[Topics: Moral Injury and Systemic Abuse]
Moral Injury
Originally posted Dec 28, 2021
Violence and suicide are more frequently due to what is called "moral injury" than due to PTSD among war veterans.***
What is moral injury?
Moral injury is not a disorder, but rather a reasonable response to one's moral/ethical compass being thrown off track. It involves a loss of trust in others and often a loathing of oneself if one feels they did not act in a way congruent with their moral compass, after being put into a seemingly no-win situation.
When one's core values (such as faithfulness, loyalty, fairness and justice) are betrayed, certain social, psychological, and spiritual harm can occur; this harm is known as moral injury. The harm of a fellow human; one's failure to protect another, through error or inaction; leaders' failure to protect those under their care; moral dilemmas in which one feels torn between duty and self-preservation... all of these can wound someone's conscience, throw off their moral compass, fundamentally alter one's view of the world, and lead to long-term anger, shame, guilt, distrust, and self-loathing.
Moral injury can occur collectively.
Psychology Today states:
Collective moral injury involves the effect of ongoing moral injury on the body politic—how a community grapples with events that violate their values, for example if an unarmed civilian is killed by the police. The world today faces constant moral strain, visible in protests rife with moral outrage as well as injustice, discrimination, divisiveness, and the distortion of fact and fiction.
If you can relate to these descriptions of moral injury, personally and/or collectively, I share your pain.
Both in my nuclear and extended family, as well as in my church community, I have experienced intense moral injury; what was moral and ethical seemed to no longer matter to people whom I had deeply trusted. I lost trust in my in-laws to whom I had turned for support for decades. I lost trust in church leaders whom I believed had the capacity to shepherd my nuclear family, but who, instead, supported illegal, cruel, and abusive treatment taking place, particularly involving unhealthy influence of my in-laws, who also function as church leaders.
Some of the most highly regarded (that in itself, to me, is problematic and unscriptural) church leaders practiced definite gas-lighting to further confuse me and/or to justify people who were violating my moral compass.
One such "senior coworker" told me that my in-laws were only "helping" me - not replacing me - although they would be/are with my husband in my home and I was/am not "allowed" to be; although they didn't even tell me or our children when my husband was in the hospital and could have died. THAT IS NOT HELPING. THAT INJURED me and my husband... because our marriage is scriptural and it was critical to his health. And that injured Nathan and Christy, our children.
That same "senior coworker" said that my husband's stepdad is my husband's real dad, though my husband's biological dad has been the ONLY in-law who has faithfully supported and advocated for our marriage in every possible way. The Bible, in my awareness, never rewrote someone's geneology. Even God Himself came as Jesus into this world through a messy, honest, wonderful lineage. I have been punished severely because I did not agree to perpetuating lies about my husband's lineage.
Perhaps reading this or other blogs I have written, you have experienced some moral injury. Although I want to apologize for this, I believe that a moral society does not choose willful ignorance when facing moral incongruities, even if pain and cognitive dissonance are experienced by the community as a result of refusing to avoid the inconvenient and/or painful truths.
Turning a deaf ear to ones like me who are personally suffering moral injury, who may be "unpleasant" to hear, turning a blind eye to cruelty because we want to protect our own shallow happiness... we silence the voices crying out for help and we provide convenient cover-up for perpetrators, permitting and even perpetuating ongoing abuse and injustice.
So what can we do to heal from moral injury?
The same Psychology Today article cited throughout this blog (please find the link at the end of this blog) provides a few pointers toward healing (all quotes are from https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/moral-injury):
Speak up. "Moving away from avoidance and speaking openly about one’s experience is often the first step of moving beyond moral injury." Initially, reaching out and speaking to certain ones I trusted only increased my moral injury, because I first reached out to my in-laws, and then some church leaders, all of whom violated my trust and failed to protect me from abuse. In fact, some of them have been among the most injurious abusers I have encountered in my life. Though very vulnerable, I eventually began to speak out more freely, after finding therapists and support groups. And as I speak out, I find that I am not alone. This blog is one way I am speaking out, in hopes of not only healing from my own moral injury, but also of encouraging others to speak out, to raise awareness, and to disallow secrecy and shame that cover up any ongoing injuring of others.
Self-care. "Practices like meditation, mindfulness, resilience skills, exercise, and healthy eating are helpful, but they often do not address the root cause of moral injury. 'There is a place for mindfulness. There is a place for yoga and resilience. But they are not reasonable ways to fix a structural problem,' says trauma surgeon and moral injury researcher Simon Talbot.”
