me: she took away my belief that there is absolute evil in the world. She took from me the belief that I was avenging my people’s destruction by absolute evil, that I was fighting absolute evil. For that girl, I embodied absolute evil. Even if I was not as cruel as the absolute—Nazi—evil in the shadow of which I had grown up, I didn’t have to achieve its perfection and force in order to fulfill my role in her life. No. I was merely who I was, playing the role of absolute evil in the play of her life. As soon as I realized the fact that in her eyes I myself was absolute evil, the absolute evil that had governed me until then began to disintegrate. And ever since, I have been without my Holocaust. Ever since, everything in my life has taken on new meaning: the sense of belonging is blurred, pride has gone missing, belief has weakened, regret has grown strong, forgiveness has been born.” (Chayut, 2013, p. 63). Chayut remembered this little girl years later on a spiritual pilgrimage in India, and he has committed his life to honouring her memory.

In crimes against humanity, the choice of committing one’s entire life to acts of restitution is an acknowledgement that there is no magic solution to Moral Injury, in the sense that one does not simply “put it behind” oneself and carry on. Moral injury reveals that the universe is not perfect, and that immoral events are part of the reality, and once that is seen there is no going back to the pretence. The way forward is to accept that our future actions are also an essential part of the universal story. As Chayut explains, once we remember that we have a choice what we do from here, then the concept of absolute evil is banished from the universe: we can no longer use the excuse that we are fighting it, and paradoxically we can no longer see ourselves as part of it. Because in the darkness we have lit a single candle.

Summarising

Moral injury is an ancient problem, previous dealt with by community rituals and religious symbolism, and currently being rediscovered by psychotherapy. It occurs with victims, perpetrators and observers, when moral transgressions seem to have broken the moral order of life. The feelings and thoughts it engenders can lead to severe self harm and suicide. It can be approached therapeutically by a process of acknowledgement of harm, by community discussion of appropriate action, and by symbolic release and atonement. It also requires real life action to make restitution for past events and to prevent future harmful events. It challenges and deepens our understanding of what it means to be human.

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