Finding Your Way: Resilience Development in Action
"Resilience Development in Action" is your dynamic guide to building unshakeable strength in life's most demanding roles. Join us as we dive deep into the intersection of mental health, leadership, and personal growth through the lens of real-world experience and professional expertise.
Each week brings a powerful focus:
- First responder resilience and mental wellness
- Trauma recovery and healing journeys
- Executive leadership and C-suite coaching
- Grief navigation and transformation
Host, Steve Bisson, LMHC, with over 20 years of experience working with first responders and mental health, brings straight-to-the-point strategies that bridge the gap between professional challenges and personal growth. Whether you're serving on the front lines, leading in the boardroom, or navigating life's toughest moments, each episode delivers actionable insights for developing resilience in real time.
From raw conversations with first responders to executive coaching breakthroughs, every episode offers practical tools for building mental strength and emotional agility. This isn't just talk – it's Resilience Development in Action.
New episodes release weekly, featuring expert interviews, solo insights, and real-world applications for immediate impact.
Finding Your Way: Resilience Development in Action
E.194 Navigating Growth: Insights on Therapy and Change
In this engaging episode focused on mental health and resilience, we reflect on the evolution of our podcast as we shift towards the theme of "Finding Your Way: Resilience Development in Action." Therapy plays a crucial role in not only individual growth but also in creating strong support systems for professionals—particularly first responders who encounter daily challenges that others may not understand. Join me as I share my personal journey and insights on how therapy can demystify the path towards mental wellness.
Our conversation delves into why mental health must be treated with the same importance as physical health, and I'm passionate about advocating for regular check-ins and open dialogues. With over two decades of experience working closely with first responders, I strike a balance between discussing their unique challenges and conveying the importance of resilience in cultivating coping strategies.
As we explore these pivotal subjects, I invite the community to engage with us, share stories, and provide feedback on future topics. The purpose of this episode is to spark conversations that lead to real change in life perspectives, routines, and understanding towards mental health and therapy. Subscribe to our podcast for more enlightening discussions, and enjoy a journey towards improved mental wellness!
Freed AI converts conversations into SOAP note.Use code Steve50 for $50 off the 1st month!
Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.
Hi and welcome to Finding your Way Through Therapy. A proud member of the PsychCraft Network, the goal of this podcast is to demystify therapy, what can happen in therapy and the wide array of conversations you can have in and about therapy Through personal experiences. Guests will talk about therapy, their experiences with it and how psychology and therapy are present in many places in their lives, with lots of authenticity and a touch of humor. Here is your host, steve Bisson.
Speaker 2:GetFreeai.
Speaker 2:Yes, you've heard me talk about it previously in other episodes, but I'm going to talk about it again because GetFreeai is just a great service. Imagine being able to pay attention to your clients all the time, instead of writing notes and making sure that the note's going to sound good, and how are you going to write that note and things like that. Notes, and making sure that the note's going to sound good, and how are you going to write that note and things like that? Getfreeai liberates you from making sure that you're writing what the client is saying, because it is keeping track of what you're saying and will create, after the end of every session, a progress note. But it goes above and beyond that. Not only does it create a progress note, it also gives you suggestions for goals, gives you even a mental status if you've asked questions around that, as well as being able to write a letter for your client to know what you talked about. So that's the great, great thing. It saves me time, it saves me a lot of aggravation and it just speeds up the progress note process so well, and for $99 a month. I know that that's nothing. That's worth my time. That's worth my money. You know the best part of it, too, is that if you want to go and put in the code Steve50 when you get the service at the checkout, code is Steve50, you get $50 off your first month and if you get a whole year, you save a whole 10% for the whole year. So again, steve50 at checkout for getfreeai will give you $50 off for the first month and, like I said, get a full year, get 10% off, get free from writing notes, get free from always scribbling while you're talking to a client and just paying attention to your client. So they win out, you win out, everybody wins, and I think that this is the greatest thing. And if you're up to a point where you got to change a treatment plan, well, the goals are generated for you. So, getfreeai code Steve50 to save $50 on your first month.
Speaker 2:Alors, re-bienvenue à notre nouveau début. Welcome back to our new beginnings. My name is Steve. This is episode 194 of Finding your Way Resilience, development and Action. Yes, that's the new name I've been dropping, as someone else told me. One of your listeners said oh, you've been dropping Easter eggs, so I guess there were Easter eggs across there. It talked about resiliency, development and action, and so that's going to be the new name in about a month and a half a month around there, but right now we're going to transition from finding your way to finding your way resilience, development and action. If you haven't listened to episode 193, go back and listen to Lisa Manka with special co-host Courtney Romanowski. It Go back and listen to Lisa Manka with special co-host Courtney Romanowski. It was a great interview Talk about dance movement and I hope you enjoy it.
