Focused
Work
For therapists and trainees who leave sessions carrying more than they brought in — available online and in person in Wexford.
You probably already know what this is. The session ends, the client leaves, and something remains. A heaviness, a tightness, a residue that doesn't quite belong to you but has nowhere else to go. With high-activation clients, trauma, dissociation, it can be more pronounced. You absorb the room. And then you carry it into the next session, the commute home, the evening.
Most training doesn't prepare you for this. Supervision helps, sometimes. But the body keeps its own account.
This focused work is available online and in person in Wexford for therapists and trainees wanting a more body-based way of working with what accumulates through practice.
This is work I know from the inside. I've spent years sitting with clients whose systems were in high activation and years figuring out, slowly and imperfectly, how to stay present without becoming porous. I'm still refining it. What I can offer is not a solved problem, but genuine, hard-won experience of working on it and a way of helping you do the same.
What we actually work on
There are three distinct moments where things tend to go wrong for therapists carrying vicarious trauma, and each one needs a different kind of attention.
The first is during the session — noticing, in real time, when your system has started taking something on. Most of us catch this too late, if at all. Building that awareness is the first skill.
The second is regulating your own nervous system while you're still in the room. Not checking out, not performing calm, but actually finding and maintaining your own ground while staying fully present with someone else's activation. This is where somatic work becomes practically essential rather than theoretically interesting.
The third is after — clearing what came in. Not processing it as if it were yours, but releasing it. This is often the piece people find most elusive, especially when the material is heavy or the client's system was highly activated.
We work across all three, using the extended sessions to stay with what actually happens in your body — not just what you understand about it.
The nervous system does the rest.
What this looks like
This is likely for you if
- You work with trauma, high activation, or dissociation and regularly feel the cost of it in your own system
- You leave certain sessions feeling wrecked, flattened, or strangely activated, and you're not entirely sure what to do with that
- You over-attune, take on too much, find it hard to locate the boundary between your experience and your client's
- You're a trainee beginning to feel what this work actually costs and wanting to develop real skill in it early, rather than just absorbing it
- You've been in therapy yourself, done significant inner work, and there's still a layer of accumulated professional material that hasn't shifted
- You're curious about somatic work, have maybe had a first experience of it, and want to go further in a relational, unhurried context
On the mentoring
This kind of learning doesn't consolidate in a single piece of work. It needs time, repetition, and someone to check in with when something comes up in a session and you're not sure what just happened.
It's not formal clinical supervision. It's a somatically informed space to help you track what happens in your own system during and after the work, and to stay oriented as you bring that learning back into practice.
How I work
Somatic and Gestalt-informed, with careful attention to pacing and relational contact. I'm interested in what the body is doing — not as a technique, but because that's where this particular kind of material actually lives.
My practice is also shaped by my own experience of neurodivergence and queer identity, which has given me a particular sensitivity to the cost of adaptation, and to what it takes to function well on the outside while something quieter goes unattended underneath.
I work from contact, not from neutrality.
This probably isn't right if
- You're currently in acute crisis or without adequate support outside of sessions
- Sustained body-based attention tends to destabilise rather than settle you
- You're looking for a structured trauma protocol — EMDR, formal SE — rather than a relational somatic process
Questions about this work
What is vicarious trauma and how does it affect therapists?
Vicarious trauma is the cumulative impact on a therapist's own nervous system from sustained exposure to clients' trauma material. It can show up as residual heaviness after sessions, difficulty switching off, or a sense of carrying something that doesn't belong to you. This work addresses that directly — somatically, not just conceptually.
How is this different from clinical supervision?
Clinical supervision focuses on the client work. This is specifically about the practitioner's own nervous system — what is happening in your body during and after high-activation sessions, and how to work with that somatically rather than just cognitively.
Is this available online for therapists outside Ireland?
Yes. This work is fully available online and is open to therapists and trainees anywhere — Ireland, the UK, Europe, the US, and beyond.
Is in-person focused work available in Wexford?
Yes. Focused Work for therapists and trainees is available both online and in person in Wexford.
Do I need prior experience of somatic work?
No. Some practitioners come with prior somatic experience; others are curious but new to it. The work is adapted to where you are.
What does the €450 include?
The fee covers two 120-minute extended sessions and three 30-minute monthly mentoring sessions over the following three months — a contained, continuous piece of work rather than a one-off.
Two 120-minute sessions and three monthly mentoring sessions. A contained, continuous piece of work — not a one-off.
If you're not sure whether this fits, the consultation is the place to find out. We can talk through what's happening in your work and whether this format makes sense for where you are.
Book a consultation