Men's Mental Health Blog

“I'm fine.” Two words. For a lot of men, they are not true. “I'm fine” can mean “I do not know how to talk about this”, “I do not want to worry anyone”, or “I am barely hanging on.” We think keeping it inside is the strong thing to do. We tell ourselves we are protecting our partner, our kids, our mates. What we are really doing is pushing the pressure down until it leaks out somewhere else. Let’s talk about the real cost of bottling things up, and what it looks like to do it

What does it mean to be resilient? Growing up, I was a pretty ambitious kind of kid. By the age of 21, I had finished high school, earned a Certificate III in Geoscience, worked in the Mines, worked on the oil rigs, was a volunteer firefighter for the Country Fire Service, had joined the army and had risen to the ranks of Special Forces. I knew what I wanted, and I always went for it. I look back and I can see that younger version of me…with a fuel tank full of optimism and a

How positive emotions can increase productivity and performance... Why is it that we can remember everything bad or negative that has happened to us in any given day, but when we’re asked to think about anything good that has happened to us today, it’s not so clear cut and we really have to stop and think about it? Talking about positive emotions and where they come from would have to be one of my favourite conversations these days. My entire life, I had no notion, no knowl

Some wounds do not show up on a scan. After two tours of Afghanistan as a Special Operations Engineer, I came home looking fine and feeling anything but. Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder does not announce itself. It moves in slowly. The nightmares. The flashbacks that arrive in a supermarket aisle. The guilt about the mates who did not come home, and the strange shame of being the one who did. For a long time I did what a lot of veterans do. I blamed everything except what had

What to do when someone confides in you, and how to achieve the best possible outcome from those difficult conversations... I vividly remember the first time I confided in one of my mates in a state of serious distress. This happened many moons ago when I was still in the Army and had recently returned from my second tour to Afghanistan. I had been home for some 6-8 months and my world was imploding. Things were no longer making any sense. I was so lost, confused, frustrated,