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THE MOTIVATION FOR writing this piece is a personal one. I have experienced and continue to experience mental health issues. It all came to a head in 2006 but thankfully I found the services of One in Four and was able to address my trauma as a survivor of child abuse.
Since then I have gone from being a service user to a mental health broadcaster and more recently a provider of mental health support services through Insight Matters.
One of the main reasons why I decided to co-found a support service was because prior to finding One in Four I had to go through 10 therapists before I found someone I could work with.
Most were unequipped to deal with my sexuality, migrant experience or trauma and yet they wanted to take me on as a client. I remember feeling incredibly frustrated at the time as my knowledge around mental health was limited and I didn’t know what to look for in a therapist.
Evolving the conversation of mental health
The conversation around mental health in Ireland has mainly focused on stigma as it is still the greatest barrier to stopping people from seeking help. In recent times the topic is being spoken about more and more thanks to individuals sharing their personal stories, national campaigns such as Little Things and the tireless work of charities such as Aware and Suicide or Survive.
The conversation must now evolve from simply seeking help to gaining awareness on how to go about finding the right help for you.
What is psychotherapy and counselling?
Psychotherapy and counselling gives you a regular time to think and talk about the issues, which are stopping you from living a happier and fuller life. This is carried out in a confidential, safe and non-judgemental space. It works best when a collaborative and equal relationship is formed between you and your therapist.
Here you will explore thoughts, feelings and behaviours that may be causing emotional and physical distress. Together you will discover new healthier ways of coping and letting go of past experiences, enabling you to move forward with your life.
Before you begin your search… a word of caution
At present this sector is not yet regulated but is expected to be in the next 18 months. As a result of this, it is imperative that you shop around and “interview” a therapist before you begin work.
Remember this is your mental health, just like you wouldn’t trust your car with any mechanic you shouldn’t trust any therapist with your mental health.
Where to find a counsellor or therapist?
A good place to start is the accreditation bodies responsible for maintaining the professional standards.
What are the approaches?
It’s an understatement to say there are many different forms of therapy. There are over 400 in fact. If you’re considering engaging in therapy you certainly don’t need to know about all 400. What you do need is a sense of what will work for you in a therapeutic environment and essentially in a therapeutic relationship.
Most people learn this after their first positive experience of therapy, where they felt supported and heard. Others found their therapist too passive, sitting back and saying too little. Some like a therapist with a very “hands on” problem solving approach.
One such better known approach is Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), which aims to identify negative or faulty thinking which is creating difficulty for the person, e.g. “I’m stupid; I’ll never succeed at anything”. It then looks at the knock-on behaviour – if a person thinks this way, it stands to reason that they will experience low mood, negativity, poor motivation and a host of other effects usually described and recognised as common depressive symptoms.
The foundation of a lot of training courses is person centred therapy which allows the client to work at their own pace and to speak freely, with limited use of any therapeutic techniques.
The psychodynamic approach works well in looking at older issues that may have their origin in early developmental years while the person was growing up.
The use of mindfulness practice in therapy is increasingly popular. In this the therapist helps the client become more aware but less absorbed by their internal experience. In a lot of cases we can feel carried away by our thoughts and feelings – they have control over us, versus us having a sense of being able to direct them. Mindfulness practice develops our ability to observe our thoughts and feelings without becoming consumed and overwhelmed by them.
Considering the complexity of the human being it is reasonable to say that one size will not fit all – hence the birth of the integrative form of therapy and counselling. This increasingly popular approach aims to integrate various elements from different approaches in working with one particular person.
One in four or four in four?
The statistics tell us that 1 in 4 of us will experience mental health issues at some point in our life but many believe that the issue is actually much bigger.
Losing a loved one, loss of employment, workplace stress, illness, trauma, ageing, these are just some of the circumstances that can spark mental health difficulties and these are part of life.
It makes sense to invest in ourselves, to develop our self-awareness and proactively learn coping skills now that can serve us well in the future.
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We are way too dependant on multinational companies here.
well we are a small island. what do you expect?
