Moral Injury and Your Soul
5 Ways Moral Injury Contributes to Burnout—and What to Do About It
I remember when I began working in the mental health field, right out of grad school. Bright eyed and bushy tailed, I woke up with the hope that I’d have an impact and help people. After all, that’s why I went through years of study, worked my tail off to get my thousands of hours, and sign all the papers to be a licensed counselor, right?
Yet what I experienced over time was more than burnout. It was a disconnnection between who I knew I was meant to be and how I found myself moving in my life, work, my vocation. Many helaers I work with have this kind of struggle: it’s not depression, but it feels like grief, disillusionment, and sometimes helplessness. We’d make inroads with reducing stress or even resolving some personal trauma, But there was a craving for deeper work—bandaids just don’t work with moral injury.
We don’t often think of caregiving fields as exploitative—healthcare, teaching, chaplaincy, nonprofit work—these are often raised up to be cornerstone, valued, idealized careers. Yet they are not immune to corporate greed that seeps into these fields of work: No time off for grief. No acknowledgement of mysoginistic, abilsit, or racist microaggressions. No collaboration or connection with colleagues—instead, fostered competition. No childcare or eldercare support. No help when facing clinical challenges. Gaslighting to pull yourself up by your bootstraps.
Moral injury is when our inner integrity—our very core value system fully connected to the Self— is compromised by external realities. As for us helpers and healers—this wounds our very source of personal power and purpose: our soul.
The soul tells us something is wrong: We wake up and feel burned out, but it is heartache that we’re experiencing for ourselves, for our sense of helplessness. We feel burned out and exhausted but it is our hands that are tied that is causing the strain, not some lack of self care or effort on our part.
Our values are meant to drive our decisions—but what do we do if our hands our tied?
Moral injury contributes to spiritual disconnection and is the primary driver of modern burnout. Over time I’ve found that there are five core ways it does so—and how, through my own personal experience as well as years of working with healers have taught me, we can indeed make first steps for reconnection.
Loss of Inner Trust
Early in my career, I worked in community mental health and often asked myself—How am I, this privileged white chick—truly able to make a difference? I showed up but doubted almost from day one: Am I able to make any difference when the odds are so stacked?
When systems push us into roles that clash with our values—such as working in insurance systems that have the thumb on the scale of inequality—we begin to distrust our own discernment. When our daily life doesn’t align with our needs—spiritual, physical, mental, emotion—we then struggle with ability to trust ourselves and others to meet our needs. But intuition—self-trust’s ally— requires us to have the privilege to stop and listen, to provide ourselves with space to breathe. Fear and anger—the noise of the day—certainly can be loud and distracting. Our self-trust is about noticing our own inner value system—where our boundaries have been challenged and where our energy hygiene needs shored up.
Soul Care Response: Slow Down
Burnout for me was coupled with anxiety—my fears and worries—that monkey mind—kept my nervous system activated even when I was trying to settle. I had to notice, gently, and re-learn ways to restore my nervous system, and intentionally listening through slowing down became a radical act for me, when Because I experienced burnout repeatedly. I needed extra time and effort—and help from others. I sought time outside, where I could feel the slower, more paced rhythms of the natural world. I talked to dear friends, a good therapist, and found a spiritual director I could meet with. I needed to not feel judged; I felt that enough. I craved connection to the words that needed to be spoken, when I got quiet and listened.
2. Disillusionment with the Sacred
For years, I believed service was soul care. But after personal losses and years of misalignment in systems that were fueled by power and cheap labor, I began to feel spiritual betrayed. If I wasn’t of service, then who am I?
Institutions or leaders can betray our sense of trust in the values many of us feel undergird the reason we went into the helping fields in the first place: equity, integrity, trust, openness, transparency, growth. These values are actually sacred values—many of us feel connected to them in an important, grounded way that we feel in our bones. This kind of disillusionment is a type of exile; our self-trust wavers, and so does our connection to the greater meaning of things.
Soul Care Response: Forest Breathing
In my burnout recovery, I took daily walks in nature. I let the forest become a type of chapel. I divested myself from giving All. The. Time. and learned to receive again. The quiet of the woods helped me hear Presence again. My body learned to trust it, bit by bit. I didn’t know anything about meaning or even tried to be purposeful; instead, I plodded along and the consistent sound of the leaves beneath my feet, the sunshine at my front and wind dancing in the branches above—it brought me back to myself. Breathing in the forest was a medicine. Soul care like this helps us redefine sacred on our own terms—not what some person or book or ideology says, but what is wholly connected to a spiritual soverginty, the place of all personal growth and connection to the All.
