Moral injury

There is a weight that rest doesn’t touch: having done, having witnessed, or having been unable to prevent something that goes against what you believe.

It has a name: moral injury. It comes through three doors: doing it, witnessing it unable to stop it, or betrayal by those who should have backed you.

It isn’t tiredness. It hurts because your values are intact: it is a wound of conscience, and that is why more sleep doesn’t close it.

Calling it burnout isn’t a wording error: it changes what gets offered next, and who is asked to change.

The repair described has three pieces: acknowledgement, a change in the conditions, and talking it through with someone who was there. It is a preliminary model, not a proven treatment; but with no name, the wound stays disguised as personal failure.

Moral injury doesn’t say you failed: it says you were put where there was no good way out. Naming it correctly is what makes it possible to ask for repair.