Way too dependant on Dublin also. A lot of the jobs lost in places like Cork, Limerick and Galway l are now being replaced with jobs in Dublin. I know that the capitals economy drives the rest of the country but it’s hardly good to have a situation where there’s mass movement of people to Dublin to get a job. It puts more pressure on Dublins housing and infrastructure and is definitely not good for the rest of the country. A more balanced recovery would be welcome
That is economics. It benefits every employee to be surrounded by other employees to share knowledge and experience, so only cities grow, and in Ireland only Dublin had that momentum.
It is not to late for the smaller cities to become attractive, but it would require large scale infrastructure investment to do this. High speed affordable commuter trains, and toll-less motorways between Cork, Galway, Limerick and Dublin would open up these cities and all surrounding areas to the international market, possibly with an interconnect to a new international airport in the Midlands.
We are a small country, but we are making it smaller by limiting mobility and thinking small term foreign investments, instead of long term gains.
I bagsie first job :) ..
3 bed semi’s in Dublin west (within the M50) selling again for close to half a million.!
90% of the Celtic Tiger is back in town.
A proper revaluation of property taxes in Dublin is going to cause riots.!
pair of numnuts
I like the idea of an international airport in the midlands, I think its something that would encourage much needed investment in the area.
Amazing how Bruton shows his face of support for job creation, yet runs like a rat when workers need support and clarification. …..i.e Clearys.
This is the good news Richard had for the Clearys staff today. There’s loads of jobs loads have yizer pick…!
The key word here is “promising”! Just like they “promised” the sun, the moon and the stars before the last election. They’re starting to do it again!!!!
They will continue to promise the sun moon and stars and they will be voted back in by the same people who fall for their lies time and time again out of fear of change. Irish politics needs an enema!
67% of voters will re-elect one of the old guard outfits of FF FG & Labour,according to a recent poll.
The rest will probably not even bother to vote-as usual.
what hope is there of ever changing anything in this country.?
Check out “Oblivious” by Mick Blake – http://www.reverbnation.com/mickblake/song/21505861-oblivious
Big coincidence these announcements are made around the same time that 400 lose their jobs in clearys.
Aren’t they the fella’s that promised a new transparency and a new way of doing politics?
Thats depressing, if the same shower gets reelected again.
An FF/FG Axis of Austerity is short odds with the Red C bookies….how’s that for a serotonin shake down!
Amazing how good we are at attracting foreign investment. Long may it continue.
According to you it’s all fgs good work haha :)
Amazing how 150,000 net emigration since 2011 has helped bring down a unemployment register that sees workers working 1 hour or more as employed! not to mention jobbridge and other scheme manipulate the figures further. We’ve a underemployed economy with a lack of trade/health workers and carers.
so additional high skilled jobs should help this!
over 1000 jobs lost this week and only about 50 odd would be IT. not much use for the health workers in Canada or our skilled labourers in Australia.
yes, this was a bad week for jobs and every jobs announcement can’t help every sector but this announcement is still a good thing. Let’s not look at this week in isolation. We are not losing these jobs every week like we were at the height of the recession.
If only the government accounted for the full picture also
There have been a massive exodus of educated workers, and while some of these new jobs will be attractive, the key word in each of these announcements is “tech support”. Looking through each of these companies press releases, the “engineering” jobs will be in the DevOps area, the financial jobs are in tax reduction, and the remainder in low cost call centre support activities. We are India in the nineties. The only innovations we will produce are in reducing the spend on operations (I.e. improving efficiency to employ less people/pay less).
While *any* job is a welcome job, we are on the verge of becoming the call centre/tax washer of the world, while the real IT and technology advances happen elsewhere. Not a good policy for the future.
It’s not amazing. If you could get away with paying a miniscule amount of tax, you’d set up shop here too.
Because the corrrupt government only takes 3% corporation tax from them thats why. They are only here because we are allowing them to rape us.
irish pride 380 clerys 500 this week alone
I see the usual mob of whiners are out in force. Talk about Irish begrudgery. What happened in Clerys was an utter disgrace but should not be used to denigrate the arrival of additional jobs. The numbers of people in actual domestic employment is growing and that is unreservedly good news.
What we need now is a genuine recovery in our construction industry in order to meet the demand for homes. That will significantly boost employment in a real and sustainable way quite unlike the Celtic Tiger when over priced-housing output exceeded any likely demand. Construction of housing is way below where is needs to be, even from an historical perspective. There are many reasons for this but it is clear that demand outstrips supply and this is leading to increased home prices.
