School of War - Ep 235: Tyler Grey on Serving in Delta Force and the Warrior’s Journey

Episode Date: September 30, 2025

Tyler Grey, Delta Force veteran and author of Forged in Chaos: A Warrior's Origin Story, joins the show to discuss his experiences as a member of the U.S. Army’s most elite combat unit, his journey as a warrior, and the continuing struggle to understand post-traumatic stress. ▪️ Times     •      01:30 Introduction     •      01:48 Bakersfield, CA      •      06:51 Predators and prey              •      10:48 Not a choice      •      17:11 Rangers             •      23:15 Elite infantry               •      28:37 9/11           •      33:43 Pakistan border              •      41:20 Sniper team     •      44:22 Luck and health           •      47:05 Master of the basics             •      51:36 Fallujah     •      54:29 Sadr City     •      01:06:16 Chaos of combat          •      01:10:01 Lost          •      01:14:26 “LTSD” Follow along on Instagram, X @schoolofwarpod, and YouTube @SchoolofWarPodcast Find a transcript of today’s episode on our School of War Substack

In today's episode, you'll hear me mingle a quote from Ernest Hemingway, the correct version of which is, the world breaks everyone, and afterward, many are strong at the broken places. That's not a bad frame for today's conversation with Tyler Gray, a former operator in the Special Operations Unit, popularly known as the Delta Force. It's a remarkable interview about Tyler's life, his combat service in Afghanistan and Iraq the night he was very nearly killed in a firefight inside a building in Baghdad and a long road to recovery after that. Let's get into it. It is for safety for war with Iraqi invasion of

November 7, 1941, a date which will live in history. The bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a state. We continue to face the grave situation in France. landing around and he'll fight in the fields and in the streets which he'll never have no rest. Hi, I'm Aaron McLean. Thanks for joining School of War. I am delighted to welcome to the show today. Tyler Gray, he is a former U.S. Army Tier 1 operator. His career took him to Afghanistan, to Iraq. Today he's an advocate for veterans' mental health, and he's the author of a book, Forged in Chaos, a Warriors' Origin story. Tyler, thank you so much for joining the show. And my pleasure. Thanks for having it.

I want to hear about your life before the Army. What was it like to grow up Tyler Gray in California, if I'm not mistaken? Just tell me about hometown, major influences, faith, family, all that kind of stuff. Yeah, for me, I mean, growing up in, you know, Bakersfield, California is a strange, kind of unusual place in the sense that on one hand, it's kind of this, you know, relatively sleepy far in town. And on the other hand, it's pretty dangerous crime-wise. So it has these kind of two opposing or seemingly opposing sides. And I grew up, you know, not on the farm pretty much right in the, you know, I'm going to call it a city. It's not really a city.

But so it was, you know, it was very chaotic. My childhood, my dad, you know, was and is an alcoholic. It was pretty much gone all the time when he was home. There was a lot of conflict in, and, in some. the home. When I was outside the home, the term I use is, you know, I was e- and e- and e- and e- and which means escape and evading. It's a military term. But it was pretty much me trying to avoid, you know, the, you know, neighborhood bullies. And I was just very much a scared little kid getting, you know, picked on, harassed, what have you. So childhood-wise, it was really

I don't look back now. Every person can look back at their childhood. And it's like a bad relationship, right? You know, you're with someone for however many years. And then 10 years later, you look back and you go, I miss this about that person. Like, that was okay. They weren't, you know, they were great, blah, blah.

And then, of course, when you're in it, you're like, it's a nightmare. But we tend to look back and kind of see, you know, the positive things more than the negative ones. And I think everyone's childhood is like that to a degree. And I looked back for many years and go, oh, I had fun as a kid. Who doesn't have fun in a kid as a kid? Kids can play with, you know, they can make a stick interesting and, you know, grow up in

the middle of the desert. That's what kids do. But really, it took me kind of years to really look back at my childhood and understand. what it really was. And now I look back and realize that it was a very chaotic time in my life. And it really, your childhood sets you up for, it's the template. It's the code that is written in your, you know, in your startup disc by which you view the world for the rest of your life. And I don't think everyone realizes that. And so that's one of the messages in the book is that your childhood is really setting the it's the forge by which your your paradigm of how you see the world is is created you know

i don't want to get too far ahead here because i want to talk about your your earlier is in the army but how do you think the code that you developed in that you know bumpy upbringing that you just described fed into your ability to operate at a very high level in the army i guess this isn't super uncommon, that is to say, guys with rough upbringings one way or the other, not only doing well at high levels in the Army, but just doing well in certain kinds of high stress circumstances. You come across that a lot, I think. A hundred percent. I mean, I'll go as far as say, I think, and the term I use, I don't use traumatic, you know,

I do use chaotic and chaos. But you could also use the word adverse, if you want. wanted to be very PC about it. But that'll kind of come up later. But I think those that type of, you know, that chaotic or, you know, difficult, adverse, whatever words you want to use, childhood, absolutely, I'm going to go far to say, I think it's one of the largest, I think it's a single largest factor in setting up people to be very successful in in high stress environments in general. That being said, it, you know, there's a lot of negative side effects like anything, but I think in high stress, that chaotic childhood sets you up for the ability to be calm

in those chaotic environments in the future. Yeah. And then some people, it just, it just smooches. I think there's a Hemingway line somewhere that war or difficult times or something. I'm massacring it, but it's something like difficult times make, you know, strong men stronger. And in the week, it just breaks. I will look up the proper quote because I'm doing great. dishonor to American literature right now, but, you know, not everyone, not everyone is strengthened by it. A hundred percent, and I have a very, you know, long explanation for that, but, but yes, and I'll explain that in 30 seconds, and that is, the way I see it, there's, there's two different course. There's two different types of animals in the world, and those are predators and prey.

That's, every animal falls relatively in one of those two categories. And humans are animals, you know, to a degree. I mean, we're, we share a lot of things in common. And so, therefore, I think humans, when born, are born predator or prey. And the, because of those two things, I define them differently. I define them as innately, the predator would be the innate warrior. And the prey would be the innate victim. And the way I define a warrior is not by wearing a uniform or, you know, the job you did.

I define a warrior as someone who, when pushed, pushes back or when pushed down, gets back up, however you want to say it. And for me, I can say that, and I've asked this question, by the way, to a lot of people. I've said, hey, you know, I know you well, you know, whoever it was. and I said, I know you're innately a warrior. But my question is, do you, can you remember a time where you chose that direction or where you, you know, consciously went that way or was it just always innately there? And every single one of them, to include myself, thinks about it and goes, yep, it was always there. I didn't choose it.

