Anxiety? Powerlessness? Ethical Distress? Use It.
It’s understandable that we could look at the world around us and feel anxiety, grief, and moral distress. We can recognize these emotions and give ourselves the space to acknowledge and process them. Moreover, we can recognize the need to combat our sense of powerlessness before it generates despair and paralyzes us into inaction. We can use our ethical compass and the physiological responses generated by anxiety and use these responses to our advantage. We can leverage these responses into action.
Am I Experiencing Moral Distress?
Most of us have felt it – that heart-racing, palm-sweating, face-flushing response to witnessing an action that goes against everything we believe in – in the moment before we decide whether to speak up. In the best case scenario, we can use these feelings to act and make changes. When we can’t or don’t act though, our internal suffering is called moral distress.