Basic Dishonesty & Moral Injury
Denial, lies, projection, fake personas, espoused values that don’t match up with behaviours, organisational policies that don’t tally with actual procedures – there are many, many forms of basic dishonesty that we all encounter on a regular basis.
Some people approach things with honest intention, ethical behaviours and core values or character strengths that place the value of Honesty high on the list. Such people are likely to experience small moral injuries over and over again in their workplaces and social lives.
Honest people can end up on the receiving end of some pretty atrocious situations. They can easily be walked over by dishonest people in the workplace and community, being framed, deceived, and scapegoated.
Honest people will tell the truth even when this is likely to have negative repercussions for them. That’s where moral injury comes in.
Moral injury is the deep inner wound that opens up when we experience things that we know to be unfair, unjust or wrong. Betrayal trauma is the classic moral injury. In infidelity, for example, it is often not the fact of being cheated on that hurts, but the dishonest cover up.
Why Do People Lie?
Avoidance, projection and denial are basic human strategies for avoiding pain. Sometimes, this avoidance strategy escalates to the level found in character disordered people. Two or more very distinct apparent ‘personalities’ constructed to move through life without being hurt again and again. Street Angel, Home Devil. Dr Jekyll, Mr Hyde.
Narcissistic liars are unable to recognise the difference between Truth and Lie. For them, disinformation, misinformation and fantasy are go-to methods for avoiding hurt themselves – by ensuring that someone else is always blamed for their misdeeds. This is arguably, deeply ingrained behaviour learnt in childhood. “To keep myself safe, I have to lie”.
Healing from The Moral Injury of Wrongful Blame
Our modern institutions make a lot of effort with Mission Statements and Values Statements or Codes of Conduct that appeal to our sense of fairness and justice. Very few, if any, actually walk the talk.
This discrepancy is perhaps felt most acutely in the workplace, where our very livelihoods are at stake. In order to avoid conflict, we might tolerate many occurrences of practices or procedures that we feel are morally wrong.
We might tolerate bullying and unethical practices– justifying our complicity by the need to put a roof over our heads. Then suffer shame, anxiety or depression as a result of feeling trapped in a situation over which we have no control, other than resignation or being sacked for blowing the whistle. Trapped between a rock and a hard place. Not much of a choice.
Or in families, being caught in a traditional narrative that we feel bears no relationship to Objective Reality. The Black Sheep, The Scapegoat, The Troublemaker, The No Hoper. We might feel that the option to escape from these false narratives is not really available to us, trapped by our own values or by survival fears.
Self-Compassion
Counter-intuitively perhaps, the way to heal these compounding moral injuries is not by ruminating on the story, or getting lost in anger at the person or people inflicting the injustice, but by focussing on the injury itself.
Training in Mindful Self Compassion helps us to let go of the story, notice where the pain of betrayal sits in our body, and tend to it with kindness, tenderness and care.
We can fail to recognise that we have a choice between using the carrot or the stick to get ourselves out of difficult situations. We have lots of training already in how to denigrate, chastise, criticise and blame ourselves for the situations we find ourselves in. We learned this from our caregivers, teachers, sports coaches and bosses.
Using the stick inside our own minds becomes habit. Nothing more, nothing less. Just a habit that can be overcome and replaced with new habits. Or, if you prefer, new neural pathways.
If you have never learnt how to be kind to yourself when you experience moral injury, confluence of Western Third-Wave interventions and ancient wisdom practices can help you!
All it takes is curiosity, courage and dedication to trying a new approach.
©Nicki Paull
Moral Injury Explained - Kings College London
Understanding Gaslighting
DISCLAIMER: Narcissists are not all male. Using male pronouns to reference the narcissist and female pronouns to reference the victim-survivor is not an indication of the clinical data on gender in narcissism, but rather an editorial choice.
