COURTESY OF MICHAEL CASTELLANA
HEALING
Further into the sessions, group
members are encouraged to do
community service, and to practice
acts of kindness. “One of the consequences of moral injury is selfisolation,” said Amidon. “The idea
here is for them to begin to recognize the goodness in themselves,
and to reinforce their sense of being accepted in the community.”
Toward the end of the eight
weeks, group members are invited
to write a letter to themselves
from a benevolent figure in their
lives — a spouse, or grandfather,
or mentor — to explain how they
feel and to imagine what this person would say in response.
“What is really healing,” Amidon said, “is to hear, whether it’s in
this imagined conversation or with
the others, someone sharing really
shameful experiences and having
people accept them — saying, ‘Yeah,
that was fucked up, what you did,
and remember all the good things
you’ve done. This doesn’t have to
define the rest of your life.’”
One participant, now 33, struggles with the guilt of having killed
the wrong person. “My big thing
was taking another man’s life and
finding out later on that wasn’t who
you were supposed to shoot,” he
told me, asking not to be identified
HUFFINGTON
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“As terrible as some of this stuff is —
and sometimes what we hear makes
your toes curl — what I see in these
people is incredible goodness. Their
efforts to punish themselves is just
further evidence of their goodness.”
because of his continuing psychological treatment. “The [troops] out
there, they don’t talk about it. They
act like it never happened. Completely don’t ever bring it up.”
But in the San Diego moral injury program, he did summon the
courage to stand up and talk about
it. “Just saying it was helpful,” he
said later. “There were about five
Michael
Castellana, a
staff psychotherapist and
co-facilitator of
the San Diego
moral injury
repair group.