Season 1 Ep 06: Carrying the Weight of Moral Injury with Dr. K Kixson
Moral injury.
It’s a term that often evokes images of soldiers deep in the fog of war or perhaps of a surgeon in scrubs holding their head in their hands in the hallway of a hospital emergency department.
A therapist sitting quietly in their office or in the cubicle of a community mental health agency’s open office plan isn’t really what pops into most people’s heads when someone says the words “moral injury.” But maybe sometimes it should be.
As therapists, we are in daily intimate contact with the moral complexity of human beings. And we also have front row seats to the profound moral failings of the large systems that we and our clients regularly have to navigate.
Today, I'm talking with Dr. K Hixson, a dear friend, colleague, and mentor of mine, as well as a community treasure in our therapist community here in Portland.
Dr. Hixson and I get into some of the big factors that contribute to moral injury among therapists like individualism and the burdens of excessive responsibility that we place onto individual clinicians, and how the larger systems that we operate within prevent us from living out our own values, both as clinicians and as regular humans.
Listen to the full episode to hear:
How the concept of burnout can turn systemic failures into individual problems
How the shortage of therapists contributes to moral injury in the field
Why therapy can’t be divorced from the context of politics, capitalism, climate change, etc.
How the individualized medical and insurance model of care fails clinicians and patients
Learn more about Dr. K Hixson:
Learn more about Riva Stoudt:
Resources:
What is Moral Injury - Syracuse University Moral Injury Project
About Riva
Riva Stoudt is a therapist based in Portland, Oregon. When she's not working with patients, she likes to talk about all the things a therapist isn't "supposed" to talk about.
