Sharon O'Farrell - Counselling, Psychotherapy, Hypnotherapy

25/07/2026

Animals have been some of my greatest teachers.

They don't strive to become "enough." They don't measure their worth by productivity. They don't apologise for resting when they're tired, setting boundaries, or simply being who they are.

Dogs teach us joy and unconditional love. Cats remind us that rest doesn't have to be earned. Donkeys model unwavering boundaries. Horses have taught me more about presence, authenticity and honest relationship than any textbook ever could.

One of the aims of therapy isn't to create a "better" person. It's to help someone come home to themselves. Animals never left themselves.

Many of the struggles people bring into therapy are, in a sense, departures from our natural way of being:

We override exhaustion instead of resting.
We say "yes" when every part of us means "no."
We disconnect from our bodies and live almost entirely in our heads.
We compare ourselves with others and lose sight of our own path.
We seek external validation instead of trusting our inner experience.
We confuse busyness with worthiness.
Animals don't carry those layers of social conditioning.

They don't ask, "Am I enough?" They simply respond to what is happening in the present moment.

As therapists, we're not trying to make people more like animals, but we are often helping them reclaim capacities they already possess:
to feel rather than suppress,
to rest without guilt,
to recognise healthy boundaries,
to regulate their nervous system,
to trust embodied knowing,
and to live more authentically.

That resonates strongly with somatic psychotherapy. Healing isn't always about acquiring new skills. Often it's about removing what has obscured our natural capacity to regulate, connect and thrive.

Perhaps, wisdom may be about returning to what we've forgotten: to rest when we're tired, to move when we're called, to trust our instincts, to stay connected to ourselves and to stop confusing constant busyness with a meaningful life.

Nature has always been teaching us. We just need to slow down enough to notice. ✨ 🐈🐆🐕🐩🐎🐴 ✨
Images from

21/06/2026

A good 'take' on the current confusion created on social media about predictive processing. An elegant, precise, and non-pathologising way of approaching change.

https://www.ptsduk.org/the-body-still-matters/?fbclid=IwdGRzaASk6f1jbGNrBKTp9GV4dG4DYWVtAjExAHNydGMGYXBwX2lkDDM1MDY4NTUzMTcyOAABHo10p3wBehesbr9ozKIvhXImyxH8a7_A21blhhHefsg18uxGUBA-Mf6KaArz_aem_CUSUJcyvhMO5Xu2Pc47Vxg&sfnsn=mo

The body still matters The body still matters: What the new trauma research really means for PTSD and C-PTSD recovery If you’ve seen posts claiming that The Body Keeps the Score has been debunked, we want to reassure you. Nothing about your healing, your therapy, or your understanding of your own ...

17/06/2026

I just saw this morning that An Post are running a lovely initiative this year. You write a letter to your future self and they post it back to you in twelve months, free of charge.

I love the simplicity of it. Simply just a stamped envelope and your own handwriting waiting twelve months on a shelf to find you again.

What would you tell yourself right now if you knew it would land in your hands next June? The authentic version of you who expressed it onto a letter. What you're afraid of, what you're hoping for, what you can't quite say out loud.

The stirring in the gap between writing it and receiving it. A year passes and you become someone slightly different from the person who wrote those words, which is exactly what makes reading them back so interesting!

Apparently they have done this before, I just never knew! If you take part, I'd love to hear what you chose to say to your future self

An Post's 'Letter to My Future Self' campaign is back 💌

You can write a letter to yourself today and have it delivered back to you one year from now - completely free of charge.

28/05/2026

✨To feel different, we often need to become different.✨

One of the most difficult yet honest truths in therapy is this:
Many people come hoping to feel better while staying in the same patterns that keep them suffering.
We all do it.

We long for relief, but at the same time we can cling tightly to familiar ways of being, like defences, protective strategies, identities, coping mechanisms, relationship dynamics. Even when they no longer serve us.
Let's be honest and real.....Therapy isn’t magic.
No therapist can give someone the life they want, remove pain, or bypass the work of becoming. The work is deeper than symptom reduction.
It is the slow and often courageous process of:
• becoming aware
• grieving what cannot be changed
• loosening old survival patterns
• learning new ways of relating
• embodying change, not just understanding it intellectually
And yes… this can feel disappointing at first. But paradoxically, this disappointment often opens the door to something real:
Hope. Agency. Choice.
Because if change doesn’t come from outside us… it means it is possible within us.
🌿 Therapy is about becoming more fully yourself, not about becoming someone else ✨👌🏼

Sharon O’Farrell
Psychotherapy | Trauma-Trained | Embodied Approaches

09/05/2026

One of the hardest things about supporting someone in grief is realising that love alone doesn’t always tell us how to help. We often rush to reassure, fix, encourage, or make sense of pain, all because sitting beside heartbreak can feel so uncomfortable and helpless.

This beautiful infographic by Megan Devine / Refuge in Grief gently reminds us that grieving people don’t need to be corrected, cheered up, or “brought back to normal.” More often, they need presence. Safety. Permission to feel what they feel without being hurried through it.

Sometimes the most healing thing we can say is: “That sounds really hard.” “I’m here.” “You don’t have to do this alone.”

Support is not about fixing pain. It’s about staying connected to someone within it.

💛 Show up. Listen. Don’t rush the process.

19/04/2026

This applies to all relationships.... friendships too 💖

04/04/2026

Traumatic symptoms are not caused by the triggering event itself.
They stem from the frozen residue of energy that had not been resolved or discharged at that moment; this residue remains trapped in the nervous system where it can wreak havoc on our bodies, minds and spirits.

When people have been traumatised, they are stuck in paralysis - the immobility reaction or abrupt explosions of rage.

So! What is Emotional, Psychological, or Physical Trauma? According to Dr. Peter Levine, “Trauma is perhaps the most avoided, ignored, belittled, denied, misunderstood, and untreated cause of human suffering”. He describes trauma as “anything that is too much or comes too fast”.

Bessel van der Kolk describes emotional trauma as “anything that overwhelms the body’s ability to cope.”

Trauma is not held in a single event but in the way the body is able to cope with the trauma. We become traumatised when our bodies do not have the ability to respond to a perceived overwhelming threat in a way that is helpful to the body. Our bodies are then stuck or frozen in a in a loop of overwhelming stress.

Trauma can be very subtle and different for each individual and often symptoms of trauma, e.g. depression, anxiety and PTSD do not show up until years after the original trauma event.