I didn't, I wasn't even aware of it. But looking back from my earliest memories, that impulse, I guess, for lack of the better term, was there. And so I think that is something quite honestly we don't choose. I think that comes from a creator. Why I don't know. Again, I can just tell you it was always there. And I think the victim, people that have that victim mentality, it really is just, I'm at the point now where I've seen enough things. where I kind of feel like a lot of the victims,

I've seen them, no matter what the consequences are, not be able to choose, you know, if it's fight or flight, they're choosing flight every time. And it's interesting because for a long time I would get upset and think, you know, why aren't you choosing this? And I'm at the point now where I just kind of look at those people and I don't blame them because I, really don't think, I don't think now that they, that they are even capable of different actions.

That being said, though I don't blame them, you know, I also don't have to deal with it in my life and, you know, be a part of their victimhood. But in my older age now, I'm less judgmental than I probably was in the past. But I think that the, that innate warrior versus victim is is something that's there or it isn't. And I think you can make it better, but I think there's, like everything, nature and nurture, I think there's two parts,

and it all falls a little bit into a split between what came from our, you know, creator or genetics, same thing in my mind or our environment. So this innate warrior or predator or whatever we want to call it dimension to you, what role did that play in taking you to the army? It's funny.

I mean, I have, you know, there's a bunch of pictures of me as a kid wearing, I mean, I'd go to school in full camouflage. You know, that was, I've got asked many, many times on interviews, you know, why did I join the military? Why did I choose to join the military, et cetera? And the answer I always give is that, and I mean this wholeheartedly, I don't honestly feel like it was something I chose. I feel like it was just something I had to do. And I felt that way since I was very young. four or five. And so for me, I used to think that I chose to join or the innate reason. I never really defined it for a long time. And now knowing what I know, I think people that feel like I did,

where it's like not a choice, it's just this inherent need. I think that comes from that innate warrior that is just trying to manifest itself. And it's a core. I think at least for guys or boys, really, I think it changes at puberty. And I think there's like a seed planet. And when puberty happens, that seed sprouts. And then it just like pushes you into that kind of path.

So for me, I was looking to, and I'll be very, you know, honest here. I was a very sensitive, scared, weak, not in a physical sense, just, again, I was bullied all those different things. So I think part of my impetus to join the military too was I was like, I need to harden up. I need to get tougher. I need. And the other part of that is, and I'm very, I truly believe what I'm about to say wholeheartedly is, I think I also was subconsciously looking for that masculine right of passage that no longer exist in modern society. And, you know, again, as I said, my dad was not around.

He was, and to be clear, it's not like he was, you know, whatever. He was working probably 14, 15 hour days on a heavy equipment mechanic truck out in the field. So he was working his butt off to support us. And, you know, and that's admirable. But the negative side effect of that was, I spent. almost no time with my father. So I didn't really learn how to be a man. I, and I'm going to mention this now because it'll definitely come up later. I was searching for a masculine role model. The one that I had

was my grandfather, who was a World War II veteran and a cop for 35 years in Bakersfield. And he died, I think, when I was six. So I only really had probably a good year with him. And then at that point, I was out of male role models, and so I turned to the only ones I could find, which was on TV and movies. You know, I tried to learn how to be a man from Han Solo, and that was my masculine influence. What did your granddad do in the war? He was a CB. Amazing. Navy CB, yeah.

And he, I learned later that there was two types of CBs in World War II. I'm sure it's different now. But in World War II, the two types were, you know, the guys doing the work, you know, building the bridge and whatever that is. And then there was the guys that were essentially protecting them building. They didn't use external units. They did it internally. And so he pretty much was, you know, protecting the guys building with a Tommy gun or, well, an M1 Thompson. Not really a Tommy gun.

That's the gangster version. But he was awesome. I mean, he was a great, he was a great man, very well respected. I got out of the military, came back, and again, became a police officer. He used to take me into the basement and, you know, open up boxes of, you know, bullets and knives and zip guns, you know, brass knuckles that he'd gotten from, you know, criminals on the street. He worked downtown. And, I mean, I remember that very, very clearly, and I was very young. But, yeah, that was difficult.

And I want to say something interesting about that because it kind of blew my mind. Yeah, my grandfather died when I was, you know, whatever six, seven, I forget. And I mean, it was sad when I was a kid, but I didn't really think about it too much after that. And I was in this rehab facility, which we can talk later. And they basically said, you need to write a letter to a male that was very instrumental in you as a young man. And for a minute, I was like, man, I don't know. know who to, I was like, I don't know. And then, oh, my gosh, my grandfather's the only one I can think of. And as I was writing this letter, it hit me on how he was, again, as I've said, my only masculine

role model is a child that I lost him. And I had never really thought about how big that loss was to me until I was writing that letter. And I like got emotional when I, you know, he's been dead for 40 something years. And it really shocked me on how much I had never realized the significance of A, his death and B, that loss, and that I had never really felt the emotion that was present at that time. And so I thought that was pretty interesting. And again, it just goes back to there's so many things in our childhood that we haven't explored. And when you start to explore them, I think most people would be very surprised on what they find. So it's 1998.

Join the Army and you end up in the Ranger Regiment. How did that work? I mean, did you have a contract for that or just walk us through the process and just the culture of the Rangers and how you adapted to it as a young man? Yeah. So for me, you know, when I went in to be talking about, you know, how to be a man and movie influences, I can say definitively that one of my biggest movie influences was First Blood. And maybe the second Rambo, but First Blood was a very, very, very significant influence on my life. And I

went into the Recruiter's Office. I had a Ranger and a Special Forces poster on my wall for, I don't know, probably a decade. And I went into the recruiter and I said, I want to be a Green Ray. And he was like, great. Nope. Ain't going to happen. And I was like, what? You know, I didn't understand contracts, whatever. And then, you know, he educated me. And he's like, we can't give you a contract. You can join and then you can apply after whatever it was, four years, I forget. But, you know, we can't get you a contract that guarantees you to be special forces. And so I just said, okay, great. And I wanted to be, to be clear, I wanted to be a Green Beret because of Ray. Rambo, right? And so I was like, all right, that's, that's fine. I'll figure that out later. What's the

hardest, you know, thing that you can guarantee me a contract to try? I know you can't guarantee me a contract to do it. Just, just guarantee me an opportunity to try and I'll handle the rest. And he said, well, Ranger, Ranger Battalion. And so I, I'll give myself credit now. I don't know, honestly, how that, I don't know how at that age I was aware of there was no internet. I mean, you know, the internet existed, but not even remotely. Like there was no information. There was no Google, right? So it's not like you can look up and learn stuff about, you know, how to join the military, how to get a contract. That wasn't out there. So I was very lucky in that I somehow had the sense that I needed to get a contract to guarantee what I wanted. I knew that. Again, I don't know how. But

So I joined to go to Range of Retain and the, I mean, I really, one thing I loved about Range of Italian, oh, I want to add something here, sorry, just for people because they may not realize the SF 18 X-ray contract or SF, you know, baby program as it's... That hadn't started yet, right? That hadn't started. That started after September 11th. Right. I don't know, like December, November of 2001, I think.