3. Compassion Fatigue and Spiritual Numbness
Compassion fatigue doesn’t just creep into the lives of caregivers like moms or healthcare workers—it rises up in anyone who has an empathetic response to pain and suffering in the world (empaths, HSPs—listen up!). The body shows the weight of this particular fatigue by dissociating from the soul. This can look like feeling stymied in life, getting sick, or dealing with chronic pain. When we reorient ourselves to self-compassion, often right under the surface is grief for the unlived life, grief for the suffering of others and ourselves, grief for systems that are totally broken. Unaddressed grief for the world is a type of heartbreak that needs witnessing and presence to move through and dance with. Grief is a companion, and often has important lessons if we’re able to listen to it.
Soul Care Response: Embodied Griefwork
Breathwork, such as box breathing, or bilateral eye movements are simple somatic exercises that I use with clients to access and process grief that may be hiding in the shadows. With steady companionship and trauma informed support, we can address the core pain that is often connected to what feels like huge, immovable struggles: past traumas, collective harm, fear for the future. Facing these in safe, supportive, and creative space can help us re-orient ourselves towards our resiliency that is often right under the surface, ready for us.
4. Internalized Patriarchy and White Supremacy
Growing up in a family of medical professionals, I was steeped in the cultures of power and privilege: the savior complex is real in these worlds. But these sytstems also taught me that rest was negotiable and that being available for clients was my role—not personal self care. Messages abound: Pull yourself up by your bootstraps. Be quiet. Don’t rock the boat. Ignore your gut. Keep going even if you see something wrong—you’re not the expert. Know your place. We learn to equate worthiness with compliance, productivity, perfection. Women, BIPOC folks, folks with disabilities—even in the most inclusive of organizations— are still the underdogs. And we can internalize these messages just to get by—until our soul calls us back through a nasty case of burnout.
Soul Care Response: Know Thyself
Soul care is a radical act in light of how we are taught, how we are encouraged to act, where we came from in our families or communities. True reconnection to the soul is about being rooted in compassion and community, not greed, exploitation, or capitalism. This rootedness is in service of the self for the greater connection to the whole—a value lost in most competitive corporate spaces. Finding space to listen to your core values and note how you are living them out—or not—is a first stem in this kind of healing work.
5. Isolation from Community
So many of the healers and helpers I’ve worked with struggle with isolation and loneliness: “people don’t get me,” “I have no one who understands.” “There isn’t anyplace where I can talk about all this stuff.” Moral injury persists not because we know we struggle, but because others don’t. Silence gives it power and isolation perpetuates it. The division we feel is reflected in society, social media, and even in our organizations or groups or families we’re a part of. Division is a primary tool of oppressive systems: we begin to forget that we’re in this together.
Healing always begins when we speak aloud what is true—even if the only place is to the air around you. But finding sacred witness—a trusted friend, therapist, or soul care provider, a group or small community or friends or supports—these are essential to the kind of reconnection that heals our moral injury and helps us remember that division is a tool, not a reality. Only through witness can we find our way back to wholeness.
Soul Care Response: Be a Witness, Seek a Witness
Many of us are givers, but don’t easily receive. What would it be like to find a space where you can do both? Spaces where you can show up, feel safe, nourish your sense of connection and compassion? Fostering true sovereignty is about reconnection to self and others, grounded in shared values and understanding that we are in this, together. Finding a safe, trauma informed space—therapist, group, or other space—is a first step.
Reclaiming the Soul
Moral injury is exhausting. Living in systems that harm can make us feel weary, lost, separated, and even despairing. When we witness fear and anger and division can fracture the very purpose and sense of power we are born with.
What I know is true through many years of working with healers and also through my own journey is that rest, renewal is owed to us. Courage is accessible and doesn’t need permission—it is right here, ready for you. Your strength of purpose is not far—but sometimes needs coaxing to emerge, once again.
This is the work we do at Root Grow Thrive; the space here is about re-learning and re-engaging the soul, from the bottom-up, from the inside-out. Through practices of inner wisdom reclamation—whether through individual therapy, intensive personalized retreats, or soul care spiritual direction—we walk the path of wholeness, together.
If you’re feeling so dysregulated or overwhelmed you’re having thoughts of harming yourself or others, stop and call 988, local crisis center, or a trusted friend who can help you find next steps.
Other resources:
Txt HOME to 741741
Mental health line: 800-950-6264 or txt NAMI to 62640
Trevor Project help line (LGBTQIA2S+)
