Cabin Counselling Athlone
Putting balance into your life.
Tel: +353 87 62 03 371
Areas of Focus
If you are feeling overwhelmed and unsure of the next step, start your change now.
The Cabin provides a warm, safe, and supportive environment in which my clients explore their issues and the challenges they face in life. My clients vary from adults to adolescents, and couples.
My aim is that you look forward to therapy and see the value of having a trained professional assist you with your journey.
Anxiety
Anxiety is part of most people’s lives today. However it becomes a disorder when the symptoms become chronic and interfere with our daily lives and our ability to function.
Anxiety is the body's way of responding to fear or being in danger. Often the danger is in our heads rather than in reality. Symptoms include sweaty palms, hyperventilation that leads to panic attacks, palpitations, upset stomach, and poor concentration.
Anxious thoughts keep the cycle going. With my support you will find ways to understand your anxiety and develop coping strategies to face life more calmly.
Grief and Loss
Losing a loved one can make our life feel meaningless. By rebuilding around the loss, we become whole once more but are never again the same person. Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance, and renewed meaning are some of the recognised stages of grief. They are part of a framework to help us identify what we may be feeling.
Experiencing and working through the emotions of loss and grief are an important aspect in healing. Each of us is unique and each of our relationships is unique, therefore the way we adapt to our losses is highly individual.
Loss also occurs with life events such as retirement, redundancy, health issues and relationships. Dealing with loss is never easy. With my compassionate understanding you will find support in moving through the grieving stages and come to an emotional acceptance of the loss.
Depression
Anyone can experience depression and it is an illness that affects all aspects of a person’s life. Symptoms include a number of feelings such as sadness, frustration, anxiety, disappointment, low mood and a loss of interest in life.
The quality and depth of our connections with others can have a huge payoff in terms of fighting depression and reducing the risk of recurrence.
For the treatment of depression, I use evidence based therapies include cognitive therapy and behavioural therapy.
Relationships
A good relationship is more than something we want - it’s something we need to be our healthiest, most productive selves. But at home or work, supportive, fulfilling relationships don't come automatically. They take an investment in time and energy as well as social skills that can be learned.
Sometimes relationships can break down and cause conflict and stress. I use my professional skills to provide the necessary support by building new ways of communicating and relating.
Trauma
An incident that leaves someone feeling helpless and totally unable to cope may be perceived as traumatic. Trauma, of any kind, can cause unsettling feelings and reactions. People respond differently to trauma, but sensory overwhelm is the norm.
Emotional reactions include feelings of numbness, shock, fear, anxiety, sadness, angry, guilt. Physical reactions may include sleeplessness or too much sleep, headaches, stomach upset, racing heart, intrusive nightmares, confusion and disorientation.
I treat you, the client, in recovery, honouring the individual for who you are and what you have been through. I will provide you with a second pair of eyes, and teach navigation skills to help you make sense of and manage your responses going forward.
Self-Harm Addiction​
Self-harm has been defined as ‘causing deliberate hurt to your own body’. It is something a person does to himself/herself on purpose that injures or damages their body. Reasons why people do this vary, but it is often an expression of distress, used to reduce tension and manage difficult emotions of despair, low self-worth and inadequacy.
The behaviour can be an expression of guilt or anger and sometimes is a way of communicating to people that support is needed. Self-harm can also provide a sense of control. The most common methods are cutting, poisoning, pulling out hair, burning, and hitting.
I provide professional non-judgmental support and assist my client to recognise any future triggering situations without acting on an impulse to self-harm. Working together we will find more positive ways of coping and create healthy alternative strategies to make your life more manageable.