Mental Fortitude isn’t pretending to be fine. Sometimes it starts with realizing that what you’ve called “normal” for years is actually a nervous system stuck in survival mode.
By: Matt Spaid
For a long time, one of the biggest struggles I dealt with from Operator Syndrome was sleep.
When I first got out, I dealt with nightmares that often traced back to a covert observation post mission we ran in Afghanistan. I was recently talking with another Marine who was on that mission with me, and he told me he still has nightmares from it too. I’d imagine most of us who were there probably do.
That mission has stayed with me for a lot of reasons. We did some good. We helped prevent an IED. We made decisions that probably kept us alive. But we were also far away from support, and looking back, there are parts of that mission I still question. Some decisions were smart. Some were not. Some of it still sits heavy. That’s the nature of trauma sometimes. It doesn’t just live in the memory of what happened. It lives in the replay. In the what-ifs. In the body staying on guard long after the moment has passed.
Over time, that started showing up in my sleep in a serious way.
Toward the end of my fire career, it became extremely difficult for me to shut my eyes at all. This wasn’t just “stress.” It was trauma, chronic nervous system overload, and likely brain injury all layered together. I wasn’t truly recovering. I was surviving. And when that becomes your normal, it can be hard to even recognize how far off things really are.
That’s a reality for a lot of veterans, first responders, and high performers. They don’t know what they don’t know. Poor sleep, hypervigilance, irritability, brain fog, anxiety, and always feeling “on” can become so familiar that dysfunction starts to feel normal. You adapt to it. You function through it. You wear it like it’s just part of the job. But normal does not always mean healthy.
That’s one reason I care so much about brain health and nervous system recovery.
I’m incredibly grateful for Resiliency Brain Health for treating me. But even before I got there, Semper Fi & America’s Fund stepped in and sent me a neurofeedback device that made a huge difference for me. It helped me regulate better throughout the day, and it made a real difference in my sleep. It gave me another tool to begin working with my brain and nervous system instead of just being dragged around by them.
What’s important to me is that this wasn’t some totally foreign concept. I had already been using meditation for years before ever getting these devices. In many ways, the goal is similar: training the mind and nervous system toward better regulation. Meditation helped me build awareness. It helped me slow down, observe, breathe, and create a little more space between stimulus and reaction.
But for a lot of people, especially tactical professionals, sitting down and meditating is not easy. For some, it feels frustrating. For others, it feels almost impossible. When your system is used to constant stimulation, threat scanning, and high output, stillness can feel unnatural.
That’s where tools like neurofeedback and biofeedback can be so helpful.
They provide real-time feedback. Instead of guessing whether you’re regulating well, settling down, or improving control, you get information back as it’s happening. In simple terms, it’s like giving the brain and body a mirror. That feedback can help reinforce healthier patterns over time.
Meditation is still training the mind. Neurofeedback and biofeedback are also training the mind and nervous system, but with a more direct feedback loop. For some people, that makes the process easier to understand and easier to stick with. It gives them a bridge.
And that matters, because not everybody connects with healing the same way.
Some people need breathwork.
Some people need movement.
Some people need meditation.
Some people need objective feedback that helps them see and feel what regulation actually looks like.
The goal is not to force everyone into the same box. The goal is to help people find tools that move them out of survival mode and into a more regulated state.
A Quick Look at the Research
Research on neurofeedback is still developing, but the results are promising — especially for symptom clusters that overlap with what many veterans and first responders describe as Operator Syndrome, like hypervigilance, poor sleep, trauma load, and nervous system over-arousal.
A 2023 meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials found that neurofeedback had moderate beneficial effects on PTSD symptoms, along with positive effects on depression and anxiety.
A 2024 systematic review and meta-analysis also found that results across the included studies favored neurofeedback for reducing PTSD symptom severity, though the authors noted that more high-quality research is still needed.
There is also veteran-specific evidence worth paying attention to. One study on veterans with PTSD, TBI, and chronic pain found that mobile neurofeedback showed promise for improving multiple symptoms, including sleep disturbance, while also being practical for home use.
Biofeedback matters here too. A 2024 meta-analysis found that heart rate variability biofeedback may be a viable way to reduce PTSD symptoms in military service members, which supports the broader idea that training regulation in real time can help people who are stuck in survival mode.
In other words, this isn’t just guesswork or “woo-woo.” The research is still evolving, but there is legitimate evidence that neurofeedback and biofeedback can help improve regulation in people carrying trauma, stress overload, and sleep disruption.
That’s a big part of what mental fortitude means.
It’s not just toughness.
It’s not just grinding harder.
It’s not pretending you’re fine when you’re not.
Mental fortitude is being honest enough to admit when something is off. It’s having the humility to recognize that the way you’ve been functioning might not actually be healthy. And it’s having the courage to start doing the work to heal, even if that healing looks different than you expected.
For me, that journey included meditation, mindfulness, neurofeedback, and brain-based care. Those tools helped me begin sleeping better. They helped me regulate better during the day. They helped me understand that what I had normalized was not something I had to stay trapped in forever.
That’s why I talk about this stuff.
Because a lot of people are walking around exhausted, wired, emotionally flat, hypervigilant, or unable to sleep, and they think that’s just who they are now. It’s not. Sometimes it’s a sign that the brain and nervous system need support, training, and recovery.
Healing is possible.
But first, we have to stop pretending survival mode is normal.
Study links:
2023 meta-analysis on neurofeedback and PTSD: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37732560/?utm_source=chatgpt.com
2024 systematic review and meta-analysis: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38577405/
Veterans study on mobile neurofeedback, PTSD, TBI, chronic pain, and sleep: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31697371/
2024 meta-analysis on HRV biofeedback in military PTSD: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38287778/