To read some people posting here any good economic news is actually bad news. I can only assume that the reasons for such attitudes are largely ideological and have nothing to do with reality.
Nothing to do with reality? The reality is our employment rate is flawed. your supposedly employed if you work more than 1 hour. (I’m only garunteed 6 in mine and I need full time work to save or plan ahead) then you have net emigration of 150,000 people since 2011 along with a massive brain drain, jobbridge manipulating the figures further. Our construction sector is set up similar to what it was before the celtic tiger. There are no apprenticeship incentives, no apprenticeship quotas, not even 5% of the social housing announced and we still have half of suicides coming from the contrition sector. I aknowledge your optimistic but maybe to the extent that you’ve swollowed the cool aid without checking the reality.
Good man Kevin you know your stuff! The ones saying everyone needs a reality check when in fact there the ones that are deluded
So what your saying is the biggest recession in living memory can be reversed overnight? Or is a slow steady recovery how we get out of the mess we are in (which would mean this is another step along that road and along with many of the other jobs announcements will reduce brain drain, lower under employment and emigration).
Why on earth would anyone want a recovery in housing construction? That so has long sailed, and it proved to be unsustainable. If we are to resurrect construction jobs, it will have to be in infrastructure, and at today’s rates, not Celtic tiger rates.
We have plenty of housing stock – we just have no way to get to them.
Alien8 the housing sector needs to build more houses. That’s a fact. Current normal housing demand is not being fulfilled. We don’t have plenty of houses where we need them which is largely in Dublin. The notion that because we had a building boom we should not build houses again is absurd. We need houses but they are not being built. If they are built tens of thousands of workers will be sustainably employed to meet what is normal demand in our economy.
@cooperguy
It’s not a recession. It’s a consequence of theft from the Irish people. They created the mess and now want credit for clearing up their own sh*te
John, it is not just because we had a housing boom that we should not do it again, it is because we had an unsustainable housing boom that cashed out early and left everyone in it’s wreck. The assertion that we should build houses to give employment to a localised demand shortage is another unsustainable plan. There is plenty of housing within 100km of Dublin that would support the current workforce, but there is no viable, affordable transport to get to them and no common but features to attract people there.
Left to developers, we would have maximum profit, smaller, high density units with minimal infrastructure in already poorly served suburbs. This then leads to poor quality of life, social problems and eventually unemployment and a debt issue for unsellable properties.
We have plenty of land, potential for good transport and a strong political case for infrastructure and community development (schools, facilities – not just pubs, off licences and bookies you see around the new suburbs). We can grow our cities outwards as well as upwards, we just need political will to do it.
Whose constituency are they in .
Extraordinary , that our An Taoiseach gets more take home pay then the The USA President . An extraordinary €1.1 Milion in less then Four years .
A man who won’t even come on TV , or Radio, to be interviewed and is truly hated from one end of The Country to the other , for the multiple corruption, that has occurred, under his watch !
He doesn’t get more take home pay than the US president, Thats actually wrong. But don’t let the facts get in the way….
Wexford is Howlin and that braying rabid donkey Paul Kehoe (F G Chief Whip). Interesting that although Wexford has two cabinet members it was ignored by the latest east coast tourism initiative and has the highest rate of unemployment and lowest rate of third level attendence. The blueshirts don’t like us much.
Jerry OSullivan or Treasa Murphy would eat him without salt .
You could also compare the pay of politicians in ireland to that of Singapore – there the prime minister makes about €1.5 million euro a year. Public officials can make up to €300,000 a year. Singapore is much more efficient than the USA – and is probably what we should be aiming for. (We’re both small open economies on the edge of a continent)
Surprising enough, high pay attracts capable people. Perhaps we should be more aggressive with our public officials – have fewer, highly qualified, better paid – resulting in better service.
Anyway, everyone knows the president of the U.S. makes their money afterwards – look at the millions that Clinton makes from public speaking.
That didn’t work out too well for us David with Bertie and Biffo.
I remember when Bertie got a €38k pay rise in one year bringing his wage without expenses to €310,000 just before things went tits up.