Speaker 2:So, as we go along here, I wanted to talk a little bit about the rebranding, because that's important for you guys to know what my thought process was. So when I started Finding your Way Through Therapy, obviously go listen to episode zero and one and my God, do I sound different than I sound today. In episode zero and one and my God, do I sound different than I sound today there was a lot of nervousness, a lot of unhappiness, like not unhappiness, but you know you're not sure of yourself. I don't know if I'm more sure nowadays, but I sound more confident, which probably is reflected. But when I started Finding your Way Through Therapy podcast, it was really about from my book and someone said talk about therapy. And I really wanted to talk about therapy because I think I wanted to demystify therapy, which is part of the intro right, if you go listen to it, that's what it said. And so the journey for the last three and a half years has been wonderful, went from limited downloads to right now I'm looking at a little more than about 300 downloads per episode, which is a fantastic growth, and I want to continue growing.
Speaker 2:And some people don't talk about the numbers. I really don't care. I want my numbers to be higher for the record, so I'll share this with everyone. But I grew it and how I grew it was talking about therapy in general talking about some techniques, talking to different people that I enjoy talking about some techniques, talking to different people that I enjoy. One of the things I developed during that course of time not only did I have more listeners, I also saw what I really enjoyed. I enjoy doing therapy. Obviously I enjoy talking about therapy. And for those who have reached out to me and said you really made me less scared of therapy, thank you, appreciate it, but I think I've evolved. Thank you, appreciate it, but I think I've evolved, and the reason why the evolution has come up to that is I think resilience is particularly one of my favorite things to talk about, as I've worked with trauma for 25 years give or take between the crisis team and my licensure, my master's level stuff and the other jobs I've done, as you've heard on the show licensure my master's level stuff and the other jobs I've done, as you've heard on the show, whether it's the crisis team, jails, police, what have you.
Speaker 2:I really enjoyed working with grief and trauma because it's something that's near and close to me. Some of you again have heard the show when I was 12, lost my best friend in a fire and I felt very alone for a long time and I never want people to feel alone. So that's why when there's trauma and grief, it's particularly something I enjoy, so to speak, which sounds weird, but I hope you understand the spirit of it really helping people getting there. And then the resiliency to develop those strategies, develop how you can be more resilient in regards to all this, and which leads me to the other couple of focuses that I really want to do with this podcast.
Speaker 2:The first one is first responders. As you clearly have said, you've seen in the beginning of this year, I really focus mostly on first responder trauma and grief, and the reason why is I really have this passion to work with first responders? Why I like to think that I'm trying to make mental health as important as physical health for them, trying to make mental health as important as physical health for them. And not all therapists want to take their guns away, want to keep them from their job and whatever other preconceived notions they have. But I really work with my first responders, I think, because I feel closer to them, and what I mean by that is you know, you've got to be quite a professional to get there.
Speaker 2:I know people like oh, they're not the most educated people in the world. I've heard that before from first responders. By the way, this is not the general pop, but they're very smart and I respect that. Just like you know, I might have a master's. I don't consider myself super smart, but I have some logic and I'm myself, and I think one of the things that first responders are kind of known for most of the time is that you know outside of, maybe, the hard stuff that you, you know when they happen during the job, they are themselves, they, they just learn how to do that and I really enjoy working with them because of that, just like one of the other things that we'll see the develop across the course of this podcast is what they consider. I don't even know what to call them I hate these words, but I guess it's the corporate world.
Speaker 2:So the C-suite people. And why do I work with people who are from the C-suite? I really think that they're very close to the first responder. They're used to having people being polite, or they've been polite and they've grown, but they also have a lot of their own stuff that's really hard to talk about, including mental health and working on that. A lot of them need coaching and I do coaching, obviously, which is part of why I want to rebrand a little bit and talk about my company. But I also think that people in the C-suite world they have the same problems that most of us do. We just don't recognize it and they do have some self-doubt, they have some resiliency issues and it's really building those things up so they can be even more successful in their lives, and that's why I really want to work with them and the trauma survivors as well as the first responders.
Speaker 2:I've worked 20 years in the first responder world, plus actually right If you count my crisis clinician years. Our crisis triage was 1999 when I started there. We're in 2025, so 26 years. I really enjoy it. Has it been hard sometimes? Yeah, I want to make sure that people know it's hard, but that being hard doesn't mean I really enjoy it. Has it been hard sometimes? Yeah, I want to make sure that people know it's hard, but that being hard doesn't mean you don't enjoy it, and I truly do enjoy it and that's why I think it's going to go towards that in the first responder world and there is the words resilience, development and action is pretty self-explanatory to me. We need to develop resilience when we're first responders.
Speaker 2:When we grow in a corporate world, more and more people, especially with bigger companies, they're not happy with the higher ups. So you got to create some resilience there and I'm going to commit to the same core values being authentic, being myself, honest, real change is what my motto was when I first started in my private practice. It hasn't changed. I don't use those words anymore, but it certainly hasn't changed. That's who I am, and I'm committed to make mental health a part of day-to-day life, and what I mean by that is I want mental health to be seen like physical health, and if you don't need it every week or every day, or every month or every three months, whatever. That's great. Once a year, though, go do your mental health check, and I still commit to mental health being as important as physical health.
