Stella Reddy's Story

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During my therapy in 2018, I first heard the term moral injury. It struck a chord deep within me. I had already been carrying the weight of abandonment by my employers—people I trusted to uphold basic decency and professional ethics. Their silence after receiving that vague letter in August 2016 wasn’t just disappointing—it was damaging. It left me questioning everything I believed about integrity in the workplace.

I did what I felt was right. I spoke up. I tried to mediate between the Tenants and my employers, even suggesting neutral ground like a nearby coffee shop. But they refused. They wanted silence. They wanted avoidance. And they wanted me to play along.

Their refusal to act went against everything I stood for. It chipped away at my faith in people and institutions. I’m grateful I no longer have to put myself in that position!

When I tried to address the gossip and rumours, I was told to “be quiet.” Even after I left the job, they emailed me to “stay quiet.” Their lawyer even called me once to reinforce that demand. I felt bullied—not just by the Tenants, but by the very people who were supposed to protect me. They hid behind legal walls while I lived on the property, exposed and vulnerable.

I pushed for action. I advocated for a letter to be sent in September 2019; thankfully, they did. I filed a complaint with the Ministry of Labour, even though it tore me up inside. Loyalty had always been part of my professional code—respect, integrity, accountability, and professionalism. But loyalty doesn’t mean silence in the face of harm.

They had no health and safety protocols. They did nothing to protect us from the Tenants’ escalating behaviour. I was the one who initiated mediation with the Landlord and Tenant Board. I wasn’t even sure they’d be evicted—I just wanted the rules of entry clarified. In the end, their own words sealed their fate.

The betrayal by the property owners still lingers. They made promises they never kept. Their inaction caused me moral injury—something I still wrestle with. And sadly, it wasn’t the first time I’d felt betrayed by an employer.

Filing that complaint wasn’t easy. But when we settled, I felt a flicker of vindication. I knew I couldn’t heal while still living there. My end goal was to leave—and I did in September 2020.

As Psychology Today puts it:

“In PTSD the individual loses his sense of safety, in moral injury, the individual loses his ability to trust people and organizations to uphold a moral code of conduct.”

I was hit with both. I felt unsafe. I felt hopeless. I felt alone. It wasn’t until I found WordPress that I began to see things differently. I wasn’t alone. Others had walked this path. Others had spoken up.

That’s when healing began.

I’ve lived with PTSD since 1991. The symptoms were aggravated by this experience, and the moral injury made it harder to trust. Even now, the lack of action from hosting companies and domain providers keeps that injury alive longer.

Since stellareddy.com appeared in 2019, I’ve filed countless complaints. The domain has been transferred 28 times, and now, since it was released in July 2025, it is in the hands of a cybersquatter looking to profit off my pain. Some companies uphold their policies, others don’t. Everyone agrees the content is cyberbullying—but without a court order, they refuse to act.

I’ve found peace here in Newfoundland. Retirement has given me space to breathe and reclaim my values. I’m free to speak about what happened. I’m free to share my story of Adult Tenants who Bully—and the people who let them.

But it’s not just the distance from that toxic environment that soothes me—it’s the land itself. Mother Nature here in Newfoundland has a way of reaching into your soul and gently reminding you that healing is possible. The rugged coastline, the salt-laced wind, the ever-changing skies—they all speak a language of resilience I’ve come to understand deeply.

There’s something sacred about walking along the trails with the ocean crashing nearby, the scent of pine and seaweed in the air. The rhythm of the waves feels like a heartbeat I can trust. The fog rolls in like a soft blanket, permitting me to rest, to reflect, to simply be. Even the silence here is different—it’s not the silence of suppression, but the silence of serenity.

The seasons shift with grace, and I’ve learned to shift with them. In spring, the land wakes up, and so do I. In summer, the sun lingers, and I feel my strength return. Autumn brings colour and clarity, and winter—though harsh—teaches me endurance. Nature doesn’t rush healing, and neither do I anymore.

