E.237 Best of 2025: How A Police Sergeant Faced Trauma And Found A Path Back

Resilience Development in Action: First Responder Mental Health

Steve Bisson

Social Sciences, Honest, Science, Substance Use, Psychology, Health & Fitness, Mental Health, Counseling, Education, Self-improvement

5 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 31 December 2025

⏱️ 40 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Send us a text The most downloaded conversation of the year returns for a reason: it’s the raw, practical guide first responders and their families keep asking for. We sit with Sgt. Michael Sugrue—Air Force security forces veteran, Walnut Creek Police sergeant, and author of Relentless Courage—to talk about the weight of hundreds of traumatic calls, how a 2012 shooting upended his life, and the exact steps that pulled him back from the edge. Michael breaks down why suicide remains the top th...

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Resilience Development in Action with Steve Bisson.
0:06.1	This is the podcast dedicated to first responder mental health, helping police, fire,
0:11.4	EMS, dispatchers, and paramedics create better growth environments for themselves and their teams.
0:17.5	Let's get started.
0:29.4	Okay. their teams. Let's get started. Well, hi, everyone, and welcome to episode 237. If you haven't listened to episode
0:33.6	236, please go ahead and listen to it. It's about a bunch of guests that we're on and we talk about their episodes and
0:40.5	hopefully you can go and listen to that.
0:42.6	But for episode 237, I want to give you as my end-a-year type of information the most popular
0:50.2	episode, the most downloaded.
0:52.1	I don't know how to measure it other than most downloaded.
0:55.9	I've had a few episodes that have come up for people who have really enjoyed it, but this one
1:00.5	is the one that was the most downloaded according to my Buzzsprout people. This was for episode
1:05.5	201, Michael Sugru. Michael Sugru began his law enforcement career in the United States Air Force as a security
1:12.4	farms officer.
1:14.2	He then served in different capacities.
1:16.9	He went into the Walnut Creek Police Department and did the FTO thing, did the PIO thing,
1:23.1	did the Contra Costa County Narcotics Task Force.
1:26.8	He did a lot and then he ultimately retired in 2018,
1:30.0	and he's now a peer volunteer, the West Coast Post Trauma Retreat Center. And his interview was amazing.
1:36.2	He has a book called Relentless Courage, winning the battle against frontline trauma, read that book
1:41.1	written with a PhD, which was really good. and it does tackle a lot of his traumas.
1:46.9	I personally read it, so I really can recommend it.
	...

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