Moral Injuries: When Good Conscience Suffers in a World of Hurt

A psychologist's paradigm-shifting exploration of moral injury--when your moral compass is misaligned with the outside world, causing pain, stress, and other debilitating symptoms--how it develops, why it matters, and how to repair it.

An invisible epidemic is reshaping the emotional core of our institutions, communities, and inner lives. This ailment fractures our sense of self, erodes our trust in others, and leaves us questioning not only what has happened to us but also who we've become. Arising out of high-stakes events that force us to participate in, witness, or endorse violations of our deepest principles, this disorder is known as moral injury.

Often confused with PTSD, which is a reaction to mortal threat, moral injury arises in response to moral threat. First observed in soldiers, moral injury is now appearing across professions from medicine to tech, law to public safety. Dr. Michael Valdovinos, a psychologist, veteran, and trauma expert, has spent over a decade exploring this acute form of ethical and emotional pain. In this urgent and necessary book, he investigates how moral injury manifests, why it matters now more than ever, and what it reveals about our social contract.

Rather than offering prescriptive steps, Moral Injuries invites readers into stories of rupture, reckoning, and repair--tracing how individuals can begin the work of healing. Through history, science, and lived experience, it also opens a new conversation about the role of conscience in protecting the health of society.