Grant Denyer quit his job at Sunrise live on air in 2013.
At the time, he said his departure was due to exhaustion, but now on his podcast with wife Chezzi Denyer, the 43-year-old said there was more to the story.
The TV star revealed that he is an “empath” – which is defined as “a person with the paranormal ability to perceive the mental or emotional state of another individual”.
It was because of this, Grant found it incredibly difficult to cover natural disasters such as the Queensland floods in 2010 and 2011 and the Christchurch earthquake in 2011.
Explaining that both he and his wife Chezzi are empaths, Grant referred to the coverage as “a very heavy toll”.
“You are there telling human stories but people are hurting and we are both empaths so… you just get really weighed down with it. It was a hectic period and I was like, I don't think I can do this anymore. I was wiped,” he said.
Grant went on to explain that the tragic scenes he was faced with left him traumatised.
“I’m there and I'm seeing bits of body and a headless torso sitting in the driver's seat. I wasn't equipped to see that s**t. There was bits of brain everywhere. You go from a decapitation to a cat up a tree,” he said on the podcast.
In the lead up to his time at the facility, Grant had been displaying what some described as “erratic behaviour” on Sunrise.
He then attended a wellness centre in Thailand which helped the host overcome his health problems.
This article originally appeared on Over60.