Moral Injury Therapy in Colorado Springs
For the guilt, shame, anger, and betrayal that follow when something violated what you believe is right. Therapy for moral injury in veterans, service members, and first responders, in person in Colorado Springs and online across Colorado.
Moral pain is not pathology.
Moral injury is what can happen after you do, witness, or fail to prevent something that goes against your deepest values, or when the people and institutions you trusted betray what is right. The guilt, shame, anger, and disgust that follow are not symptoms to eliminate. They are evidence that your moral compass is still intact.
Moral injury is not the pain itself. It is the suffering that comes from fighting that pain, avoiding it, or turning hostile toward it. It is a separate wound from combat trauma, and the two can absolutely exist at the same time. Many people carry moral injury on top of PTSD, depression, or anxiety. If only the trauma gets treated, the thing driving the despair gets missed.
In daily life, moral injury often shows up as a hypervigilant need to protect others, or to close the gap between your values and the way the world actually is. It can look like outsized rage at small injustices everyone else walks past, or questioning your service, your country, and everything you were told. For many OEF and OIF veterans, the withdrawal from Afghanistan was a peak moment of moral injury.
We sit in the pain with you first.
Conventional treatment often misses moral injury. When the wrongdoing was real, there is nothing distorted to restructure, and exposure won’t touch it. Trying to talk someone out of their culpability lands as minimizing and costs the relationship. The most important thing we do is be willing to sit in the pain with you before we do anything else.
From there, we witness the betrayal or the violation with you, not to process it like a trauma memory but to be present to it. We validate the feelings and the values underneath them. Your anger makes sense. Your grief makes sense. We help you see that nothing is left to be done inside the footprint of that event, and we help you separate values from ideals. Values are what you live out and can act on today. Ideals are how you believe the world ought to be. The suffering lives in the gap between the two, and closing that gap was never a job any one person could do.
We draw on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT) when beliefs are genuinely distorted, and Internal Family Systems (IFS).
What healing looks like.
Healing looks like accepting the injustice without condoning it. Understanding that it is not your job to hold the whole world to account, and that things are often not what they appear to be. Forgiveness becomes a behavior, not a feeling: reconnecting with your values while still carrying the pain, and releasing the demand for punishment.
The protective impulse doesn’t disappear, and we don’t want it to. We help you aim it at the people and the life actually in front of you: your marriage, your kids, your work, your ability to be present. Shame and isolation, more than symptom severity, are what drive people toward despair. That is why rebuilding connection is the heart of this work.
From Nick
My own moral injury got displaced onto the Bush administration after my time in Iraq. As a young man in my twenties, the President became the perfect scapegoat for the betrayal I felt. Shortly after he left office, I read an article about President Bush painting portraits of the veterans and soldiers who had served under him. It created a moment of cognitive dissonance I still have trouble describing. Either he was a tyrant who started a war and got my friend killed, or he was a deeply empathetic man carrying the weight of impossible choices.
I found myself considering all the funerals he had attended and the phone calls he had made to families. I imagined what those decisions cost him and what it must have been like to watch the ripples move through people’s lives. I wept, and I forgave him instantly. And I saw that all that anger, all that focus on the betrayal, had been standing between me and my grief the entire time.
Nicholas Fry, MSW, LCSW · Founder & Clinical Director · Combat Veteran
If you are having thoughts of suicide, you deserve support right now. Call or text 988 (veterans press 1) any time, day or night. If you are in immediate danger, call 911.
Moral Injury Therapy at a glance
Getting started is simple
Insurance we accept
Questions about coverage or cost? Email Sarah or text 719-357-6569.
Moral Injury Therapy FAQ
What is moral injury?
Moral injury is the lasting distress that can follow doing, witnessing, or failing to prevent something that violates your deeply held values, or being betrayed by people or institutions you trusted. It often shows up as guilt, shame, anger, and a loss of trust in yourself or others.
How is moral injury different from PTSD?
PTSD is rooted in fear and a threat to your life or safety. Moral injury is rooted in a threat to your values. They often occur together, but they call for different kinds of care. Someone can have one, the other, or both.
Do you only work with veterans?
No. Moral injury is common among veterans and service members, and also among first responders and anyone who has lived through a serious betrayal or violation of their values.
Does insurance cover therapy for moral injury?
In most cases, yes. We are in network with Aetna, United Healthcare, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Cigna, Kaiser Permanente, UMR, Medicare, Colorado Medicaid (Health First Colorado), and VA Community Care. Sarah can verify your benefits before your first session.
What if I am having thoughts of suicide?
Please reach out now. Call or text 988, the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline (veterans press 1), or call 911 if you are in immediate danger. When you start therapy with us, your therapist will work with you on safety and a plan for hard moments.
There are no shortcuts to healing.
But you don’t have to do it alone. Reach out today, and we’ll take it from there.