(Self-)Compassion and (self-) forgiveness. Many who are morally injured blame themselves for not doing something the way they, in retrospect, believe they should have. Practice self-empathy and compassion as you would toward someone else, who, like you, likely didn't know better at the time of moral compromise/failure. And forgive. "Forgiving oneself and others can be a critical step toward releasing the burden of moral injury. This does not mean condoning or excusing a transgression. Forgiveness involves making a decision to acknowledge one’s own or others’ responsibility for what happened coupled with an emotional release of the burden of condemnation. Forgiveness also doesn’t require people to repair or reconcile with others who were involved in the transgression."
Helping one another. "Moral beliefs and values are almost always imbued with social or religious significance; people may fear rejection or betrayal when disclosing a choice that feels wrong or unethical. Therefore it’s important to be empathetic and non-judgmental. When a friend or loved one struggling with a moral injury chooses to share their experience, acknowledge that it may have been difficult to disclose the experience, listen with compassion, and ask how to aid their process of recovery and repair."
Much good can come out of moral injury.
Moral injury does not have to result in rage and violence and suicide, thereby fueling the trauma cycle. "Exposure to stress, in some cases, can lead to growth following adversity, called post-traumatic growth. Moral strain can also provoke positive responses, for example greater motivation to seek change, and moral, spiritual, and emotional development. (This may be more likely if one experiences guilt rather than shame.) Attitudes such as belief in a just world are also thought to be associated with better outcomes during stressful circumstances."
Related to helping another and allowing good to come out of moral injury, I want to end this blog with a paragraph from a book I finished reading yesterday, Wholehearted Faith, published posthumously this year (2021) for author Rachel Held Evans, who is drawing an analogy between our personal and communal well-being and that of coastal redwoods:
Beneath the soil, there's another, significant subterranean story: for a tree so tall and grand, the roots of the coast redwood run remarkably shallow. Most redwoods have roots that go no farther than 5 or 10 feet deep. Instead, they roam far and wide, interlacing with the root networks of their neighbors. When storms roll in from the Pacific Ocean - one memorable system in 1962 produced gusts of up to 170 miles per hour - those neighbors held on to one another for dear life, drawing stability from community and safety in numbers (p. 156).
Due to their communal support system, these gentle giants can endure inevitable storms throughout their lives - lives that can span even thousands of years.
One very concerning challenge related to moral injury is the characteristically common, resulting distrust of others, which can so dangerously isolate the injured who most need support. Symptoms of one's injury may make them (us) even less welcomed by our communities (especially those who are judgmental), or may render the injured more fearful to be vulnerable.
I think of my still exceptionally, dangerously lonely 23-year-old son, who has many tattoos that testify of his moral injuries, and who is trying desperately to recover from effects of the moral injuries on his heart and soul, after 4 weeks of hospitalization and many more weeks of therapy. He has been seemingly abandoned by his father's side of the family - an essential community in his younger years. He desperately lacks the presence of neighbors/community, with whom to interlace his roots, like a coastal redwood, to stand stable and strong.
My reaching out, even through this blog, is one way I am sending out my root system as widely as I can, to interlace with the root system of others, in a neighborly community and support network, so that hopefully, together, we can continue to grow and heal from any moral injury that may have occurred, or may yet come, in the passing storms of life.

***Facts and data in this blog are from https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/moral-injury.
Systemic Abuse
Originally posted November 2021
"...the manifestation of abuse by that deemed to protect the abused. The net result: the perpetuation of ... violence by the very systems that purport to stop it".***
When a person suffers abuse, s/he may then face systemic abuse when seeking safety from an abuser. "...not only do you feel violated, but you also see no aid, no options and you learn that you are your first responder."***
What underlies and/or causes systemic abuse?
These ingredients are generally found in systemic abuse, related to those who should help, but instead perpetuate abuse:
greed
ignorance
absence of ethics
absence of fiduciary responsibility
These ingredients are generally found, specific to the intimate partner or other should-be safe person who is instead abusive:
the abuser’s need to save face
the abuser's need to get even
the abuser's need to maintain control
The pathology of a perpetrator + an adequately ignorant system/organization driven by greed and void of essential ethics and/or a sense of responsibility = a very perverted self-sustaining abuse dynamic.