Even then, don't they look for guys who are older with more experience? No, not really. Not really. No, if you can meet the requirements, then they'll sign you up. They kind of see it as the, I think they've learned now. The military, to me, has learned that the 90s mentality was that people needed to be older and more mature. And they learned around 2000, you know, the early 2000s, that age really. really didn't have as much to do with it as maybe they thought in the 90s. So they allowed people

to come to units who were younger than they, I should say special operations units. I'm sorry, younger than maybe they were previously. And so for me, I went to Range of Italian and I mean, I really, I am glad now in hindsight that there was no S-A-18 X-ray program because I think Ranger Battalion is the best place to start. in really special operations. I'm sorry, I should mention this too, because I'm sure it'll be, people will be thinking the question.

And that is, I never wanted to join anything but the army. People are like, why didn't you become a seal? And my answer is always because I don't float. That's a fact. I do not float at all. And therefore,

anything in the water is exceedingly difficult for me. And I don't think only the people, the people that know what it feels like to not float knows how scary the water can be when you do when you're that way. And so Marines, again, just never was really what I wanted to do. You know, Air Force, just the Army was just always what I gravitated towards even as a kid, you know, watching World War II stop and everything. I just was attracted to the Army. And so that's why I chose. The Army, by the way, also has, you know, like four special operations units. It's the only service that has that many special operations units.

So to me, I also felt like, yeah, I'm going to go to Ranger's Bittain, but then, you know, I can try to be a Green Bay brain later. So it just had more options in my mind. That's funny. I have no direct experience, obviously, of the Army or the Rangers. But my mental impression of them somewhat from the movies, I think, as much as anything, is that it's the most marine-like of army units in the sense of young people, high discipline, you know, very regimented elite, you know, light infantry. That's my impression from afar.

No, that that's definitely accurate, you know. And it's changed now from that a little bit. It's more special operations-y and less elite infantry now. but when I was there, it was exactly what you're saying. It was very much elite imagery. And I want to say this because this is something I've never heard to anyone else say, and I wholeheartedly believe that the core to special operations, any special operation, I mean, the reason it's called special operations

is because it's a special mission requirement that falls outside the realm of conventional forces. And so, but it's not something, it's, it's special, but it's not different, if that makes sense. I mean, it's different, but it's not completely different. And so the key to any special operations, mission, unit, etc., is it's just advanced infantry skills. So like CQB, close quarters combat, people like, oh, I want to do it, you know, teach us the ninja a way to do this and the, you know, the, and all these things. And I try and explain it and I go, you don't understand. It's not, all it is, is the way I define close quarters combat or battle is it's just infantry combat under extreme conditions in a confined space. So it's not different

than infantry combat. It's just a different environment, if that makes sense. And so what I love about Ranger Battalion is that because it's an elite infantry unit, you really get indoctrinated into core infantry basics and then you really train those basics. And all an advanced person is is a master of the basics. And so I very much think Range Battalion is such a great place to start because you're forced to start at the beginning. Where were you on 9-11 and how quickly did you understand that your life was about to change pretty dramatically. I was in a course called PLDC, which is primary leadership development course, which was odd.

And the reason I say it was odd, it was because we were in a schoolhouse environment. And so when, you know, September 11th, I remember exactly where I was, they allowed us to have like a radio on in the morning for music or whatever. And so we had just done a run. I was back changing and we heard it on the radio. It was announced. And then, you know, whatever it was 10 minutes later, I don't remember. The second one was announced. And at that time, it was just the words were a plane. There was no, you know, jet, you know, whatever. But somehow, I don't, somehow I knew the second one, as soon as I heard it, I just remember thinking,

that's that's not good you know what i mean that's deliberate you know the first one was like oh wow and then the second one i was like okay that's deliberate i didn't know the scale of it obviously and then for the rest of that day and even probably week you know we didn't have tv we didn't have you know cell phones or anything so they really hid it from us on what was going on i remember seeing the towers fall in the chow hall and seeing like all the instructors watch watching it, but we weren't allowed to. And so I remember, like, seeing it kind of in a background through three rooms and hearing people, you know, like making a lot of noise.

So it was very weird, if that makes sense, because it was kind of, we were kind of sheltered from it. But I knew that, I knew that we were, something was happening. I knew that we were going to deploy. And at that point, honestly, for the rest of that course, which was probably, two or three weeks, I just remember thinking like they're going to pull us out of this course any minute, right? And I tell people that you weren't around during, in the military, I should say, it's impossible for me to explain the difference between the military pre-9-11 and post-9-11.

It's two different organizations. And it really things took a real turn. And there was this palatable feeling of, and I'm going to say it, and at least where I was in Ranger Battalion, and no, you know, obviously 9-11 was an unimaginable tragedy and just a horrible event in our country's history. But, you know, for the people in Ranger Battalion that I was in, there was definitely this excitement after it happened that, hey, we're going to go do something about it. You know, that that was a very you could feel it it was an energy of of just wanting to go do something and and everyone felt that way yeah you know with all the seriousness that i'm sure you also felt about it but to be a young man in that unit at that moment you must sort of feel like i've i've timed it perfectly

like there's nowhere i would imagine one would feel at that moment there's nowhere else i'd rather me. Yeah, I mean, I, so, so actually to your point, why'd you brought that up? To your point, I was going to get out of the military, I think, within, I think, so that was September. I was supposed to get out in like February, I think of the next year. And they were, you know, pushing me on re-enlistment as they do. And, you know, I'd been training and I had fun for four years, but, you know, it was like being on a a pro football team and just scrimaging. At a certain point, you want to play a game. That's just how we are. And so when September 11th happened, I remembered when I got out of that course, I went to the, you know, if I had a meeting with the recruiter or whatever, the internal one at the unit. And I said,

hey, like, if we deploy, once we get orders to deploy, I'll re-in-list for six years. I'm like, if, you know, if we don't, I'm going to get out because I don't. I don't. don't want to continue to play, you know, practice. And when we eventually did get orders to Afghanistan, I re-enlisted for six years because that was, you know, that was what I wanted to do. And again, I'm going to be very clear. I know for most people, it would sound weird to want to go to war. I know that sounds strange, but I can say for myself and for a lot of people I know, you know, we wanted to go to war. I was, I was, I wanted to go to, that's why I joined.

There was no wars at that time, but I was, as bad as it is, I was hopeful to get that opportunity to go. And even people, and over, not to get too far ahead, but even with, you know, getting hurt the way I did and getting medically retired, I wouldn't change anything. I would do the exact same thing all over again. I don't regret what I did at all. Tell us, about Afghanistan as it looked to a young man.

