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

It's time to dispose of these 7 Myths About Men’s Mental Health. Enough is enough! We hear it all the time. “Men do not talk.” “Blokes just get on with it.” “Real men handle their own problems.” I believed a lot of those lines for years. It nearly killed me. The truth is, men do feel. Men do struggle. Men do want support. What gets in the way is a pile of myths that do not match reality, but still control how we act. Let’s call some of those myths out and see what happens whe

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

People sometimes ask how a Special Forces engineer ends up standing in front of a room talking about mental health. The short answer is that I nearly did not make it here. The longer answer is this post. The short version I served as a Special Operations Engineer with the Australian Special Forces and deployed twice to Afghanistan. I came home with PTSD and major depression, and my twenties became a fight to justify each morning. Today I speak, mentor and advocate, because as