Speaker 2:That won't change for me, but I want to give you practical resilience strategies, and what I mean by that is I want to talk about real stuff that you can put in place in your life in order to move your life in the right direction or direction you want to go. So let's you know, hopefully I'm going to have some guests that talk about that. I'm going to talk about it. I'm going to talk about those different parts of their lives. You know, I'm going to have a few people who talk about their trauma, and it's not always going to be trauma first responders. It's not always going to be grief first responders, and certainly won't be C-suite trauma and first responders and everything, but I will make sure that the resiliency development will be part of pretty much not pretty much. They will be part of every episode that we do. So that's why we're going.
Speaker 2:So what do you think? One of the things I really want you to tell me is do you think this is a good idea for me to change, is it not a good idea? And if you're watching on YouTube, should I be wearing my Montreal Canadiens hat? I know I'm in the old studio again still working out the kinks and, frankly, my time management has been terrible in the last few weeks, so this is why we're doing it from this studio again, a lot easier for me to go to than the other studio. But please, you know, let me know what you think you can do it through here.
Speaker 2:There's, you know, if you go to any of the main platforms whether it's Spotify, apple podcasts you can go and there's a button that says, uh, contact me, or something like that, and that's going to contact me directly. So please, give me feedback as to what you think about this. Is it good, is it bad? Did I did not explain it properly? Let me know. Am I still reaching too big? Tell me too big. Tell me, I want to hear about it. You don't have that. Go to my social media handles Instagram and X and, I believe, TikTok. I'm under real Steve Bisson, r-e-a-l, steve B-I-S-S-O-N, so you can go check me out and write a DM there too if you want to. That would be great to hear from you and then on Facebook it's Steve Bissau Services and that's because they got me under podcaster. They have me under therapist author, so that all things I've done, obviously, but you can go there and obviously I want to continue to promote the things I want.
Speaker 2:So when you're going to hear me promote, for example, how much I've promoted freeai, I really use that service. You've heard me talk about freeai. I really use that service. I use it every time I do therapy, and the reason why? Well, again, with client's consent, of course, but it's so helpful in so many ways. It helped me write my notes so I can concentrate on my client. It helps me with goals when I need to set goals. It even creates a letter if I need to send it. But freeai is a great partner and will that continue? Because we're going more for resilience, development and action? Probably because I really like them a lot. But am I going to be looking for other sponsors or people who can do affiliate programs? Of course, and I'm actually actively looking for those and, but I'm freeai. I hope that partnership never dies. I really enjoyed talking to them.
Speaker 2:And so what's coming up? We're going to talk about trauma. I'm going to talk about recovery. We're going to talk about grief. I definitely will have more solo episodes where I talk about my own stuff. You guys know, know I'm working on a book on uh first responders, and it's not only for a therapist. You go see my, my one hour cu class for nbcc and licensed mental health counselors. You can go check that out. Did that with the fabulous lisa mustard. But I'm also writing a book on how first responders think about mental health and for them to kind of like.
Speaker 2:They ask me all the questions well, what does you know? One of the common questions is am I going to be hospitalized to go to therapy? I'm going to save you the answer, although for some of you you already know the answer but ultimately I want to be able to also, kind of like, continue being more of a brand, which is, I know you know, taboo to about it. But I really think that I've moved to a point in my life where I want to do more teaching. I want to be doing more coaching. I want to be able to be help people. It's not I'm getting away from therapy whatsoever, but I just want to move to that and have a couple of ideas that I'll probably talk on this podcast here and there that I will put in place eventually. But, you know, ultimately I want to know more about what you think I should evolve to what I shouldn't do, what I should do.
Speaker 2:Um doesn't mean I'll follow it, but I certainly respect people's opinions. So, yeah, just write back to me on the platforms, or even on uh. Just respond to this on the major platforms, so it's a Spotify and uhs, among others. Go to YouTube. Write back to me. There's a direct message. You can reply also directly in the comments. So please do that. And then I told you about my Instagram, facebook, twitter, instagram, twitter X, I'm sorry as well as TikTok. So a couple of things. We're going to keep on having the mental men on. I don't know what we're going to talk about, but mental men aren't going anywhere. And then you know, next episode I'm going to have Jennifer Schrapp I hope I'm pronouncing that right and we're going to talk a lot about trauma, personal loss and grief, as well as where she's at in her career and how we can, you know, help ourselves get there too. So I hope you join me, then help ourselves get there too, so I hope you join me then.
Speaker 1:Please like, subscribe and follow this podcast on your favorite platform. A glowing review is always helpful and, as a reminder, this podcast is for informational, educational and entertainment purposes only. If you're struggling with a mental health or substance abuse issue, please reach out to a professional counselor for consultation. If you are in a mental health crisis, call 988 for assistance. This number is available in the United States and Canada.