Have you must have been what, like 22 or something like that at this point? Yeah, I think 22. About that. Maybe 23. I'm not exactly sure. But the young man, first time in combat, just what did this place seem like to you? And tell us a bit about the mission your unit had as well. Yeah.

So for me, it, I remember coming into Kandahar, the first place we flew into. and it looked like, and I'm going to say this, I don't mean the environment, obviously, the environment or night and day, but it looked like Vietnam in the sense of the, you know, sandbags and what the air base look like, you know, and what the bases look like. It looked like Vietnam, you know, looked like a war zone that had just started. I mean, things, there was, at that time, when I went to Afghanistan at that time, there was no, what's it called? Power. There was, or electricity, there was no electricity in Kabul at that time. Or I shouldn't say it was no electricity. There was no electricity across Kabul. It was the whole city didn't have electricity. Parts of it did. And

there was just no infrastructure of any kind. I mean, there was places that I went in Afghanistan that, you know, there was no difference between the day I was. there and what would have existed in biblical times. I mean, it was that little infrastructure, technology, et cetera. So it was pretty interesting going there. It was definitely, you made it it work. You know what I mean? There was not a lot of, when I heard that Afghanistan, that like the airbases got like a Burger King and a basket rod, that blew my mind apart. That was not the Afghanistan that I was in. Yeah, I saw Canada Airfield on the way out in 2010.

Yeah. Yeah, paved roads and war. I was only there for one night. I will say Helmand in 2010 still mostly did not have electricity. So progress. Yeah, that makes sense. But yeah, but it was just, it was crazy how little infrastructure they had there. So that was pretty, pretty wild.

That was my kind of first thoughts about it. And you guys were out, if I had my notes correct here, you were out, this was not what would later become the norm of sort of counterinsurgency stuff. You were out on the Pakistani frontier. Is that right? And at this point, you were a sniper. Yeah. So tell us about operating at this stage. Yeah.

So at this point, I was our initial mission. So we got there as soon as Anaconda ended. And we actually rotated out very, as a much longer story that I will tell now because we don't have time. But we rotated with the first Ranger Battalion who had just had Roberts Ridge happen. And that was just. very surreal, you know. We were coming in all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and they were leaving just, you know, they had lost multiple guys and they were leaving just like, let's just get the hell out of here. You know, they were not. It was not a good experience with what had happened to them.

Yeah. Our first mission when we got there was QRF based out of Kandahar, you know, reacting, which is what First Battalion's mission was. And we were there. We did that only for, I think, two, three weeks max. and then because Anaconda had happened, Anaconda pushed all the insurgents or the Taliban, really, to, you know, into Pakistan or along the Pakistani border, right? So they go back and forth. And so at that time, we pushed out to the Pakistani border,

which is really where the, you know, the fight happened for the next, you know, two decades. And so a lot of the outstations, you know, we built a, or started building and created all the initial, you know, the J-bad, Assadabad, Shkin, where I was, we built all those. And then we started doing missions around the Pakistani border. Again, from the perspective of a young man kind of encountering things for the first time, tell me about your first time in combat. Yeah.

The first one I remember I put in the book, which is, I was just talking to my buddy that was there with me. We're, you know, here traveling together. So I was a sniper team leader. He was a sniper team leader. But we had been a sniper team together. And then we took our own teams. And we were just talking about it yesterday, or two days ago. And the first mission I very clearly remember, we were, you know, because we're a sniper team,

we're going out for like three and four days depending and doing missions around our around the Pakistani border, around outside of our fire base on foot. And so I don't think, I don't think they would do that now. There's no way they'd kick, you know, four rangers, you know, outside the wire with, you know,

we had a little support, but there's just way too dangerous now. I don't think it would happen. But at the time, you know, they let us do our thing. And so I remember, going on our first mission, I remember coming across a guy that had a gun. It was the first guy we had encountered with a gun. And his dog started barking. So we're crossing in a field. It was at night. And this dog starts barking. And then the next thing we know, we see this guy

come out of a, like a little building. It definitely wasn't a house. And it comes out. He's got a gun in his hand. And it's night. And it was pretty dark. We we left on a no moon. And so it was pretty dark. And we immediately lit him up with, you know, whatever, five lasers, whatever it was. And we were in this, you know, Mexican standoff for, I don't know, probably 30 seconds. I don't remember. By the rules of engagement, we could have shot him. You know, he was armed. He was kind of had it, you know, not really pointed at us more at a low ready, not an official one. And technically, we, you know, we could have shot him. But we just kind of stayed here in this Mexican standoff.

And me and my buddy were talking about the other day. We just kind of both got this sense that, you know, one of the things I learned over time is just because someone doesn't have a gun doesn't mean they aren't a threat. And just because someone does have a gun doesn't mean they are a threat. It's not the weapon. It's not the gun. It's the mind is the weapon.

And the intent is the critical aspect. And so both of us just kind of got the sense that this wasn't a guy coming out to shoot Americans. This was a guy that hurt his dog barking, grabbed a gun, you know, and came out to see what it was. And so we both almost at the same time just turned our lasers off. And the guy, to this day, I don't think he knew exactly what happened, but I think he got the sense of like, I'm just going to go back inside. And nothing was said, but he eventually went back inside. And we continued on our way. And that was the, I remember that very clearly,

because what it signified was that what I just said is you can't, when you're dealing with an insert, when you're dealing with an enemy that doesn't wear a uniform, you can't just, you know, you can't just shoot everyone with a gun. You can't just treat everyone without a gun like they're not threat. It was a realization that this war and further wars were going to be a lot more complicated than, you know, maybe, you know, World War II or the Korean War. And that was what I took away from that. Well, that's a lot of maturity and a cool head for, you know, a 22-year-old team leader,

kind of in one, if not his first time, one of his very early times in genuine danger. For me, I look at it as a person who is not comfortable in that kind of chaos. is going to possibly, you know, they could have, you know, taken a life unnecessarily if they're feeling fear in that environment. Because I grew up in that environment, I was very comfortable. You know, if he, as soon as, you know, if he would have raised the gun, we would have shot her, you know. But I was very comfortable in that chaos of what do I do because I grew up that way. So for me, it didn't feel, I didn't feel any, the chaos didn't elicit fear. The chaos was comfortable because, again, that was my homeostasis.

So obviously, we could keep talking about Afghanistan, but I want to make sure we get to Iraq and everything that follows. And at some point in here, and I'm a little unclear on the timing, you move on from the Rangers to this Tier 1 unit. Full credit to this unit, unlike, and I have listeners in the Navy's equivalent. of this unit, so I want to be delicate how I phrase this. But I feel like if I want to learn about the inner workings of the Navy's version of this unit, a lot of podcasts, a lot of books, a lot of things I can go to. And in the Army, it's a little bit more opaque. So, you know, from what you can say, tell us how you made the movie.

