A person who works in the armed forces will know how important it is to go undercover for certain missions. They must put their lives on the line and are then forced to be distant and maintain no contact with people they might have known all of their lives. Their command units cannot contact them frequently because the investigator may be under suspicion in the first place. Doubt will only need a slight edge for the undercover agent to be under threat. Moles in any system are not appreciated and are, most of the time, executed and hidden away.

Throughout the undercover mission, officers have to pretend to be something they are not. They have to create a persona that may be entirely different from their initial personality. To be one with the investigated party, they must like things they do and involve themselves with beliefs and morals that might contradict their own. With all of this in place, it becomes difficult for a person to remember who they were before the mission started.

It is also psychologically proven that a human being can not pretend to be someone for more than three months. They will physically have to drop the act after three months. When it comes to undercover work, a person must consistently put up the new persona and live with it day and night. They need to be emotionally strong and have a strong will to continue living like this. All of this is extremely draining. A person will feel weary after several months, and it can play a major role in affecting them physically.

Having no contact with those they love can leave the agent unhappy about the decisions they might have taken throughout this timeline. Humans are social animals, and if they cannot socialize with the people they love and admire, it becomes hard to find motivation in the purpose they have been given or have been chosen for.

After the work is over and they can finally return to their “normal” settings, it becomes increasingly hard for them to re-adjust. The old things they know do not feel the same, and a weird connection has been formed with those they were investigating. A very common concern for those who have gone as undercover agents is that someone will rat them out. Sometimes it is people who have been in their own organization or the people they were investigating who have somehow found them and now are after them for revenge.

An undercover agent had to leave his home country because he was ratted out to the organization he was investigating by people he knew inside his workplace. Incidents such as these are common and leave the agents questioning the predictability of their life. The most common outcome of such situations will be chronic stress which is not good for any human.

A great book revolving around this topic is Life Raft by Paula Ashcraft. The book involves the mafia and the police. While everything is going smoothly, certain suspicions arise in the mob regarding the mole in the situation. The mole is sent on a voyage on a yacht, and the plot of the book takes a start. If you have a keen eye for such topics, then reading this book should be a priority.