When following distressing news on a daily basis, you might feel anxious and powerless to stop injustice. An inner conflict may arise because your values (like justice or care) exceed your immediate capacity to act. This mismatch creates moral stress that can lead to anxiety or shutdown.

Mindful Self-Compassion Teacher Mila de Koning explains what moral stress is and how to cope with these distressing feelings.

In a nutshell

• Moral stress arises from misalignment between values and feasible actions.
• It manifests as ongoing distress when we cannot fix systemic issues.
• Common feeling in conflict areas and among those bearing witness to global suffering.
• Calls for practices that support agency, steadiness, and care without denial.

What is moral stress?

Moral stress is the inner conflict that arises when personal values and the ability to act in alignment with those values do not match in a given situation. It occurs when your sense of right and wrong is caught within systems or circumstances beyond your control. It’s common among people witnessing injustice, loss, suffering, and deep uncertainty.

When you feel overwhelmed by what’s going on in the world, it’s important to recognize moral stress as values-action misalignment and acknowledge your limits of control. You can do this by checking your personal window of tolerance.

This framework describes the range of arousal in which you can function optimally. It consists of three “zones”:

• The green zone (inside your window): you’re feeling present and responsive
• The red zone (above your window): you enter a state of hyperarousal and can experience feelings like anxiety, agitation, urgency, tension
• The grey zone (below your window): you enter a state of hypoarousal and can experience feelings of numbness, freeze, disconnection

How to regulate moral stress?

When you’re stressed, tense, or feeling numb, the first impulse is usually to analyse the situation. We try to think our way out of it, using logic to fix whatever feels off. But most of the time, that mental problem-solving doesn’t help. It often adds another layer of stress.

Resilience, instead, is something you build through self-regulation and compassion. Emotional balance comes from embodied practices (sensing, grounding, breathing, moving) that help your nervous system settle so you can return to your window of tolerance. It’s the skill of soothing yourself while the difficulty is still there.

Many practices can help you regulate heightened arousal, like briefly checking in with yourself. Pause, return to your body and breath, stand up if you can, move around, or take a short break before diving back into what you were doing.

If you’re looking to soothe yourself, a self-compassionate touch can help. If you’re overwhelmed, a grounding exercise may work better.

Learn more: 5 Mindfulness Exercises That Are Not Meditation

A practice to regulate your emotions

When you feel overwhelmed or numb, the most helpful thing is to return to your body. This standing practice supports emotional regulation and helps you come back to yourself:

• Stand up with your feet shoulder-width apart. Your knees slightly bend and with a tall spine.
• Take some deep breaths and feel the ground or earth beneath you support your body.
• Image your standing strong, just like a mountain, and feel a sense of mountain-like solidity.
• Inhale while you imagine a string is pulling you up, exhale into stability
• Repeat helpful affirmations, like “I’m here. I will not abandon myself. I will take care of me.”

Want to learn how to cope with moral stress? Join our workshop: Self-compassion in Unstable & Challenging Times

Credits image: Sean Foster via Unsplash