I mean, did you get tapped on the shoulder? Did you apply? Like, how did you get into this line of work? Yeah, so I think I mentioned this in the book. But when I was in Afghanistan, there was a team from that unit, were in the outstation that we were staying at. And they, because Afghanistan was obviously, you know, long distances, that team didn't have, they were kind of broken up.

And so they didn't have a sniper team with them. So they augmented with my team. They brought me and my team along on several of their missions. After working with them on that, I was like, all right, I want to go there. And so as soon as I got back from that deployment, I put in a packet to request permission to go try to go to the selection course. And it just, it was all based on, I mean, I had heard rumblings, you know, I knew of that that place, you know, was around. But it wasn't until I worked with them directly that I was just like, all right, that's what I want to do. and I was very lucky that, you know, I put in a packet and I got approved.

I went to the course and, you know, luckily I made it on my first try, which was I was not expecting. I was not, I was fully expecting to have to go back and I was lucky enough to not have to. And so, luck plays a huge factor in any course that you go through. And that's something that, you know, I know, I know plenty of. the guys that were just absolute studs that didn't make it because of just, you know, crazy stuff. You know, I remember falling down one time going down a pretty steep hill. I remember falling down, sliding actually, and landing kind of on my side. And the, there was a root, and I mean a like a big root that was sharp.

And it penetrated by kidney pad on my, on my rock. but had it just was, you know, an inch and a half higher, it would have bit went over my kidney pad. And it would have freaking gourd me. There's no question about it. I mean, it was brutal. And I just remember thinking like, well, you know, what are the odds? Like luck is a huge, you know, it was lucky that I hit my, destroyed my kidney pad on my rucksack. But like, luck's a huge factor. And that's something that you have to take into consideration. So I was very lucky to, to be able to, you know, accomplish the courses I did, you know, without having to go back. Yeah, my experience, to be clear, at a less competitive level, was that successful candidates

in sort of any kind of selective military training, they tend to have luck for sure. And then there's a quality of, I don't want to call it hardness exactly, but uninjurability. And that overstates it because obviously everybody's injurable. But, you know, I knew very, I knew much better athletes than me who just, they were, they were high performance machines, but they were also kind of high strong as bodies, you know, like conditions had to be right for them to perform every time. And yeah, I don't know if that makes sense to you. No, no, it does. I mean, I would agree with that. It's like a 1911 pistol, you know, a 1911 pistol is a great pistol. It's a very high performance, you know, a handmade matched, you know, 1911. 11 is going to be a great gun, but you better keep it clean.

You better maintain it. If not, it's going to stop shooting. Whereas a Glock, you know, definitely not nearly as high performance, but it'll shoot pretty much no matter what you do. Yep. Right. And so I think that's kind of the example. And I definitely would agree with that.

And I was, I mean, I was kind of, I mean, I've had plenty of people telling me that, you know, you're pretty clumsy. And it's like I am to a degree. It's kind of strange. But really a lot of people, it doesn't make sense. Like I get hurt a lot, but not in a way that stops me. If that makes sense. But yeah, it's just, yes, it's a strange dichotomy.

So again, you're not going to be able to go into granular detail here. But like, what are the instructors looking for in the candidates in this selection? Like, what are the qualities of people that make it through? nothing they're looking for nothing the instructors don't know what the requirements are can you say more so no one knows i don't know you know i i don't know in fact me and my buddy were talking about the other day he's been there for 21 years he doesn't know it's the best kept secret in probably not just the military probably the u.s government but no one knows no one knows what the standard is and that's what makes it difficult.

Can I ask just an obvious stupid question, which is how can the instructors not know? Because they're just taking the information, but they don't know what any of it means. I see. So there is a board somewhere that does know, and they are not. Yes, they are not letting on. It's one person apparently that knows, and that's it. And that may sound crazy, but it's true. One more question about the pipeline, and then we'll go to Iraq.

you're through, you're selected, and you're into the training pipeline. You said earlier about the Rangers that it's all just, you know, basically advanced levels of infantry skills. Does that principle hold true here? Are there new layers and dimensions that you think wouldn't fall into that category? No, it's still just advanced infantry skills. And I mean, granted, it very, it's very, very very important. It's no doubt about it. But the, a true professional and expert is just a master of the basics. because every complex thing is really just complex, compounded, stacked basics. And that organization does a phenomenal job

of essentially layering, they take you back to the basics and they make you perfect them to where they're done on a complete unconscious automatic level. And I would say a true pro is someone who's doing the basics, perfectly without thinking about them. They're just happening, which allows their brains to focus on, you know, complex tactics,

things like that. But all the physical things are just happening without any mental input, really. So you're through, you're trained, you join a unit. I suppose it's a squadron. And then a rack. This is 04, right? What do your ambitions do you have in 04? That deployment was in, well, not the whole thing, but a good portion of it was I spent in Fallujah,

and, you know, Fallujah in 2004. So I worked with the Marine Corps quite a bit on that deployment. And it was just a, it's hard to explain, but Fallujah in 2004 was just a, it was just a wild place. There was, you know, you'd have Spector gunship just at night. It was just flying and, you know, just firing. all night long. We would watch it from the rooftop and it would just circle and just nuke stuff all night. And, you know, we were doing some, you know, we were doing some direct action missions, but it was for me, you know, for me as a kid who grew up on movies,

being there was like, there's not a lot of stuff in even Ranger Battalion where you're like, I mean, there's a lot of cool stuff. But there's not a ton of time. But there's not a ton of time. where you're like, oh, man, this is movie cool. Like, most things aren't movie cool. Yeah. And I think very much in film, you know, I'm always thinking, you know, of quotes and just, I think in film, in scenes. And there, almost every day, there was something or multiple things where I'd be like,

this is movie cool. And so that was pretty awesome. I mean, I just was, it was a dream come true. It's the best way I could say. It was a dream come true. It was like, you know, your dream or dreams being manifested into your reality. From either that deployment or the one that followed, and we'll get to your injury here in a minute, and again, to the extent you can say, like, what's an episode that you participated in of which you were most proud?

Not necessarily because it was cinematic, but because it was a real contribution. I don't know. I'd have to think about that. There was several, but there was also several that I missed, you know. There's a very famous, a very famous hostage rescue mission, very famous that I, or not me, that my whole team missed because we were in Fallujah. I was not happy about it. It is what it is, you know, but I mean, there's just a lot of things.

The frustrating thing is that you don't choose, you know, the missions that happen, you don't choose them. So there's, you know, some that I. I was happy to be on and I've had friends go, oh, man, I wish I would have been able to do that. And there's many more where I'm like, dude, I, you know, I wish I would have been there on that deployment. I would have wished I would have been, you know, on your rotation or whatever. It's, you don't choose the missions and the environment.

