A Moral Injury with Implications that Affect Us All

Gaslighting is not the path to atonement and repair

The US Army recently issued a letter to former service members who were previously discarded for refusing to comply with the COVID vax mandate, offering them the possibility of correcting their military records, and perhaps returning. Most soldiers that were kicked out were given a less than honorable discharge.

It’s an interesting coincidence that the Brigadier General who signed the letters happens to be named Hope. Is this message intended to be a ray of hope for individual soldiers and the military as a whole?

While this letter appears to be welcoming, it’s actually gaslighting. There is no part of the letter that shows any admission of truth, regret or commitment to actual restitution. In fact, it’s more like a hoovering attempt made by a narcissistic or psychopathic abuser. Woven into this letter is a subtle implication of blame-shifting, as if the perpetrator is generously forgiving the victim for having boundaries that led to them being “involuntarily separated.”

When an abusive relationship ends, it’s either because the victim wakes up and sets new boundaries (such as making the tough decision to end the relationship and go No Contact with the perpetrator) or the victim was discarded by the perpetrator (and left devastated by the experience, yet often hoping to be taken back). The latter is the most dangerous place to be, with the highest likelihood of the victim returning to the abuser.

Eventually, when the abuser needs something from the victim—some form of narcissistic supply—the abuser will hoover the victim through an act of perceived kindness. In other words, they try to suck you back in by acting nice or offering you something they think you want.

Some former members of the Army called bullshit on this letter, and rightfully so. Online they voiced their commitment to truth, self-worth and moral uprightness, refusing to re-enter a dysfunctional and abusive relationship with the military.

When abusers refuse to acknowledge the truth, accept accountability for their wrongdoings and take action toward restitution and repair, it means they don’t think they did anything wrong and therefore you can count on them doing it again. You can also count on being blamed, again.

People often fall for hoovering tactics in abusive relationships. This is usually due to a distorted desire for personal healing and/or relational repair. People can keep returning to the source of harm over and over again, thinking it’s going to be different this time.

With the smallest active duty Army since 1940, the news media says the Army letter is due to the recruiting crisis of the last two years. It may be true that the Army is experimenting with tactics in order to boost recruitment. Yet, if we take a deeper look at the pervasive crisis happening across the branches of the military, the root of the problem becomes unveiled as something deeper.

Resigned US Army Officer and battalion commander, Brad Miller, started an important conversation about the path to a healthy military amidst its current state of crisis.

The Only Path to a Healthy Military

Miller is calling for a full reckoning of the COVID vax mandate and its aftermath according to three essential parameters that will be necessary if repair is possible.

This reckoning must encompass three crucial ingredients: acknowledgement, accountability, and restitution. These three concepts can be captured in the acronym AAR.

This acronym is already well known in the Army. It stands for “After Action Review” which is a process that involves a retrospective look at an operation, mission, or other endeavor with an aim to analyze the unit’s actions conducted in light of what was planned. A successful AAR will highlight what went well and should therefore be sustained in future missions as well as identify what did not go as planned and provide recommendations for improvement.

Unfortunately, instead of taking the route of this kind of After Action Review, the military’s official stance involves a mind-blowing, yet completely typical, doubling down on the lies.

The Army’s Human Resources Command website (where the letter came from) states that the Army is “proud of [its] response to the pandemic and will continue to encourage vaccination against the COVID-19 variants . . .” Proud, they say.

This is like when an abuser offers a gesture of seeming kindness or a fauxpology, while still being proud of the way they treated the victim. A naive person could assume that the abuser’s return or empty gesture means they’ve changed their ways, when in actuality, it usually just reflects their grandiosity and entitlement to treat the victim in such a way and get away with it, yet again.

Miller highlights the impact of moral injury and that this trauma has affected not only those who served in the armed forces. This may be an invisible injury on the surface, yet it implies significant harm.

However widespread the physical impacts of the injections may be, the moral injury is even wider. I would argue that all those who are physically injured are also morally injured, but many others suffering from moral injury are not dealing with physical injury. Moral injury occurs when an individual commits or witnesses an act that goes against his moral code. This can be extended to an organization whose members, particularly the leadership, act against the organization’s stated moral code. The Department of Veterans Affairs has an entry for moral injury listed under Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), which suggests that this type of injury occurs as a result of moral trauma.

How many service members and their families have been subjected to moral trauma as a result of this mandate?

This term moral injury is not one that I’d heard over the years while focusing on abusive relationships and family systems. Yet after seeing Miller connect these dots, it’s clear that this topic is essential for understanding the damage that occurs to victims of abuse in a relationship or social system, like what happened in the military.

In order to stay in an abusive relationship or situation, the victim has to sacrifice their own values. This is how a victim of abuse can end up with a moral injury.

Earlier this year, Miller wrote about the implications of the moral injury that service members suffered as a result of the military vax mandate, calling it the military’s greatest strategic problem for readiness. He explores the current moral state of the military and the country, which is relevant in most places around the world as similar trends have occurred.

Moral Injury

Miller defines the term by citing the VA:

What exactly is moral injury?

We can consult the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs entry for the topic. To understand moral injury, we must acknowledge that when under “traumatic or unusually stressful circumstances, people may perpetrate, fail to prevent, or witness events that contradict deeply held moral beliefs and expectations.” This can then lead to moral injury: the “distressing psychological, behavioral, social, and sometimes spiritual aftermath of exposure to such events.”

The nature of the covid-19 policies, to include the injection mandate, have undoubtedly caused immeasurable moral injury.