"When it’s all over, normal people scratch their heads trying to understand your net outcome. And those individuals that care about you genuinely struggle to wrap their brains around the absurdity of your irrational, tragic predicament. In utter confusion, they say, 'How can this happen?' 'It can’t, but it did,' you silently think to yourself." ***
Making this personal...
All of the above 100% applies to my recent few years' experiences.
It is most painful to experience abuse, and then turn to a body of people whom you trust to defend, support, intervene, and provide safety... only to realize that those people are unable and/or unwilling to do so, and in fact, may even agree with, support, and encourage the abuser (and his/her abuse).
Again and again this happened, in my situation personally and in situations involving my teen-age and now young adult children, in our recent family crisis. And I have heard similar stories from others.
This is why I am blogging about this.
I was asked recently if my blog will only make my personal problems worse, by someone I view as a key player in all of my experiences, since he is a leading one in the church and a main person to whom I have repeatedly appealed for guidance and protection. He seems more grieved and concerned that I am writing about these matters than he is that these matters continue to ransack my family and my life, with no end in sight [though I know God will put all of this to an end... someday. "Unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word" (MLK, Jr.).]
It seems that the best case scenario for those involved in the abusive "system" is for the victim(s) and witnesses to stay silent. And religious teachings can strengthen their argument for silence:
"Love covers."
"Forgive."
"Forget the things which are behind."
All of these phrases (and others) have been directly quoted to me by leaders in my church community WHEN I sought intervention and safety amidst abuse. All of these phrases have been used to protect the abuser and hush the victim(s). [And even more are in my own mind, making it hard to speak out - but I can't stay silent any longer, for others' sakes. It is worth speaking out, and important to do so, if it helps others' situations or preempts further abuse, even if it doesn't change my own situation.]
When I was beginning to feel hurt by particular actions of my in-laws, I was punished: When I told my husband I felt I was being displaced by my in-laws, my husband, based on the recommendation of my in-laws, told me I may never live with him again. My expression of pain related to mistreatment by in-laws was deemed as hurtful and unacceptable behavior by my husband, as a personal affront to him, though I simply expressed my pain (one time raising my voice).
When I started to speak out beyond the family circle (when I published a book about my situation, called The Games), I received a threat that unless I took my book off Amazon (which I did subsequent to this threat), I would lose the kingdom (from a very senior member of my church community). I have experienced and continue to experience other punishment and abuse from church leading ones... including ostracization.
Meanwhile, my children have suffered extreme, disabling (at times) cognitive dissonance, I have been homeless for a period of several months, I was abandoned/rejected by my own husband, rumors have been spread in the church community, law enforcement has told me I am being treated illegally, some friends and family members suffer tremendously because they love me and want me to be safe in every way... and most church members seem to just want to look the other way. Somehow that seems ethical and even spiritual to them.
I have reached out to leading ones in multiple churches (Christians who believe they are meeting as THE church in a particular city, and to meet elsewhere with believers in the same city is sinful division) who have been involved in inappropriate and damaging treatment of my daughter. I have received NO substantive response. From most to whom I reached out, I have received only silence. Silence is violence.
What hurts more is not the words of enemies but the silence of friends (paraphrased quote from MLK, Jr.).
So, I will share this blog with that dear (and I mean that so sincerely) brother who asked if I am just making matters worse by "publicly" airing my "personal" problems.
I am blogging because I don't believe my problems are personal, but rather systemic. I am a member of a society that has NOT protected me from abuse but rather perpetuated it. I believe that society has an image to maintain, which often is also attached to monetary gain. That society has proven to be ignorant, unethical and irresponsible related to caring for vulnerable members.
I have many, many examples related to my personal life, my adult children's experiences, and others who have reached out to me since I first posted an honest update about my life on Facebook. This is NOT merely a personal problematic situation.
This is systemic abuse. The very organism that should be a support system and that should protect its own from abuse has in itself become abusive. And to save face, to get even, and/or to maintain control, players in the abuse have lied to me and about me, given me and other victims (like my children) the silent treatment, refused to help or to make amends or to reach out or to repent... to this day. And some of these "players" are leading ones in churches.
So abuse continues.
And I won't keep silent, because I believe silence is violence; it allows for the perpetuation of abuse... even to the annihilation of many precious lives who eventually succumb to the abuse, historically and in modern-day society. Even in my own church community.
*** Quotes and paraphrased content in this blog are from an article by J. King, Ph.D.: https://www.preventabusiverelationships.com/systemic_abuse.html
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