So it's a, I mean, look, Fallujah was an interesting, I mean, it was wild to see. It was like World War II, you know. Was this, my apologies. I should do this, but was this the April version or the November version or, or, or No, this was like, I don't know, two months. I forget the exact time, but it was, it was not long after, you know, Faluja was surrounded and, you know, by the Marine Corps. Yeah.

Actually, I think it was surrounded by the Army and then the Marine Corps took it over. I forget exactly. But it was just, it was, it was, it was interesting to see. It was, I was lucky to be able to see what a big war look like, you know, calling, you know, F-18s, calling Cass, you know, in a city. That was crazy, you know. You couldn't do that in Baghdad, no way. You know, watching tanks fire, you know, watching Cobra gunships come in and unload. It was just, you know, it was a wild. Growing up, watching World War II footage, it felt like World War II, you know, versus doing missions, you know,

by myself, or not by myself, but with a team in Afghanistan, a small team, sniper missions, or doing, you know, assault hits were cool and they're awesome. but seeing that scale of war was really interesting and eye-opening for me. And what was, I mean, you saw the Taliban in Afghanistan, and then you have different varieties of Iraqi insurgents. You know, what was the, we talk a lot about infantry skills. What was the quality, as it were, of the Iraqi insurgents that you faced? Were there any that were particularly concerned?

Any guy with a gun can be concerning if he gets lucky. But, you know, what was the nature of the enemy? I think the one quality that they had that was dangerous wasn't skill because they didn't definitely have that. But the quality that they did have that that was dangerous was a complete and total lack of regard for their own preservation. That was, that's tough. You know, when a person doesn't care if they die or not, that's, that's dangerous. And so that, or even worse, or maybe not worse, but along the same lines, you know, it's the same thing where, you know, you see a guy, or there's two guys, let's just say. And, you know, one of them is shot and goes down.

And the other dude doesn't even have a look at him. Doesn't even act like it just happened. They just keep coming like, like nothing. That was, that was wild to see. And that's just not something that we really have, you know, an equivalent for in Western society. Tell us about Baghdad and Sard City and the mission you were on when you were hurt. Yeah, so Sauter City, for those that don't know, is literally South Central Baghdad. Everywhere's got a South Central, right?

Sotr City was just a bad neighborhood. You know, Baghdad's huge. And Sauter City was a bad neighborhood in, or, you know, in, you know, in, inside Baghdad. And so it was just, and I say that both on the people that were there, I think it was a predominantly Sunni neighborhood from what I remember, and which was kind of loyal to Saddam. And in addition to that, it was just kind of a shanty town, but it wasn't a shanty town, but it was just a, you know, Baghdad specifically has pretty clear-cut neighborhoods. It's very, you know, cookie cutter the way the neighborhoods are but solder city the houses are just kind of in ran kind of

randomly in no particular order the streets aren't clear cut it's mostly dirt or or if it rains mud and it's just a difficult place to maneuver it would be like the somalia of bagdad if that makes sense and so yeah that mission we were going off or going for a very important person. And, you know, it was just one of those nights where that had been a very busy deployment. And we didn't have, I think maybe we had one night off from what I remember, one or two. And it was just a very busy time. And we were going after, like I said, a very important person. And it was just one of those missions where things didn't happen the way they would normally happen for a variety of reasons. And what that led to was we ended up hitting a house and that house, I won't go into the specifics of why and what was exactly going on.

But we had a house and we were there for, I don't know, maybe 30 minutes. And then for various reasons, we kind of went out of that house and started to go, oh, no, I think it's this other house over here, which was, I couldn't, I have no idea. I'm assuming it was like 150 yards away, but I don't remember. It's been too long now. And then we started going towards that house. And what we didn't know was that when we were in the other house, that house, which it was the whole time, obviously heard us assault the other house, woke everyone up, you know, got on vest, prep grenades, you know, locked and loaded. So they were ready to go. So we really ended up walking into an ambush at that. that next house and that led to you know a massive firefight both outside the house and inside

the house I was inside the house by that time multiple seals that we were with were shot on the front side of the house and then the guy right next to me was shot inside the house eventually and we cleared part of it you know it was chaos as I said earlier CQB it's infantry skills but it's you know, when you're, when someone's got, you know, a couple 8Ks, you know, in a hallway or in that confined of a space, you know, it's wild. That's a, you know, you're out of a 20-foot fight with machine guns. You know, it's, I don't think most people, when you see a movie, movies do a real bad job in my mind of conveying the force that you feel. Like just that can, forget about bullets. Just that can,

concussion of, you know, a 30-round AK mag, you know, from 10, 15 feet away is crazy intense, even if you hit with no bullets. And the force of that is pretty wild. And so what eventually happened was we got kind of trapped in the hallway, or not trapped, but stuck because it was just a bad tactical situation. You know, sometimes, sometimes the terrain makes it to where, you know, you just don't have a lot of options. And that was the position we were in. And then all of a sudden, I was, you know, flying through the air. I either hit the ceiling, the wall.

I don't know. I remember being blown into something. And I came back down on my arm, breaking it, which is kind of funny if you think about it. The doctors told me later, like, oh, this wasn't from the explosion. You actually fell on it and broke it here. I'm like, oh, great. It's clumsiness. Bonus.

Yeah, bonus, right. I mean, honestly, it really didn't matter at that point. But, and it blew, for me, it blew my night vision goggles off. It pretty much really messed up my helmet, blew off my nods, my nods mouth, and took a good chunk out of my helmet. And then obviously, it, you know, severed quite a bit of my, or not severed. It blew a good portion of my right arm off. It was also hanging by just, I wish I had a photo of what it looked like because it was just hanging on by, you know, skin, really. And so that happened and I immediately knew, this is not good.

I knew I had an arterial bleed once I had looked at it. I knew that the arm was pretty much, I mean, it was mangled, you know. And so I was very aware that I had an arterial bleed. bleed and that if I didn't get, you know, immediate medical attention, you know, I knew that I had probably, I mean, at max, you know, under, under two minutes, probably under a minute with arterial bleed, but worst case, two minutes, I knew that it was, it was serious. And actually probably a minute, really, before I would have lost the ability to do something about it. And so, luckily for me, me, you know, I got myself out of the house. And I was, I was out of it. I was like a zombie because I think

because of the head injury, I was just kind of everything was cloudy and I just, I wasn't thinking straight. It was very surreal. It was like a dream. I don't know. It was odd. And luckily I got out of the house. There was a wall that I had popped going in. That wasn't happening now. So I just kind of put my back to the wall and sat down. Struggled to get my tourniquet because I was right-handed and I had it on my right side. Just as luck would have it. I also had my morphine in my right pocket. That was gone.

