MIDWAY — After serving in the Army National Guard for more than 30 years, Brig. General Paul Peters retired in July 2025. Although he returned to civilian life, his military experiences followed him home.
Peters joined the National Guard in the 1990s at the age of 19, earning the rank of 1st lieutenant in 1997. He rose through the ranks over the next 25 years, serving five different overseas deployments to Kuwait, Afghanistan, Djibouti, Bahrain and Iraq.
He achieved the rank of brigadier general in 2022, the same year he was deployed to Iraq. After a final year abroad, he returned to the United States, serving in North Carolina and Virginia before retiring.
Nightmares and racing thoughts in the middle of the night tormented Peters for years even before he retired, but that wasn’t the only impact his military service had left on him.
Peters said his anger management has become more difficult throughout his career, leaving him feeling fine one minute and “pretty upset” the next. He was also hypervigilant everywhere he went, even on vacations and weekends.
“High alertness, high stress, high anxiety,” Peters said. “It really affected every interaction I had.”
Post-traumatic stress, caused by experiencing or witnessing an extremely stressful or terrifying event, can include intrusive memories, avoidance of equally stressful situations, and negative changes in mood and behavior, according to the Mayo Clinic.
These symptoms may fade over time after the stressful event, but they sometimes persist for long periods of time throughout a person’s life.
When symptoms last more than a month and negatively impact a person’s functional ability, a medical professional may diagnose them with post-traumatic stress disorder. About 13 million Americans were diagnosed with PTSD in 2020.
Peters’ experience is not uncommon for veterans returning home after serving in the military. About 6 percent of military men and 13 percent of military women are diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs.
“In the early 2000s, it was just expected that we would just say, ‘Suck it up, Buttercup,’ like we used to say, and kind of move on,” Peters said. “But as we started to learn more about the implications of PTSD…I started to become aware of it and open my eyes to some of these things.”
Transcranial magnetic stimulation
Although post-traumatic stress can be treated with therapy and medication, the impact of trauma on the brain can be difficult to overcome. As medical technology advanced, scientists began experimenting with magnetic waves to learn their impact on the brain.
The impact of magnetic waves on the brain has been studied for years, according to Dr. Thomas Trevort, a nurse practitioner at Optimal TMS who studied neuroscience while earning his doctorate. Trevort said magnetic waves have been used in medicine since the 1980s.
Stress has been shown to damage parts of nerve cells called dendritic spines, which serve to receive electrical impulses from other nerve cells. When spinal columns are damaged or destroyed, electrical impulses in the brain have a harder time properly sending signals from one area to another.
Transcranial magnetic stimulation sends magnetic waves to specific areas of the brain. Tests showed that the waves will help regrow dendritic spines in the targeted area, allowing previously damaged nerve cells to return to full function, Trevort said.
The Federal Drug Administration approved transcranial magnetic stimulation to treat drug-resistant depression in 2008, after years of study. Ten years later, it was approved to treat obsessive-compulsive disorder.
Research has shown that treatments have an 80% chance of improving symptoms of depression and obsessive-compulsive disorder when medications and other treatments have failed. The Mayo Clinic has stated that the risks of the treatment are very low, even among unaffected people.
The traditional transcranial magnetic stimulation treatment program lasted 36 days, five days a week, according to Trevort. Medical technicians placed an electromagnetic coil against a person’s scalp and triggered magnetic pulses in sessions lasting between 10 and 30 minutes.
As additional research into the technology continues, new treatment methods have emerged, including ways to shorten the traditional treatment program to a single, one-day session.
Impact on Veterans’ PTSD
Peters said he was initially skeptical of the treatment, and even immediately after treatment he asked himself, “Hey, has anything changed?” However, that night he was able to fall asleep and “really, truly sleep for the first time” in years.
Peters said his wife and therapist noticed an immediate change in his behavior after treatment. He added that he had become much more himself than he had in a long time.
“Things always frustrate me, but I don’t get upset when they frustrate me,” Peters said. “I’m still committed to getting things done, but I don’t have this nagging anxiety about how they’re accomplished or meeting deadlines. … It’s very positive.”
After seeing the beneficial changes in his life, Peters and Trevort, who also underwent treatment, want to spread the word about the procedure to other veterans who may be suffering from PTSD.
“I want people to know about treatment more than anything else,” Trevort said, “because knowledge gets people to start looking, and that’s what matters most.”
The key takeaways from this article were generated with the help of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article itself is solely written by humans.
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