Still…….Enda is the third highest paid leader in the EU and sure isn’t he worth it….(pass the sick bag)
David – George Bush Economics – The Trickle Down Koch Brothers Variety of Disaster Economics – The FG Rich get Richer – while everyone else just get poorer – just like now – David Higgins ?
How dare these foreigners come in here and create employment, have they no one to do the jobs in their own country. Let them f#ck off back home and leave us alone.
His pose in the last picture, it identical to mine every time I hear his name.
No proper counterbalance to the Dublin Economy in this country, which will leave us pretty vulnerable when the circle of capitalism turns once again.
It’s not bad news, just another sign that as jobs are allocated to Dublin, the rest of the country’s economy is shrinking.
Why are most of the farms located in rural Ireland? Discrimination against city dwellers is the obvious answer but most people will not say it because of the pc lobby.
Tap dont be silly now!
Here’s a few crumbs don’t forget us come election time.
Lies, lies and more lies
Kenny and crew have zero credibility left, they have been nothing but a cancer to this country
His magical 5 point plan he had to get elected turned out to be more of a middle finger up to the normal people of this country when he got into power
Whingers whinging, depressing dimwits.
Aren’t ye just brilliant!!!! Why don’t ye show us ye really mean it now by cutting taxes.
They can well afford to smile. How much is it costing the country to get these new jobs all of a sudden? Pair of obnoxious twits
Them two gobshits will be out of a job after next election hopefully ! But will sail into the sunset with big fat pensions like the rest of them make you sick to the pit of your stomach !
Turns out that people with in demand skills are more likely to get a job than whingers. Who knew?
What skills as there are many blackspots for jobs in Ireland and all the key skills going is no good if there are no jobs?
It kinda some sort of lame, limited thinking strategy for this gov that, always after big news of job losses, straight after, we always get this hype from the gov about a couple of hundred new jobs created this week bulls&€t.
Vote Yes for Jobs get rode get desperate and work for peanuts.. Beasts of Labour pay yere taxes and yere bills and then you dont have to worry about us but ye will have to worry about yereselves.
Seriously a Fianna gael Promise is a bit like looking for the pot of gold under the rainbow. A complete fantasy.
Election jobs, yippee :-)
Ye still don’t fool u lads….
“Govts don’t determine where the jobs go. Private industry does”
Hence the government want to eliminate obstacles to multi nationals locating in rural areas.
They want to tax the residents of towns and cities to death, with their new water and property taxes.
Then they can provide fast broadband, and non toxic, potable water for the new factories in Strokestown etc.!
Sean – your world must be very unhappy. You seem to major on finding the negatives in any positive statement.
So you call the lies they told to get elected “positive”. Their liars.
All growth on the JOBS front is very welcome, but remember there are 26 counties in this country, so jobs should be also going to all areas , not just a chosen few ,
The government come to all people for Votes and Taxes so they are entitled to Job
Govts don’t determine where the jobs go. Private industry does. This is not a centrally planned economy. The notion that you can distribute industrial jobs equally and proportionately is nonsense. What you are seeing in Ireland is the norm worldwide.
“The government come to all people for Votes and Taxes so they are entitled to Job”
They come to some more than others.
A city dweller will pay far higher property taxes in his 3 bed semi, than a family living in a spacious “one off” Mc mansion built on any rural, bogland hillock.
The property tax should have been based on the size of the house, as it is in most European countries.
That would have offended rural voters of course.!
Perish the thought.!
Where is property tax based on the size of a house?
I swear some of ye are never happy.. fact is the jobs picture has been a real success point of this government. I am not a FG or Labour devotee necessarily and a lot of things they have made a right balls of no doubt. But credit where credit is due at the same time.. and job creation is one of those plus points for me.. Dublin is always going to get the lions share.. we are a small island with a very sparse demographic outside of the main cities. It will never be as attractive so set up a site far away from main transport links and support services… Fact of modern commerce and business requirements… Done!
Cleary’s…
No jobs can come here without Merkels special seal of approval…
A comedy duo, they do this whenever there are lay offs, jobs for the future but no manufacturing jobs for now unless you went to college or can thump a keyboard?
have your say