And so things were not good and luckily for me. And I want to say this right now because it's not in the book and it's just the craziest thing ever. So what are the odds of this? So the first guy that gets to me and the guy who puts. my tourniquet on and saves my life, that guy was the exact same guy who was the team leader that I did the missions with in Afghanistan as a ranger. No kidding. What are the odds of that?

Right. And guy from the story a few minutes ago. Yep. Yep. That team leader, not my buddy was not the guy that I was a sniper team with, but the guy that was the leader of that unit. I see. I see.

At that time, yeah. And so, I mean, just wild, right? And so I luckily got, you know, again, he very clearly saved my life. And more people did, the medic that got to me, but the initial person that really stopped the bleeding was him. And it took a while. There was multiple casualties in addition to myself. And it took, you know, quite a bit, still have to secure the target, etc.

So I don't think I evacked for at least 20 minutes. It felt like forever. And then I finally got evacked to the cache in Baghdad where I underwent surgery, obviously. And then very quickly, I mean, I was only there for, I think, 12 hours max. And then I was flown to Blod and then Blod to Germany. And then eventually Germany to Walter Reed and then Walter Reed to the Bragg. where I stayed for a while. At numerous points in your account just now, you said it, you know, it exploded.

Did you find out at the time or after the fact what it was? No, it took, yeah, it was just, it was an explosion inside the house. And, you know, there was a lot of, I mean, it wasn't even something that I was aware of for months, you know, because it didn't matter, you know, to me. But yeah, no, it was, it was a very interesting, you know, war is chaos. It's just a chaotic environment. you know, you're not able to, you don't control anything in that environment. And that's something I would say everyone has to learn about war. It's you don't have control.

It's absolute chaos. And if you try and control the chaos, you're going to be, it's not going to work. And you're going to spend a lot of time and mental energy trying to make sense of something that you can't make sense. There is no justice in war. There's no things don't, you know, the, the bad guys don't always get killed, you know, the, it's just, it'll drive you crazy if you try and, you know, put your rules or morality or what you think should happen in that environment, it'll drive you crazy. So when I talk to veterans who, you know, experience things in that environment, I just try and, teach them to let go because it's it's not you know what you want it to be it's not going to it's

not going to bend to it yeah you were talking about how you you think in terms of movies and scenes i think everyone you know roughly our age does that and one thing i i think movies get even good war movies don't get right about war in a way because they can't is they they can't capture the the the chaos as you put it or just the way in which the battlefield is just very hard to understand even when you're highly trained and highly aware and in a position to understand it as well as anyone like if you take black hawk down it's a very entertaining good movie about the kind of world that you're operating in here in real life you know what do you see before you know an r pg hits a truck well you see a shot of a of a guy on the roof shooting the r pg but if you're

the kid driving the truck all you see is boom and that's that's that's that's the real reality but audiences in the movie theater would revolt they would walk out if you tried to make a movie that actually portrayed the level of like inscrutability or indecipherability that it can often feel like. Yeah, well, it's it's because in a movie or any entertainment, it's storytelling. And, you know, you have to show cause and effect. You know, you have to tell the story. And so I, you know, to your point, I get it. You know, you want to see the kid doing the thing so that you know what the effect is.

but to your point, that's an absolutely good point, is that that's not how it works. It's like a sniper shot. And actually, I do think, to be fair, I do think Full Metal Jacket, which is one of my favorite war movies, I do think Full Metal Jacket did a great job with the sniper scene

because they don't know where she is at all, right? And I think that is one of the best war scenes because they played it so accurately in that the whole scene revolves around. They have no idea, you know, where the shooter is. And they don't play it. They play it almost in real time of them trying to figure it out. And I think that was done offhand. I think that's one of the better ones that I can think of,

to your point of showing war for what it really is. So you're back in the United States, back in North Carolina. and, you know, this phase, this, what comes next is obviously a major focus of your work now and helping others who have been in related situations. You know, there's a miracle of modern military medicine, which, which, you know, brings you as far, I guess, is almost possible to bring somebody after they've physically been through what you've been through. But then I want to say this just because you, you just mentioned it, and you reminded me of this. I had the doctors tell me, so when I went under, they told me they were going to cut my alarm off.

or before I went under, whatever. And I was on so many drugs at the time. I was like, whatever, dude, do it on you want. Have off my legs too. I don't care. But the next morning, and I was still pretty out of it, but I remember very clearly the doctor saying, the only reason that your arm was saved

was because we have done so many extremity surgeries around Baghdad in the last year. He was like, we've, he's like, if this, would have happened a year and a half ago, we would have cut your arm off, not even tried to save it. Yeah. It's just we've learned a lot of things and we're able to do a lot of things now because of all the, you know, explosions that we couldn't do before. So to your point, it only was saved because of the advances there.

So you have like that, you know, that incredible state of the art ability that saves you and your arm on the one hand. on the other hand you have just the nature of the thing itself you know you end up on a lot of pain medication which is understandable and then has predictable effects you know ultimately through a you know a follow-up procedure it becomes clear that you're as a consequence of follow-up procedure you're not going to be able to operate at the same level you had operated before so all of a sudden i think you as you put it in the book it's like without ceremony that that chapter of your life comes to a conclusion and you got to figure out life as you're as you as you're as you're as you're as you're

as sort of your principal, professional purpose, maybe just your purpose has been removed, and your body's a lot different than it was, and you're struggling with things you weren't before. Talk to us about that and talk to us about what you learned. Yeah, I mean, what I learned was when your identity is wrapped around what you do, who do you become when you can no longer do that? And that was a real, obviously, it's easy for me to,

talk about in hindsight. But at the time, I was, the word that I, that is just the best word, period, is I was just lost. You know, I was lost. I was lost in my identity. I didn't know who I was without what I did. I didn't know what my value was without that job. I didn't know what my purpose was without that job. I didn't know where my community was without that job. Everything that I associate, Everything that made me confident and comfortable and happy even was now gone. And I had no idea to how to essentially get them again. I didn't even know, you know, identity, purpose, value, community. I mean, that's a lot to try.

And again, I want to be very clear. Again, I want to double doubt this. It's easy for me to look back and go, identity, purpose, value. value community. I didn't know what the loss was at that time. I just know it. I just, I didn't know what the loss was. I just knew that I was lost. I'm very proud of that right there. Chuck that up. I'll let me quote myself on that later. But yeah, I didn't know, I didn't know what all the losses were. You know, I couldn't even characterize them or identify them at the time. I just knew I was miserable, right? And I want to say that, or I want to say this to anyone listening maybe right now

or watching, if you feel lost and you feel like, oh, my gosh, everything's just messed up and you don't really know where to begin, the reality is there are very specific issues and there's very specific losses and there's very specific probably things that you're grieving in your life, but they do have a name. They are quantifiable. And once you can begin to identify, you can't fix something that you can't identify. And so hopefully, kind of my intent, obviously, with the book, was putting it out there to try and give people the language to identify the different factors that are really coming together and creating this juggernaut of just misery. And again, though, you can't fix it until you know what you need to fix. And so for me, I didn't know what I didn't know at that time.

