Dublin Psychotherapy and Counselling - Fitzwilliam Psychotherapy Centre

About Us

Theresa Merrigan

Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist

Theresa Merrigan works as a Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist, Clinical Supervisor and Training Analyst with private practice consulting rooms at 20 Fitzwilliam Place, Dublin 2 and Galway City Centre. She is a full member of the IFPP, ICP and holds the European Certificate in Psychotherapy.

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Paul Moore

Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist

Paul is a psychoanalytic psychotherapist in private practice in Dublin 2, Kilkenny, and Carlow. He is a Training Analyst with the Irish Institute of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy, providing personal therapy for candidates in clinical psychotherapy training. Paul also lectures in psychotherapy at Trinity College Dublin.

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John O’ Connor

Clinical Psychologist and Psychotherapist

John has over twenty years experience in working psychotherapeutically in the private and public sectors. His work is psychoanalytic in nature, with a particular emphasis on how experience has developed and on those ways that have developed.

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Denis Mahoney

MSc in Integrative Counselling and Psychotherapy

Denis is a trained psychotherapist, with a Masters in Integrative Counselling and Psychotherapy from University College Cork. He is an accredited member of the Irish Association of Humanistic & Integrative Psychotherapy (IAHIP) and the Irish Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (IACP).

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We have set up Fitzwilliam Psychotherapy to offer psychotherapy in comfortable, pleasant and open environments with Centres located in Dublin City Centre, South East Wicklow, Carlow/Kilkenny and the Galway/Roscommon/Mayo border. Psychotherapy is about helping the person to further develop a sense of meaning, purpose and direction in life; at the same time, and toward these ends, it involves looking at things that are usually difficult to consider or what we have put to one side and of which we are no longer even aware.
At each of the centres, we work exclusively with adults and usually on a one-to-one basis. While we at times receive referrals from professionals, we work mostly with people who make contact with us directly. We also offer psychotherapy online.

While many of our clients seek psychotherapy because they experience anxiety or depression at a level, people vary greatly in what brings them to seek a consultation. A major event in life may call for a re-evaluation of things in general. Feelings of guilt or shame can be very powerful and call for some exploration. Many people become stuck in their lives and unable to make the kinds of changes they wish to make. For many people, relationships may be difficult; there may be a fear of intimacy, feelings of intense anxiety with others and experiences that are difficult to come to terms with, in spite of the passage of time. At times, our suffering gets caught in our bodies and, if we do not actually become physically ill, we become very concerned about physical illness or the possibility of illness, which can become highly debilitating.

Though we have all trained as psychotherapists, we have each areas of particular experience and interest.

What is Psychotherapy

Psychotherapy is about making sense of our experience and, over time, becoming aware of parts of our psychological lives that may not be fully conscious to us – things that have been forgotten or that have been set aside because it has been too painful for us to look at them. Our making sense is not always about a change in how we think about things but it is more about how we experience things in a fuller and wider way.

What brings someone into this kind of experience is often only a starting point for a wider and deeper exploration of one’s life as a whole. Psychotherapy is about exploring our own individual experience and people usually seek this when experience is painful. It involves looking at our lives in a broad way and finding connections between parts of our lives. While psychotherapy is in part about helping to resolve certain kinds of symptoms (like depression or anxiety), it is also about developing a fuller life experience.

Psychotherapy helps us to make sense of our experience and to link what we have experienced in our lives, our current situations and our aspirations for the future. It involves a taking of time and of space to develop a fuller sense of one’s life and where one has come to in this.

Our experience of life can leave us feeling fearful of everyday things and our lives can be limited as a result. It may be difficult to form relationships as it may be hard to put energy into work or to complete projects. For many people, such experience means that life is narrowed and things seem to remain unchanged. Hopes for development in life are suspended. Our confidence is affected by messages from childhood – from within the family, from teachers, from peers – and this often interferes with how we go about our lives later. We may hold back from things that would leave us feeling exposed or inadequate.

People often experience a sense of being caught or stuck in their lives; they feel trapped by the circumstances in their lives but also by their own ways of doing things. It is difficult to shift out of such patterns and cycles by our will alone and by the time we begin psychotherapy, we have often tried many other things.

Prior to starting psychotherapy, we meet once or twice for consultations to give an opportunity to explore the fit between what our prospective clients are looking for and what we offer. We at Fitzwilliam Psychotherapy recognise the importance of this as a way of thinking through what you are looking for and what this might involve in terms of your existing commitments. We recognise that the decision to start psychotherapy is often a major one and that there is an investment at a number of levels in doing this; for this reason, it is important to think through what you are seeking from this work. For this reason, we are happy to suggest other psychotherapists, counsellors or others in the helping professions should it become apparent that you are seeking something that we do not provide. We encourage our clients to attend weekly and, in order to develop a consistency in this, at the same time each week.

We are also trained in a tradition of psychotherapy that emphasises the value of this work in helping the person to come toward a fuller experience and that, toward this end, different parts of experience – from our earliest years, through our childhood and into our adulthood – are relevant to our lives. This work helps to link up our experience and, in this, helps to relieve those concerns. The purpose of longer-term work is to help our client to look at their lives as a whole and to help to deal with issues that run deeply into their lives. While it may be possible to make a choice quickly in life in some instances, the kind of change that brings about a shift in our quality of life usually takes a much longer time. This change involves something deeper and means often that we need to look at all different aspects of our lives.

What has taken place in our lives may continue to have a strong effect on how we experience things, what we do in our lives and what is difficult for us. There may be trauma. There may be loss. There may be rejections. There may be many things that have left us feeling wounded. We may not have had the chance to discuss our experiences up until now as we have tried to get on with our lives. The pace of our lives may have made it difficult to deal with these up to this point but there is now a space to make these changes.

About Us

What is Psychotherapy

Psychotherapy explained by Fitzwilliam Psychotherapy

Consultations at Fitzwilliam Psychotherapy

Confidentiality

Change

Making Sense

Events

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