The Unspoken Trauma: Military Identity, the Invisible Cost of Transition, and What It Takes to Come Home to Yourself
Note: This episode discusses veteran mental health and the experience of suicidal ideation during a period of transition. Garrett speaks about this as part of his recovery and advocacy work. If you or a veteran you know is struggling, the Veterans Crisis Line is available 24/7 — call or text 988, then press 1.
Nobody Briefed Me on What Comes Next
Garrett Biss flew for the US Marine Corps. He served. He led. And in 2015, when that identity ended, no one told him what to expect from the other side — the anxiety, the displacement, the void where connection, meaning, and identity had been. He found his way through. Now he's making sure no veteran has to figure out the unspoken part alone.
In this episode of Who We Become — Life Beyond Change, Amanda Lentz sits down with Garrett Biss — retired Marine Corps captain, TEDx speaker, award-winning author, and founder of Valiant Path — for a conversation about the invisible crisis that follows military transition, and the work he's built to address it.
Garrett's TEDx talk is called The Unspoken Trauma. It's unspoken not because it isn't real, but because no one gave veterans the language for it.
Identity Built in a Container
Garrett points out something that shapes everything that follows: most people join the military between 18 and 22 — exactly the window during which the prefrontal cortex is still developing, when identity is being formed, when assumptions about how the world works are being set. The military is a highly specific container for all of that development.
This isn't inherently a problem. But it sets up a particular kind of disruption when that container is removed.
"It's like you spent all of your life learning the rules of one sport, and now you're dropped in a different athletic field trying to figure out: what's going on here? What are the rules? How do we score? What's this game we're playing?"
— Garrett BissGarrett calls it a secondary adolescence — the disorientation of an 18-year-old entering a new world, but arriving at 35 or 45, when nobody expects it and no one around you quite understands why the adjustment is so significant.
The Transition He Wasn't Prepared For
Garrett applied for early retirement in 2015 when a short-term program opened as major war efforts were scaling back. He thought it sounded like a good opportunity. He had eight months of active duty remaining after the approval. The concern started bubbling up during those months — not dramatically, but persistently. He knew his value inside the military. He didn't know if any of it translated.
When he left, he did what high-performing people typically do: kept himself as busy as possible. He describes it as a wave looming over his shoulder that would crush him if he stopped running. That, he now understands, was avoidance — another form of not facing what was actually happening inside.
"There seemed to be this void left inside. And what I began to understand more clearly was that the void came from losing the basic ways I met my fundamental human needs — connection, authenticity, and meaning."
— Garrett BissConnection, authenticity, meaning — the three things the military had provided in abundance, that the civilian world offered no clear pathway to replace. As the void grew, Garrett turned to substances and other behaviors to manage the internal pain. He's clear that these weren't the problem — they were a solution to a deeper problem. He didn't see how removing them could be a long-term answer when the source remained untouched.
The Moment That Changed Direction
The inflection point came when Garrett noticed that thoughts about ending his life had begun to feel routine. Not distressing — routine. The normal tension, the internal reflex that recoils from such thoughts, had started to disappear. That absence was what caught his attention.
He was, he says, fortunate enough to have that moment of clarity — long enough for it to shake him into looking for something different.
What Actually Helped
What brought Garrett back was not a traditional treatment program. It was coaching grounded in positive psychology — work that went toward the source rather than the symptoms. Through that process, something shifted: he began to reconnect with his own worth. He describes it through the lens of self-esteem as self-connection — a positive relationship with the value and strengths that were already there, but that stress and adversity had hidden from view.
"As our bodies are hardwired for survival, when we're in a stressed state, we become much more attuned to negative things — weaknesses, past mistakes, guilt, shame. Almost to the detriment of our awareness of the strength and worth we have."
— Garrett BissHe's not suggesting veterans have no weaknesses or have never made mistakes. He's suggesting that in a stressed state, those things occupy 100% of the view — and the rest of the picture disappears. Part of what Valiant Path does is help veterans see the whole picture again.
Why Veterans Specifically
Garrett has thought carefully about why the veteran population faces what it faces, and he pushes back on a common assumption. The mental health struggles veterans experience are not primarily about battlefield trauma — that accounts for some veterans, but not most. Almost every veteran Garrett has spoken with who struggled significantly after transition didn't necessarily have combat trauma. They had something else: the removal of the very foundation that had supported their mental and emotional wellness.
"What's unique about veterans is they had a very strong foundation — strong connection, positive identity, strong sense of meaning — and then went through a transition that takes it all away. With non-veterans, the work is often helping them develop things they never had. With veterans, it's about helping them reconnect with a version of themselves they once had and then lost."
— Garrett BissVeterans are also prone, Garrett notes, to minimizing their own pain by comparison — "I didn't go through something as bad as someone else, so why am I struggling?" The point of his TEDx talk is to normalize the transition itself as a source of disruption, regardless of deployment history, years of service, or combat experience. Every veteran goes through it. It is not a reflection of weakness or defect.
The Spheres Approach
Garrett's award-winning book draws on a framework he began developing during a 2013 deployment in Afghanistan — three concentric spheres for understanding where our attention goes and how that shapes our experience.
Garrett traces the insight to an observation during his 2013 deployment: the collective mood in the workspace grew noticeably heavier during a stretch when multiple major disasters were dominating the news feed. The events had no direct impact on anyone in the room, but the exposure did. That observation planted the seed for the framework.
Valiant Path
Valiant Path is Garrett's coaching practice for veterans who have struggled with mental health or substance challenges since their transition. The work draws on positive psychology to help veterans reconnect with the value, worth, and strengths they once had clear access to — and that the transition disrupted. He also runs Diamond Mind Training, which provides continuing education for mental health providers and peer support coaches working with veterans.
One of the most meaningful pieces of feedback he's received came from a Vietnam veteran at a mental health provider training — someone who had been struggling with something he couldn't name for decades. After Garrett framed the transition through the lens of connection, authenticity, and meaning, the veteran said: that's what it was. That's finally what it was.
Why This Conversation Matters
The invisible struggles of military transition are not a failure of character. They are a failure of preparation and of support. The structure, the mission, the community — these aren't incidentals of military life. They are the precise things that meet every veteran's fundamental needs for mental and emotional wellness. When they disappear without warning and without a plan, the consequences are predictable. And addressable.
Garrett Biss is doing the most important mission of his career — making sure no veteran has to figure out the unspoken part alone.
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