I just knew that I was so lost that I didn't know even which way was up. And it took me years to slowly figure out and identify what those losses were. I want to ask you about this concept of LTS that you talk about is I liked it a lot. I think I had independently come to some notion very similar to it, but without really thinking it through thinking about what the details should mean. And I certainly didn't come up with this, this catchy name. But, you know, I'll be honest. I, you know, you spend some time in the military.

You come across people who, I mean, first of all, post-traumatic stress, just as post-just, you know, stress that you get after being through crazy stuff. It's normal, near universal, like, pretty common thing. There's PTSD, which is its own thing. Then there's certainly cases, at least in my experience, with what I've witnessed of people who, you know, our disability system definitely incentivized. as you. Oh, 100. To be a victim, and there are people who fall a of that. But then there's, this is where I think is so brilliant about your

framing of this. There's a kind of person who I know, and I have friends like this, who they don't have PTSD in the sense, they may be diagnosed with it or they may think they have, but they don't have it in the sense of like they're up at night, like reliving what it was like to fight Charlie in the jungle, you know, not to be flipping, but you know what I mean. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Tell us about, I thought you just, You nailed it. What is LTSD and how do you think it applies to all this?

Well, the first thing I want to say is to your point that you said, which is, I think all of us have figured out the truth of LTSD. We just, you know, like you, you maybe didn't name it and you didn't, but you knew the truth of, you know, you understood it generally. you just didn't give it a name and, you know, spend a ton of time, you know, writing a book around it. I can say what I can say about this because I've spent so much time once I had felt like I got that truth, then I spent a lot of time to develop it and really be able to explain it. So for me, I feel like when I bring it up to people, the reaction I have from most people is they go, yes, that makes sense to me. I felt it for a long time. I knew, you know, I, I feel, you know, I knew kind of the truth of what I felt and how I saw it in others, but again, I didn't give it a name

and I didn't really, you know, go so deep in defining it. So LTSD for me, everyone was saying all the mental health professionals, all the health professionals, you have PTSD. And I was like, all right, what's PTSD mean? And they're like this. And I heard it. And obviously I knew what PTSD was. I mean, again, I watch First Blood a million times. And so they're like, this is what it is clinically. And I heard it and I go, yep, that's not what I have. And they're like, I think it is. I'm like, no, I don't think it is.

And the whole point that I got to is it's like, you keep telling me, you keep trying to make me fit what I fill into this box that you've created. And what I'm telling you is it does. doesn't fit. It's not, it just, there's a bunch of pieces that don't go together. And finally I got to the point where I was just like, you know what? And yeah, I was kind of an asshole here. But I said, they kept saying that, oh, you have PTSD and, you know, denial. You're in PTSD denial, whatever. And I finally said, all right, look, do you have PTSD or have you ever had PTSD? And it was a woman therapist at the time and she said no so then i said well then what the hell do you know about it if you've

never had it and don't have it now what do you really know other than what you've read and the theory and what you think but by your own admission you don't have any experience in it and yet you're telling me i do and then on the same note you're telling me that i don't know more about it than you do that you know more about it than me and so i was just like you you're trying to make me put my feelings into this diagnosis and they don't go. And so I'm going to figure out a diagnosis, for lack of a better term, that fits the way I feel, not try and make how I feel fit into your diagnosis that you don't even know about experientially. So I walked out of there and I never went back. I never went back to the VA. I never went back to really that whole kind of normal mechanism of

mental health. And I spent a lot of time. And there was an event that happened, which I won't go into because I detail it in the book. But something happened where my behavior was so odd that I, it was so odd that I just went, all right, there's something here and I'm going to figure it out. And the conclusion I came up with was LTSD. And the reason LTSD exists is because post-traumatic stress, Think of the first word of post-traumatic stress. The first word is post. You cannot have post-traumatic stress disorder unless you have pre-traumatic stress non-disorder, right?

So you have to have a safe, normal, non-chaotic baseline prior to the introduction of traumatic stress to have post-traumatic stress. So what I realized over time is, and when I came up with LTSD, so LTSD, I'll explain what it is and then I'll go backwards. LTSD is lack of traumatic stress disorder. And what that means is when traumatic stress or chaos is in the environment, I'm calm. I'm chill as a cucumber. However, when the environment is calm and chill, my brain is chaotic. And the way I calm myself is by creating chaos back into the environment, I take myself back to my

homeostasis, which is chaotic environment, calm. If the environment's calm, I create chaos. Now once the chaos is back in the environment, I become calm again. And that's lack of traumatic stress disorder, which means I need traumatic stress in the environment to be calm. For years and years, actually over a decade, sadly. I thought that I knew the truth of that and I had told hundreds of people and they all went, yes, that tracks with how I feel. However, I made the mistake of thinking that came from, and I didn't know exactly, but I was like, oh, it starts in military training. Maybe it starts in combat. Maybe, you know, I didn't know. I never really pinpointed it. I just knew it was somewhere along our military journey. And at the time, I figured where it started was different

for different people in their journey, right? And it wasn't until I went to rehab. I went to Warrior's Heart, which is started by Tom Spooner and a couple other people at a rehab facility for veterans and first responders. It's a great organization. And Tom's a great, great dude. And it wasn't until I was there. And I was there with like 160 people that rotated through, I forget. and every single one of us there had relatively the exact same childhood story, almost the exact same story. The beats were the same, you know, the details were different, but the overall beats were the same, as we'd say in Hollywood. And I remember talking, and you know, you talk to people quite a bit while you're there. And I just started to figure this out. And I was like, wait a minute, why aren't we talking

about this. We all have the same childhood story that that cannot be, that cannot be coincidental. And at that warrior's heart, it was just, it clicked. And I'm like, oh my gosh, I've been wrong for over a decade. LTSD doesn't start in the military. It starts in childhood. And that's where my whole paradigm of everything shifted. And really where the book Fortune Chaos came from was my realization. That's what the title means, is that this addiction to chaos that we have comes from a childhood where our environment is chaotic so constantly that essentially our brains are rewired to be calm in chaos. Why? Because we have to survive. And when the environment is consistently chaotic, your brain has to wire itself to basically survive.

and be calm in that, because if it didn't, you would go crazy. And that sets us up for an adult life where we are calm when the environment is crazy. Conversely, we are crazy when the environment is calm. Tyler, thanks for what you do. Thanks for writing this book, which is called Forged in Chaos, a Warrior's Origin Story.

And thanks for taking all this time with us on the show. It was an amazing conversation. My pleasure, man, anytime. Thank you so much. This is a nebulous media production. Find us wherever you get your podcasts.