Help Your Client Move On with the Healing Moral Injury Hypnosis Script

Moral injury is injury to a person's moral conscience as a result of a perceived moral transgression. This can cause profound guilt and shame and sometimes a sense of isolation from others.

The Healing Moral Injury Hypnosis Script from The Script Collection was put together to help clients separate what they did from who they fundamentally are.

The pre-talk unpacks the Stanley Milgram experiment to show that even the most intelligent and considered people are capable of all sorts of horrors in certain situations. It makes the point that our ancestors engaged in violence, so it's only natural that this instinct still exists somewhere beneath the surface. On this basis it reassures the client that no matter what they did, many other people would have done the same.

The client is encouraged to recognize that what they did is not all they are, that there are parts of them that are genuinely positive and good, and that they can connect with these parts of themselves to come to terms with the past and live a meaningful life.

As the client focuses on slowing the breath, the mind is likened to a lake with ripples quieting down to give way to a perfectly still, reflective surface. They are invited to give thanks to their lungs for their "dedication and loyalty" and then to the feet, "for all their hard work through the years." This sense of gratitude is extended to give the client a sense of the "earnest goodness" of how the body works together to support them.

Relaxation is deepened with a description of how their body's loyal support has always been there whenever they drift off to sleep, helping the body to rest comfortably. They are asked to get a sense of strolling through nature in a dream as it is suggested that the unconscious mind can support them to find "a way through" into the future.

Now the story of a woman who caused a fatal car accident helps the client identify with the feelings and habits of moral injury and how it can "change our sense of who we are." A description of how hypnosis helped this woman allows the client to follow along with the hypnotic exercise themselves, but without the pressure that comes from being directly asked to do so.

The woman is asked to channel "all of who she used to believe herself to be" into her right hand and "the instinctive energy" that drove her to act as she did when the car accident happened into her left hand. She is guided to recognize that those positive qualities in the right hand are still there, and that the instinctive drive in the left is something that exists in all of us.

Finally, the woman is reassured that the very fact she regrets her actions shows that her moral compass is still very much intact. Embedded commands encourage the client to make amends for past wrongdoing and to move into the future with a commitment to "stay true to that moral impulse" as they "take positive action."

The client's wrongdoing is further separated from their core identity with the assertion that the two-dimensionality of many TV and film characters - good or bad, heroes or villains - does not translate to real life. Human beings are much more complex and vulnerable. It is acknowledged that it can take time to recognize this, but that with age we can "evolve" to become wiser and integrate the many different aspects of self.

Now we come back to the hands as a metaphor for the contrasting parts of self. The woman's hands are described as "drift[ing] together unconsciously", integrating the different parts of who she is. The importance of forgiveness to decent, civilized society is emphasized here, asserting that people should not be shackled to past wrongdoings forever - they can "serve their time" and even let their past "drive them to do good in this world."

Now we see how the woman transformed as she developed the ability to be decent towards herself, to see her past transgression as "something important that [she] can't allow [her]self to forget," not as a defining feature of her sense of self. She describes her newfound motivation to "make amends," to "protect people in the future," helping instill these same positive expectations and motivations in the client.

As the trancework comes to a close, the focus returns to the client themselves. They are encouraged to notice a lightness and an opening up as they integrate these ideas gradually and comfortably into their own sense of self.

Add the Healing Moral Injury Hypnosis Script to your script library today!

Healing Moral Injury is also available as an MP3 download.