Moral Injury in Military and Veteran Populations | WJC Military Discussion Series Ep. 3

Jenny D'Olympia, PsyD, LMHC, director of military and veteran programs at William James College, and Kevin Lambert, Army veteran and WJC bachelor's student, presented this discussion on moral injury. This lecture served as an introduction to moral injury within military and veteran populations, the long-term effects of moral injury, and current empirically based treatment protocols.

This event is part of William James College's Department of Military and Veterans Psychology virtual discussion series on a variety of important topics in military and veteran psychology. These monthly discussions are free and provide 1 CE credit.

[AzimuthAviation]

A wonderful discussion. The warrior ethos is so difficult to set aside when civilian moral injury is presented. Thank you!

[DavidMonierWilliams]

Dr. Jenny, thank you for your service.

My background is a coach for leaders of industry and entrepreneurs.

I'm also a Master Practitioner of NLP and Ericksonian Hypnosis.

I have worked with women who were abused, PTSD, and Vets some with PTSD some with Moral Injury {MI}.

What I objected to was that MI are treated incorrectly, as secular, not just by you but the whole of the VA and mainstream media.

Neither PTSD nor MI is about changing the way the Vet feels about it.

Furthermore, Psychology has nothing to do with MI and never will have....get used to it.

Moral Injury is strictly a spiritual/religious problem with a sub-set for non-believers.

You I'm sure understand that MI is the source of the high rate of suicides in the military.

Example a friend of mine, a former S.E.A.L. tortured to death a person on the battlefield.

His strong Catholic upbringing left him with, "God will never forgive me."

His four friends that went with him through, "Buds, " have all eaten the gun.

The process to re-structure and reconnect the Vet with his perspective of the Infinite Love is simple and fast.

It is simply give the event back to God/Higher Power or for the atheist to his Highest Positive Intent.

Then using hypnotic language God transforms the event through His Divine Mercy, as well as shifting, changing, modifying and improving it.

Then returning this completely changed event to be fully integrated into the Vet.

From here, you need to elicit all the major traumas of the Vets life in chronological order.

The reason is that when you resolve the worst trauma there is the domino effect on all others traumas.

From there the event should be re-structured by running it backwards to the beginning so that everything and everyone moves and talks backward.

After that then you need to resolve the internal conflicts, limiting beliefs and establish new behaviours to support these changes.

The Vet at this point should be encouraged to consult with His minister, priest or rabbi.

P.S. Catholics have a big advantage here with the Sacrament of Reconciliation, called Confession.

I hope this helps.

Blessings