Since a young age, I wanted to protect the world.
Finding Stability
By Seth Nuckols, as told to Steve Lamb
As a kid, I dreamed of becoming an FBI agent. But after finishing high school, I realized that I needed to cultivate better discipline in my life, so I left college to join the U.S. Army. I became an Army counterintelligence special agent, keeping U.S. classified information safe. As a badged federal agent for over 20 years, I conducted sensitive investigations related to espionage, treason, sedition and terrorism.
Missions were often intense. I’ve deployed five times — four in combat — and not everyone around me returned home. I learned that I couldn't dwell on those memories; it was very hard to recover from them.
While serving in Afghanistan, I woke up one morning with a throbbing headache. I went for an evaluation at Bagram Air Base hospital where doctors said I had the initial stages of PTSD. I was officially diagnosed in 2006 after returning to the U.S., but continued to serve and deploy.
In 2021, I was assigned to a base in the US, where I connected with an Army therapist who was trying new healing methods that had been developed since my initial diagnosis. He asked me to write the story of my time in Iraq and on other missions as if I was still deployed. I was skeptical, as I’d tried something similar before and it hadn’t worked. Even so, I started writing and I found it therapeutic.
