The therapeutic role of self-transcendence in moral injury recovery: theory, mechanisms, and clinical implications

Summary

Moral injury involves negative self-perception and difficulty in finding meaning after morally injurious events. This paper suggests that self-transcendence, a state achieved through mindfulness practices, can aid recovery from moral injury by reducing self-focus and enhancing cognitive flexibility. Mindfulness techniques may help individuals reframe their experiences and repair their moral identity. The findings highlight the potential of mindfulness-based interventions for fostering self-transcendence as a means to address moral injury.

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Abstract

A growing body of psychological and neuroscientific research suggests that moral injury (MI) involves maladaptive self-referential processing, including disruptions in moral identity, rigid negative self-appraisals, and impaired meaning-making following exposure to potentially morally injurious events (PMIEs). Building on Mindfulness-to-Meaning Theory (MMT), this paper proposes self-transcendence (ST)-a metacognitive state characterized by reduced self-focus, expanded awareness, transcendent affect, and prosocial meaning-as a potential mechanism for MI recovery. Within MMT, mindfulness practice is theorized to cultivate ST via decentering and meta-awareness, processes that broaden attentional scope, promote flexible cognitive reappraisal, and modulate habitual self-referential processing. Mindfulness and contemplative research further link ST to increased cognitive flexibility, reduced in shame-focused narrative self-processing, and adaptive integration of emotionally and morally disruptive experiences. Drawing on an integrative review of ST-consistent and MI-related mechanisms, this paper argues that fostering ST through mindfulness-based and contemplative practices may reduce rigid self-focus, expand interpretive frameworks of meaning, and support moral identity repair and meaning-making. Implications are discussed for designing interventions that intentionally cultivate ST as both standalone approaches and modular components, while acknowledging current limitations in measurement, readiness assessment, and the reliable induction of ST states.

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