The US Department of Veteran Affairs describes the manifestation of the moral injury in the suffering of an individual in three groups:

1. Those who participated in some action that goes against their own moral code.

2. Those who witnessed an action that violates their own personal moral code.

3. Individuals who fall into both of the above categories.

The first category are those who were coerced into violating their own moral code—for example, making the choice to get vaxxed even though they didn’t want to, in order to avoid getting penalized or kicked out. Some may have also participated in coercing others to get vaxxed, even though that meant going against their personal values and those of the military. They sacrificed their values and oath, either due to ignorance or cowardice. These were acts of commission that led to their own victimization and/or the victimization of others. They could be victims and/or perpetrators.

The second group are those who opted out of participating in, and perhaps even openly opposed, the COVID vax mandate. These people suffered unjust punishments and betrayal trauma as well as an identity crisis as they witnessed their peers and leaders turning against the Constitution, to which they all swore an oath of loyalty. They could also be those who submitted exemptions quietly yet witnessed others be victimized by coercion.

The VA also outlines the hallmark reactions of moral injury: guilt, shame, disgust and self-sabotage. They even mention the spiritual bankruptcy (though not by name) that occurs after such a trauma when an individual suffers a devastating a loss of faith and trust in their higher power because, how could such a thing happen?

The above are the same hallmark reactions that are seen among those who have experienced abusive relationships and social groups.

Moral injury and abuse can cause PTSD. As trauma expert, Bessel van der Kolk, states, the biggest determining factor in who develops post-trauma after the trauma and who does not, depends on whether or not someone was there for you when it happened. I would bet that the servicemen and women who experienced PTSD as a result of the moral injury caused by the vax mandate did not have courageous, discerning and integritous people around them, validating their perception of reality and standing by their side in the truth.

I disagree with the VA’s assertion that hyperarousal isn’t necessarily a common symptom of both moral injury and PTSD. I think it is, in a similar yet relative way that a person may be hypervigilant of whatever other kinds of trauma were experienced. A person who experiences moral injury could become highly reactive to very subtle or even (mis)perceived acts of betrayal or untruthfulness. This is not too different than a person who suffered a betrayal of a partner and then becomes hypervigilant and reactive to any perceived possibility that it’s happening again.

The VA has nothing to offer in terms of effective trauma healing when they cannot even acknowledge the truth about the trauma that occurred. It reminds me of how world-renowned trauma experts and narcissistic abuse experts have outwardly denied or simply ignored the psychological abuse and trauma that took place in the recent years—and in the worst situations, even enabled the abuse by promoting it.

They ought to know that gaslighting a trauma survivor about the trauma that took place only re-traumatizes the person and keeps them locked in a psychoneurospiritual state of darkness where it feels impossible to end the guilt, shame, disgust, and self-sabotage. That can become a downward spiral into the abyss. When those reactions fester over time, it escalates into self-destruction.

Untreated PTSD—unresolved trauma—is like a spiritual parasite that drives a person to keep hitting the self-destruction button. In the most severe cases, where people feel utterly alone in the world, it can result in self-harm or suicide.

It would be naive to think the VA officials are unaware of the moral injury suffered by many of their servicemen and women. By this point, the decision-makers are willfully ignorant, much like the so-called mental health experts.

If the military institutions cannot acknowledge the truth and reality of the trauma and harm caused to the victims, take accountability for the fraudulent and potentially treasonous mandate, and offer the victims restitution for harm done, then they are offering no hope for healing the affected individuals or resolving the crisis brought upon the military as a result of the COVID vax mandate.

Those who were not part of the military or their families could also have been affected by moral injury and the implications of the military mandate, as Miller states.

Lastly, there are many other individuals that have never worn a military uniform and yet have still been heavily impacted by the military’s harmful policies and therefore are also victims of moral injury. How many military spouses have watched in horror at the way DoD treated the service members to whom they are married? How many children have witnessed what was done to their parents? (How many of these children might have wanted to join the military one day but now will never do so?) How many parents watched the way in which their sons and daughters in the military were treated? How many other Americans watched in disgust at the way their military relatives or friends were treated? How many of these individuals, who perhaps have never served in the Armed Forces personally, once revered the military but now feel disgusted by the organization charged with protecting our freedoms? All of these individuals are also suffering moral injury by witnessing the extreme dysfunction that now permeates what had long been one of the most trusted institutions in the country.

Many people would rather pretend the last several years didn’t happen because it would mean facing their own traumas as well as, in some cases, their participation in perpetuating the trauma upon themselves and others. They’re in a state of numbness, which is also one of the symptoms of PTSD.

The deepest pain is usually hidden in the numbness. That pain will unconsciously guide a person’s behavior and outlook, which is how people can end up repeating the past traumas without realizing what’s happening. This is why it’s so important to face our traumas and process them so we can create a new future instead of a repetition of the past.

Pain does not heal by ignoring and avoiding it—instead it must be faced by the individual with courage and truth. Healthy social connection with a foundation of trust is also integral to the trauma healing process.

Miller questions:

How do we even attempt to fix this?

There must be some sense of atonement.

How can the military atone for what it has perpetrated on its own troops? Absent that atonement, how can restitution occur? How can the military fix itself? Is it even possible?

These are important questions to ask and this topic is relevant to all of us, not just those who were directly affected in the military.

While you may feel powerless to change this situation, one of the best ways you can support these men and women is by sharing awareness with others and encouraging people to continue the brave, wise and brutally honest conversation that Brad Miller started here.