MEET BARBARA
I'm passionate about my work…
Having been born the youngest of eleven children, eight brothers and three sisters, I was given two important skills that inform my practice as counsellor and coach: firstly the ability - born out of necessity - to observe others, and secondly the resilience and the knowledge that I could survive and did survive.
This has been essential to me during times when I have felt a loss of direction or when I have been overwhelmed in my own life. Very often the experience of feeling overwhelmed or lost has been accompanied by, what I would describe, as an experience of ‘awakening’, followed by change and transformation. I’m reminded of a quotation from Anthony De Mello:
“ Many of us are born asleep, live asleep, marry in our sleep, breed children in our sleep, die in our sleep, without ever waking up.”
The experience of ‘awakening’ brings an awareness that your relationship with yourself, with others, or your work, is not giving you what you need for a more authentic expression of your gifts, talents or your passions. Perhaps it might be what you have always known to be a potential within you but you have never had the courage to live or choose.
My passion, born of my own life and seventeen years of professional experience as counsellor and coach, is working with others to enable them to listen to their inner voice that speaks when our ‘awakening’ moment comes. A voice that can be both terrifying, disturbing and yet full of potential.
I’m an enabler and encourager of those who want to make the exciting and challenging journey towards living a more satisfying and joy filled life. A life that explores and expresses their true potential. If you feel you are ready to take the next step, to ask for help to make the changes you need, contact me.
TRAINING & QUALIFICATIONS
I have been working as a counsellor for more than eighteen years. For five years, until leaving Ireland for the UK (2014), I was a member of the teaching staff on the Masters Degree programme in Guidance Counselling in Dublin City University with co-responsibility for training, education and supervision of students in Guidance Counselling. I also have five years experience working as a supervisor of Guidance Counsellors in Ireland.
Certified Supervisor of Guidance Counsellors, Trinity College Dublin.
Member of the Coaching Division of the BACP
Member of the Institute of Guidance Counsellors of Ireland, IGC
Member of the William Glasser Institute of Reality Therapy Ireland and the UK.
Member of the the Career Development Institute UK, CDI(UK)
Higher Diploma Hons. (Postgraduate) Guidance Counselling., University College Dublin.
Accredited Therapist in Choice Theory Psychology, William Glasser Institute of Ireland.
Registered Member of British Association of Counsellors and Psychotherapists, BACP
Certified Online Therapist with the Institute of Online Therapy UK. (Endorsed by the BACP)
Certified in Choice Theory and Reality Therapy positive mental health counselling and psychotherapy
BA Hons. English and Philosophy, University College Dublin
Higher Diploma Education Hons. (Postgraduate), University College Dublin
Fully indemnified/insured to work with my clients online