{"id":37227,"date":"2024-04-04T17:43:23","date_gmt":"2024-04-05T00:43:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/?p=37227"},"modified":"2024-04-04T17:43:23","modified_gmt":"2024-04-05T00:43:23","slug":"moral-injury-healing-not-a-mission-impossible","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/moral-injury-healing-not-a-mission-impossible\/","title":{"rendered":"Moral Injury Healing: Not a Mission Impossible"},"content":{"rendered":"

Monday, July 12, 2021, my new client showed up to his first session and the first words out of his mouth were, \u201cI heard you can help people heal from the devastating impact of trauma. I am going to tell you things I have never told anyone. After you hear my shitful story, I am sure you will agree with me, that I am a monster and too messed up to heal.\u201d1 <\/sup><\/p>\n

For 45 minutes without emotion, Engelberg, a former sharpshooter and sniper told me countless stories where he was instructed to kill certain people in the Middle East. He did it effortlessly and never missed his mark. Then came what he calls, \u201cThat morning.\u201d He was given his usual assignment to kill a certain person. He never questioned his superiors, he just did his job, kill, take a picture, report back, and wait for the next assignment.<\/p>\n

On \u201cthat morning\u201d his subject (as he called him) was sitting in the driver\u2019s seat of his car. Engelberg was about half a mile away and he noticed in the passenger seat a little boy approximately 10 years old. For the first time in his life Engelberg froze because of the little boy. He wondered what had just happened because he never froze on assignment. He recollected himself, checked the wind, and seconds later pulled the trigger. The man was shot in the head and he slowly slumped down into the little boy\u2019s lap. Engelberg could not hear but he could see the boy\u2019s face of horror as he screamed. Seconds later, a woman came out of the house screaming and crying as she threw herself onto the man.<\/p>\n

For the first time in his life, Engelberg questioned himself as he saw the horrific scene play out before him and he thought, \u201cWhat did I just do? I killed a man right in front of his son and wife? Who was he? Why did I have to kill him? What did he do wrong? Who was he?\u201d<\/p>\n

Engelberg has no idea how many men he has killed but \u201cthat morning\u201d changed his life because he couldn\u2019t get that little boys face out of his mind. During our session he painfully said, \u201cHow can I tell my 2 little boys I killed a little boy\u2019s father? How can I tell my wife I killed a woman\u2019s husband and I have no idea why or who he was?\u201d<\/p>\n

This week I was reminded of Engelberg\u2019s many sessions as I read, The Good Kill<\/em> by Mark LiVecche. LiVecche addresses the issue of moral injury among warfighters as a result of armed conflict. A moral injury according to LiVecche is \u201can injury that results when soldiers violate their moral beliefs and thereby feel they no longer live in a reliable, meaningful world and can no longer be regarded as descent human beings.\u201d2 <\/sup>What is insightful about LiVecche\u2019s work is when it comes to war, it is \u201cnot the rightness or wrongness about the warfighters action, rather what the warfighter internally believes about the action that matters.\u201d3 <\/sup>This is why Lisa Lopez Levers wrote concerning combat, \u201cThe lived experience of trauma becomes an unfathomable concept to grasp.\u201d4 <\/sup>Combat becomes an unfathomable concept to grasp because the warfighter internally interprets her situation and it is nearly impossible to understand someone else\u2019s interpretation of a given situation. There is so much to talk about in The Good Kill, <\/em>but I will only focus on how a moral injury impacts a person, specifically, Engelberg and what I said in that first session to begin the healing process.<\/p>\n

In regard to moral injury, LiVecche\u2019s purpose in writing his book is to \u201creevaluate false beliefs about what it means to kill in war, to interrogate deeply held principles, reinterpret them and thereby grow in wisdom, emotional and spiritual health and resilience.\u201d5 <\/sup>He takes a theological approach and not just a therapeutic approach.6 <\/sup>He strongly believes faith communities are a necessary step to helping warfighters to work through their deep wounds and scars. Actually, LiVecche is closer to psychological thinking than he realizes because part of the way I help warfighters work through their moral injury is to help them understand:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. A theology of trauma\/moral injury<\/li>\n
  2. Psychonueroimmunology (the interaction between the nervous system, body, brain, and immune system)<\/li>\n
  3. Community ~ How to connect with self and others emotionally.<\/li>\n
  4. Exercise\/yoga ~ How movement releases and discharges emotions and sensations.<\/li>\n
  5. Eating well ~ Work with a nutritionist or doctor to develop good eating habits.<\/li>\n
  6. Sleeping well ~ If necessary, work with a doctor to ensure consistent sleeping patterns.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    According to LiVecche those with a moral injury from combat \u201cseek forgiveness and healing\u201d7 <\/sup>\u201crealize war is hell on the soul\u201d8 <\/sup>\u201cseek validation they are still good people\u201d9 <\/sup>\u201ccarry it forever\u201d10 <\/sup>\u201ccan lead to suicidal ideation\u201d11 <\/sup>With all this in mind, back to Engelberg.<\/p>\n

    Near the end of our first session, I told Engelberg that I actually saw post traumatic growth in his excruciating painful story. It was the only time he raised his voice in our session. He responded, \u201cWHAT?!\u201d I preceded to tell him, post traumatic growth is when your purpose becomes greater than your pain. This is why you are here. Not because someone told you about me, but because you still believe you have hope. Truthfully, your nervous system may still be stuck in a state of survival because what we suppress, the body will later express. What we resist, will just persist. When we suppress, avoid emotion or feeling our brain actually interrupts the emotional process. Every time you pulled that trigger, your nervous system went into fight or freeze mode and once that happened, your brain released the hormones adrenaline and cortisol that kept you in survival mode.<\/p>\n

    By staying in the fight or freeze mode, you were not able to process the emotion you were feeling, therefore you suppressed it. When this happens, we get stuck with all that adrenaline and cortisol living in our nervous system and the result is depression, generalized anxiety, and\/or chronic mental or physical health issues. In other words, Engelberg, processing our emotions is actually the first step in nervous system regulation or in your case working through a deep moral injury. To be honest with you working through this moral injury will seem like Mission Impossible but I am willing to crawl with you through this tsunami of pain.<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. Engelberg is not my clients real name and he gave me permission to share a small part of his story.<\/li>\n
    2. Mark LiVecche. The Good Kill. 2.<\/li>\n
    3. 5.<\/li>\n
    4. Lisa Lopez Levers. Trauma Counseling: Theories and Interventions. 391.<\/li>\n
    5. Mark LiVecche. The Good Kill. 6.<\/li>\n
    6. 195.<\/li>\n
    7. 4.<\/li>\n
    8. 18.<\/li>\n
    9. 33.<\/li>\n
    10. 34.<\/li>\n
    11. 34.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      Monday, July 12, 2021, my new client showed up to his first session and the first words out of his mouth were, \u201cI heard you can help people heal from the devastating impact of trauma. I am going to tell you things I have never told anyone. After you hear my shitful story, I am […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":176,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2310],"tags":[3169],"class_list":["post-37227","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-doctor-of-leadership-3","tag-livecche-dlgp02","cohort-dlgp02"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37227","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/176"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37227"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37227\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37228,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37227\/revisions\/37228"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37227"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37227"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37227"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}