Here, I am not just surviving—I am becoming. Newfoundland holds space for me in ways no employer ever did. It doesn’t ask me to stay quiet. It listens. It affirms. And it reminds me, every single day, that I am part of something bigger, something enduring, something beautiful.

This place has become my sanctuary. And in its wild, unapologetic truth, I’ve found my own.

Healing from moral injury isn’t easy. But it’s worth it. Sit with your emotions. Feel them. Process them. Release them. That’s how you move forward. That’s how you reclaim your life.

Every day, it gets easier. And every day, I get better.

 

Workplace Bullying as a Moral Injury Wound | Psychology Today

Workplace Bullying as a Moral Injury Wound

Workplace abuse violates one’s moral code, resulting in an existential crisis.

KEY POINTS

• Workplace bullying is a cultural problem, transpiring in “vicious” organizations that operate under shadow values.
• Workplace bullying often results in moral injury, in which a person in authority violates the value system of a star employee.
• Healing from moral injury rests in identifying which values were violated and what the resulting emotions were, and then restoring meaning.

Trauma burrows its way into our lives in a myriad of ways, from abuse and sickness to military conflict. The resulting suffering hurts our heads and our hearts, upending our faith in a predictable and benevolent world and leaving us without a compass to navigate home to our earlier selves. The wounds inflicted may be external, internal, or both—yet there is another type of wound, existential in nature, that transcends our body and invades our souls. We call it moral injury.

What Is Moral Injury?

Moral injury (MI) is “an act of transgression that creates dissonance and conflict because it violates assumptions and beliefs about right and wrong and personal goodness” (Litz et. al., 2016, p. 698).

Shay (1994), a psychiatrist, is credited with coining the term after encountering the bones of the phenomenon in Homer’s The Iliad and then drawing parallels between the moral injury suffered by Achilles to those inflicted on soldiers during the Vietnam War. Through his study of Homer’s work and the extended narratives of the Vietnam vets under his care, Shay (2014) delineated three essential components of MI:

1. A betrayal of what is right
2. By someone who holds legitimate authority
3. In a high-stakes situation

As evidenced by Shay’s work, the vast majority of research on moral injury is situated around the battlefield. However, in recent decades, that work has been extended to the workplace.

Moral Injury at Work

Shay’s criteria for moral injury translate well to workplace abuse scenarios in which:

1. A star employee is targeted (a betrayal of what is right)
2. By either her boss or other individuals with social power (by someone who holds legitimate authority)
3. Most often resulting in job loss and/or an identity crisis (a high-stakes situation)

Moral injury on the job causes ethical employees to lose purpose, hope, and meaning in their work. Such wounds happen in what Abadal and Potts (2022) describe as “vicious” organizations in which company values dominate the webpage, such as respect, integrity, accountability, and professionalism, but shadow values direct the business. Shadow values are the “hidden curriculum” that normalizes the use of gossip, gaslighting, manipulation, sabotage, and exclusion as primary tools to complete tasks and gain power over others (Anderson, 2021).

When ethical employees devoted to an organization’s public mission unknowingly enter a vicious organization, they are forced to make the choice to either assimilate to the shadow value norms and abandon their own moral code, or call out bad behaviors. Unfortunately, the cost is high for employees who whistleblow or report toxicity, with 67 percent losing their jobs (Namie, 2021).

Unlike isolated incidents during wartime, moral injury at work typically follows an elongated cycle (Abadal and Potts, 2022; Anderson, 2021; Fleming, 2022a).

