Workshop: Moral Stress and Spiritual Struggles

This workshop explores crises that make people feel fearful or shameful about causing harm, generating moral stress. Such stress often involves conflicting values. For example, health crises can involve shame about not taking care of one’s health, and fearful conflicts over the financial vs. health costs of seeking or not seeking health care. Chaplains, religious leaders, and clinicians can easily experience moral stress over providing client/spiritual care while complying with health plans/organizations that limit time with those needing care. Many people experience conflicts in balancing family, professional, and financial responsibilities. These conflicting values and associated emotions like shame, fear, and guilt may be part of automatic, stress-based moral/spiritual orienting systems shaped by family/cultural systems (like racism, sexism, classism, and heterosexism) that heighten individual responsibility for causing harm.

Participants will explore their own experiences of moral stress and identify calming practices that foster self-compassion. Illustrations, self-reflection, and roles plays will be used to identify spiritual practices fostering self-compassion. Participants will reflect on how to identify and use spiritual practices to live out values and beliefs about goodness, compassion, and love.