Mental health is not something that men talk about. Especially not in Papua New Guinea. As a man, you’re just supposed to deal with it, to carry the weight without complaint. For a long time, I didn't even have the words for what I was carrying. When you’re dealing with mental health on two fronts—personal and professional—it’s a unique kind of struggle. Professionally, especially as a journalist, you’re exposed to so much, but you process it as part of the job. You don’t realize you’re navigating a minefield of trauma. As a young, energetic reporter starting out at EMTV, I wanted to be on the front lines. I chose the crime beat. That choice put me in the most undesirable places imaginable. I spent time at the city morgue, breathing in the unforgettable smell of rotting human bodies when the freezers failed. I stood at the scenes of horrific car accidents, witnessing bodies torn apart. I reported from the aftermath of police shootouts, where people were ripped apart by bullets. I covered stories of children who had been abused, raped, and murdered. I remember one incident vividly: a young child in grade five, killed in a payback attack, completely unrelated to the fight that started it. In the space of about 12 to 36 months, I absorbed all of this. I was running on adrenaline, telling myself it was just the job. I had no idea I was spiralling into Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. The realization came much later, years after I’d left that role and joined the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. We were undergoing mandatory trauma training, and as the instructor went through the symptoms of PTSD, I found myself ticking off every single box. The trauma I was carrying, the trauma I thought was unique to my experiences in urban PNG, was the same as what reporters and crews who had been to war zones like Afghanistan were going through. The difference was, they often had support systems. I’d had none. I didn't have the benefit of counselling. I had no concept of primary and secondary trauma; no understanding of what Post Traumatic Stress Disorder truly was. The training was my crash course, and it was the beginning of a long, overdue process of healing. For the first time, I had to allow myself to heal. That meant stepping away from the constant barrage of negativity I had seen for years. It meant finally processing it, talking about it in a series of conversations with different people—friends, family, and professionals. Expressing what I truly felt was the key that unlocked my own prison. The ABC had a wonderful peer counselling system. It was an anonymous hotline you could call any time of day and speak to a trained peer counsellor. It didn't matter how many times you called; they would always answer and guide you through the process. That support was life changing. I also learned how my trauma had spilled over into my family life. I had become overprotective. I would get angry over small things that shouldn't have warranted it. My unprocessed pain was affecting them. It taught me to be careful, especially around my children. You don't want to pass on that burden as secondary trauma by speaking too graphically in their presence. One of the most important things I learned was about triggers—the specific sights, sounds, scents or situations that could cause me to either explode with anger or implode with despair. I was sensitive to the smell of blood. It gave me mental images of crime scenes. Understanding them gave me a new level of control over my life. My experience is not unique. So many men in my country, particularly in high-stress jobs like police, emergency services, and the military, go through the same silent suffering. The expectation is to be strong, to be stoic. But that silence is a heavy burden, and it breaks you from the inside out. My journey was difficult and painful, but it gave me a language for my pain and, ultimately, a path toward healing.