Society trains us to see backward movement as failure. In business, declining numbers mean you're losing. In fitness, moving less weight than last week means you're getting weaker. In school, failing to advance to the next grade means you're not smart enough.

But healing operates by different rules.

Sometimes the most profound growth happens when you consciously choose to step back and regroup instead of pushing forward for the sake of progress.

We think we know about fear responses. We've heard the stories. Fight or flight. The adrenaline surge. The quick decision between confronting danger or running from it.

But there's something else. Something older. Something that happens when fighting won't work and fleeing isn't possible.

Shutdown.

Picture the most organized office you've ever seen. Every document has its place. Every memory, every experience, every moment gets sorted, classified, and filed away properly. The drawer slides open when you need something, you retrieve what you're looking for, and then it closes with a satisfying click.

This is how our minds are supposed to work. Experience something, process it, understand it, file it away. Next.

But what happens when the system breaks down?

It's never just one thing.

We tell ourselves stories about single moments, isolated incidents, the one bad thing that happened. But trauma doesn't work that way. It cascades.

An RCMP member stood up and described a line of duty shooting. Not the moment of violence itself, but what came after. The silence from leadership. The bureaucratic shuffle. The people in the "white shirts" who suddenly became strangers when support was needed most.

Their words were simple but devastating: the lack of support was more damaging than the shooting itself.

This is moral injury. And it's time we understood what it's really costing

Exposure to someone else’s trauma can be traumatizing in itself.

The weight of other people's worst moments can crush the helper just as surely as it crushed the person who lived through it.

But we also get to see people at their grittiest, resilient best.