No one ends up in rehab on a winning streak, but my collapse had been pretty spectacular.

I had gone from one of the most powerful political figures in San Diego to a complete outcast. I was unfaithful in my marriage, which morphed into accusations that flattened everything in their path.

While the accusations were eventually dismissed, it didn’t matter. The damage was done. “Disgraced” was the word that stuck.

I resigned my position and left public life. I didn’t enter rehab as a part of some contrived comeback story. I went because I had nowhere else to go.

My wife dropped me off at an inpatient trauma facility in Arizona. Walked in like I owned the place; shoulders square, chin up, stoic.

I had mastered how to look composed even when nothing underneath was holding.

I hadn’t had a second of calm in days. I’d lost 25 pounds in the previous weeks. I hadn’t slept more than two consecutive hours in months.

All that, in addition to suffering through horrific combat nightmares for years. My service to our country was finding and capturing high-value targets. It brought adrenaline, excitement, and intense PTSD. My actions haunted me at night.

It wasn’t just the war. It started with a violent childhood. I couldn’t remember a time past second grade when I had been at peace.

The intake nurse took my phone and my belt, administered a breathalyzer, drew blood, and searched my bags. I was irrationally upset about losing my belt. Not because it mattered, but because I now had to hold my pants up with one hand. I was half-dressed, half-human, trying to act normal.

Humiliation wasn’t their intent. Just procedure, I’m sure, but it stripped me down to who I was—a man who could not keep himself together.

They put me in a windowless cinderblock room. All I could feel was my heartbeat, all I could hear was the buzz of fluorescent lights.

The nurse asked, “How are you?”

I heard the question, but my brain produced nothing. No words. Not even thoughts. Just awkward silence. It felt like I sat there for years.

Then out of nowhere, my body folded in on itself, and I started sobbing. Uncontrollably.

Your body keeps itself alive automatically: blinking, heartbeat, circulation. Breathing should be on that list, but at that moment, breathing felt optional. The nurse had to coach me through it.

In. Out. Again.

I’ve never felt so alone. And I still couldn’t answer her questions.

Eventually, she gave up and said, “Let’s go see the horses.”

I was handed off to an equine therapist who didn’t ask me anything. She walked me out to the corrals and introduced me to a mare named Star.

I stepped toward her. Star stepped away.

I moved faster. Star moved faster.

My frustration rose, and I quickly got to see how fast she could run. Away.

Even the horse hates me, I thought.

“She can feel your pain,” the therapist explained. “All of it. The hurt. The shame. The anxiety. The regret. And it scares her.”

For all their size and strength, horses are prey animals, which means everything is a potential threat to them. Safety is their number one concern. Their survival depends on it.

A horse sees through you and asks one question: Am I safe?

Around me, Star firmly felt no.

The therapist advised that to have any chance with this horse, I had to be present. No guilt from the past. No anxiety about the future.

Being present wasn’t something I knew how to do.

The next morning, I showed up with a plan. I previously had built a life on performance and projection. If you needed tough, I could be tough. If you wanted funny, I could be funny. If you needed empathy, I could deliver it on command.

I decided to prove to Star that I could be calm, grounded, and safe.

Nothing.

You can’t bullshit a horse.

Every attempt to convince her I was at peace failed because it wasn’t true.

But I kept coming back. Day after day.

One evening near sunset, something shifted. I leaned on the rail and closed my eyes. I wasn’t trying to be anything. I was completely exhausted.

I sensed a presence in front of me. I hoped she was there, but I was afraid to open my eyes. Afraid of being exposed. Afraid she’d be gone.

Slowly, I opened them.

Star was standing right in front of me, close enough to touch.

She nodded her head up and down and then gave an exhale and relaxed her mouth the way horses do when they are comfortable.

I rested my hand on her forehead and cried.

I had stopped performing. I had stopped chasing. I had stopped trying to prove I was worthy of connection.

She stepped closer and pressed her head into my chest.

It was beautiful.

As the days went on, I kept showing up. No strategy, no performance. Just presence, as best as I could manage.

My days revolved around that arena. Around her.

Individual sessions, group sessions, quiet mornings together.

Her presence slowed my nervous system in a way nothing else ever had. But it was just a start. I had a long way to go. To confront the trauma of war, I had to actually be able to feel it.

That led me to EMDR.

The clinical description of the therapy was simple: reconnect the parts of my brain that had stopped talking to each other.

The scientific explanation is that it uses bilateral stimulation, alternating signals through headphones that beep and handheld paddles that vibrate, to force the brain to process what it has avoided.

The practical reality felt like they wanted me to run through a brick wall.

I could remember everything about combat. The sound of an RPG flying, the shockwaves of IEDs that seem to move through your entire body, the bullets ricocheting around you, the smell of burning flesh, the cries of despair.

It was all there, but I felt nothing. The memories were like watching a movie. I could tell the stories clean and flat, like reading a weather report.

Feeling nothing had become safe. It kept everything contained, controlled, at a distance. If I didn’t feel it, how could it affect me?

That’s the lie we tell ourselves. The truth is the energy and substances you use to numb those feelings leave you isolated, exhausted, and miserable.

And that distance doesn’t stay contained to trauma. It showed up everywhere. In my marriage, in my relationships, in my ability to be present.

I wanted to find a way past the pain and hopefully find some peace. Or if not peace, maybe just a little contentment. I would settle for slightly less pain.

I was ready to try what seemed like a really strange form of therapy.

I sat in the arena on a cool desert morning. Star drifted nearby.

I put on the headphones, held the paddles. I was there, but skeptical.

“This isn’t going to work,” I said.

The therapist smiled and told me to bring up a memory from war.

The paddles started vibrating. The headphones beeped.

I started a thought. The reaction was instant. Grief hit my chest like a sledgehammer. My body shook, my breath fractured, my heart hurt. Years of held-down pain came out all at once.

It was overwhelming. And I felt very, very alone.

Then I felt her.

Star had crossed the arena and pressed her face against mine.

She breathed out, slow and steady, and waited for me to follow.

“She wants you to breathe with her,” the therapist whispered.

So I did.

In. Out. Again.

It wasn’t procedure. It was real.

As fast as she had run from me on the first day, she came to me now.

I leaned into her, face to face, because she was strong enough to hold it.

I was still carrying more than I could hold. But I was no longer trying to outrun it. And I wasn’t doing it alone.

In that steadiness, something finally loosened. Not erased, just no longer gripped so tightly. My body settled, the shaking eased. The world came back in pieces: dust, sun, weight, warmth.

Star stayed right there with me. Nose to nose until my breath was my own again.

Later, the therapist told me she had never seen her do that before. Horses are careful with closeness. They offer it when the space is safe and when trust has been earned.

Star wasn’t the only horse at this equine facility. But she was the only one for me.

In her actions, she showed me that I hadn’t ever been alone. Not when I walked in the door of the rehab center and not now.

A loving wife. Incredible friends who stood beside me when I had nothing left to offer. They were there the entire time.

What I was missing wasn’t love—it was my ability to believe I deserved it.

Star didn’t rewrite my life. She responded to who I actually was when all the projection was gone.

For the first time, I felt accepted while being completely genuine. That was a lot. And it was enough.

This War Horse Reflection was edited by Kim Vo, fact-checked by Jess Rohan, and copy-edited by Mollie Turnbull. Hrisanthi Pickett wrote the headlines.