1. An employee joins an organization that publicly matches her values and mission.
2. The employee is repeatedly exposed to PMIE or “potentially morally injurious events,” most often from a superior such as yelling, humiliation, unreasonable workload, withdrawal of resources, taking credit for her work, and encouraging her to lie or cover up damaging information.
3. Such behaviors are in contrast to the employee’s moral code and value system, so she attempts to professionally address the problematic behaviors, most often first with her boss and later with human resources.
4. Following her attempts to speak up about the unethicalities, she becomes a target of workplace bullying.
5. The repeated exposure to PMIE coupled with retaliatory bullying creates an existential crisis in which trust is broken, value systems are collapsed, identity is shaken, and job security is lost, which results in moral injury. Once inflicted, the moral injury causes the employee to lose trust in people and organizations, experience feelings of sadness and shame, and suffer a crisis of identity.

Moral injury wounds are significant and long-lasting, requiring the help, when possible, of a supportive community and mental health professionals.

Healing Moral Injury Wounds

The initial wound of moral injury begins as a betrayal of the employee’s assumptive world, abandoning her in a vast landscape that lacks meaning, predictability, and an ethical code of conduct. Such cultures take away an employee’s ability to live inside her values, set goals, and have agency over her work, resulting in physical and emotional distress that includes but is not limited to high blood pressure, sleep disorders, migraines, anxiety, and depression (Nielsen & Einarsen, 2012).

Moral injury and PTSD are often conflated, yet they have marked differences. PTSD usually occurs in response to a mortal threat, resulting in long-term feelings of fear and hopelessness. Moral injury, on the other hand, transpires when there is a violation of one’s moral values leading to extended feelings of guilt, shame, and anger. Whereas in PTSD the individual loses his sense of safety, in moral injury, the individual loses his ability to trust people and organizations to uphold a moral code of conduct (Shay, 2014).

Due to these differences, some interventions that prove successful in addressing PTSD, such as exposure therapy, are not effective in healing moral injury. However, mental health professionals, researchers, and chaplains have identified specific practices helpful for healing such wounds (Calhoun and Tedeschi, 2006; Fleming, 2022b; Janoff Bulman, 1992; Schwarz, 2012; Shay, 2014).

1. Effective approaches begin with a self-evaluation of what values were violated. Did the organizational leadership violate an employee’s sense of integrity, service to the community, dedication to professionalism, belief in honest communication, opportunities for growth, commitment to respectful interactions, or the truthful and fair exchange of information?
2. Next, it is helpful to identify the specific emotions that arose due to that violation. Feeling information theory suggests that identifying specific emotions, instead of generalized feelings, empowers people to bring the unconscious to the surface where it can be discussed and analyzed. Such analysis empowers people to have more productive reactions to their emotions. To aid in emotional granularity, Fleming (2022b) developed the Moral Injury Experience Wheel to assist in breaking down generalized feelings like anger into more specific vocabulary to describe those feelings such as disbelief, helplessness, disappointment, mistrust, disillusionment/cynicism, contempt/disgust, resentment, vengefulness, or rage.
3. Once the specific emotions associated with the violation are identified, it is important to consider how that violation impacted the person’s belief in herself and a meaningful world. Daily journaling, for as little as 10 minutes, is an effective tool for this type of discovery.
4. Rituals are an integral component of the moral wound-healing process, for they create opportunities for individuals to sever emotional ties with the organization that inflicted the hurt. Rituals may come in the form of writing a letter that is ceremoniously held over a flame or taking a weekend pilgrimage on a mountain trail, signifying the taking of a new path.
5. Lastly, it is time to find meaning in new endeavors, whether it be through advocacy, volunteer work, passion projects, or seeking out alternative employment at an organization that aligns with the individual’s personal mission and values.

In summary, workplace bullying is a type of value breach in which a person’s belief and commitment to integrity, truth, kindness, and fair play are violated by a vicious institution through the tools of gossip, gaslighting, manipulation, sabotage, and exclusion. As a result, the individual suffers innumerable physical and emotional health complications, but most tragically, may succumb to moral injury. Such wounding transcends the body, resulting in a loss of personal agency and meaning-making, which causes deep feelings of sadness and shame. Healing rests in identifying internal values, speaking about violations, and discovering new communities where the individual can do productive work in a culture that aligns with her moral code.