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Episode 121: You're Only as Sick as Your Secrets - Matt Bloesch

Retirement is supposed to feel like relief. For Matt Bloesch, it does—but not because he simply “made it to the finish line.” After 26 years in the San Francisco Bay Area and retiring at captain, Matt describes what most first responders rarely say out loud: the job doesn’t just change what you’ve seen—it changes who you are at home, what you believe about the world, and how safe your family feels when you walk through the door.

In this conversation with Conrad Weaver, Matt traces the slow drift: bitterness, a shorter fuse, drinking that looked “controlled”… until a phone call reopened an old wound—his father, a San Francisco police officer, accidentally shot and killed by his partner when Matt was 13. That moment cracked the façade and pushed him into real help—where he learned the line that still guides his recovery: you’re only as sick as your secrets.

Matt unpacks what actually works: culturally competent clinicians, peer support that’s funded like it matters, and tools like EMDR that helped him get unstuck. The takeaway is simple and hard: secrecy compounds trauma; connection interrupts it—and it’s never “too small” to deserve help.

ABOUT MATT BLOESCH

Matt Bloesch is a change agent in the first responder wellness world.  He worked as a cop for 26 years, happily retiring into a life of helping others and bringing hope.  Matt went through his struggles with alcohol and post-traumatic stress while on the job, but was able to recover with the help of other cops who were brave enough to tell their stories.  He continued working and had a wildly successful career, with a lot of that time spent on his department’s peer team.  He is also the son of a police officer who died in the line of duty.  Matt now uses those experiences to help police and fire departments build wellness teams, and he volunteers as a youth mentor for Concerns of Police Survivors, an organization dedicated to rebuilding the shattered lives of surviving family members and coworkers of police officers killed in the line of duty.  He is married with two adult children and lives in Northern California.

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