I came to this work the long way around.
I was raised in Ireland and studied to become an engineer — first aeronautical, then software — and spent a number of years inside the corporate world. The work asked me to be a smaller, less full version of myself, and I came to realize I didn’t want to spend my life that way. Eventually, I left Ireland and came to Canada to study photography. I spent the next chapter of my life as a freelance photographer and filmmaker, paying close attention to people and to light.
Therapy came after that. I trained for my Masters in Counselling at City University here in Vancouver, returning to school as a middle-aged student. The most important thing I learned wasn’t a technique or a model. It was that the relationship between therapist and client matters more than almost anything else. Decades of research point to this, but it’s the kind of finding that’s easy to nod at and then forget. I haven’t forgotten it. It’s the centre of how I work.
Growing up in Ireland, I found myself in a culture that didn’t make much room for feelings or vulnerability. Making sense of my own inner life took time, curiosity, and the right relationships. That experience shapes how I sit with clients — without judgment, without performance, and with real respect for how hard it can be to begin.
What this looks like in practice is probably simpler than you’d expect. I don’t take notes during sessions. I want to be fully present with you, not half-watching my pen. I try to speak less than my instinct tells me to, because I’ve learned that the silences are often where something real happens. I aim to be the same person in the room that I am everywhere else — warm, curious, sometimes funny, occasionally direct. The Irish inheritance shows up there.