LINDA DAVIDSON/ THE WASHINGTON POST VIA GETTY IMAGES
HEALING
disclosing what you did or failed
to do,” Litz explained. “If there is
that compassionate love, that forgiving presence, it will kick-start
thinking about, well, how do you
fix this, how can you lead a good
life now?” And that, he said, “is
the beginning of self-compassion.”
The adaptive part of the therapy involves helping the patient
accept his or her past actions.
Yeah, I did this, or I saw this, or
this really happened — but it’s not
all my fault and I can live with it.
Patients are asked to make a list of
everyone, every person and institution, that bears some responsibility for their moral injury. They
then assign each a percentage of
HUFFINGTON
03.16-23.14
blame, to add up to 100 percent.
If a Marine shot a child in combat,
he might accept 30 percent of the
blame. He might award the Taliban 50 percent, the child himself
5 percent and the Marine Corps 5
percent. God, perhaps, 10 percent.
A variant of adaptive disclosure
was used in experimental treatment led by Litz and Maria Steenkamp, a clinical research psychologist at the Boston VA medical
center, working with Marines
from Camp Pendleton, Calif.
After having patients describe
in painful detail what caused their
moral injury, therapists asked
them to choose someone they saw
as a compassionate moral authority and hold an imaginary conversation with that person, describing what happened and the shame
A delirious
wounded
soldier
reaches for a
human touch
while a flight
medic and
crew chief
attend to
other soldiers
aboard a
medical
evacuation
helicopter
in Kandahar
Province,
Afghanistan,
on Oct. 10,
2010.