Emma Doorish - the Transpersonal Psychotherapist

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Emma Doorish - the Transpersonal Psychotherapist

Creative psychotherapist & Founder at Emma Doorish Therapy. Workplace wellbeing facilitator and CPD Trainer. Psychotherapy, Hypnotherapy.

I have been learning and practising psychotherapy since finishing my Psychology degree in 2003. I have worked in Valencia, Barcelona, London and now I am back from where I began in my home town in Northern Ireland. I have so much passion for my profession and I am humbled and in awe of the many clients, I have had the opportunity to work with throughout the years. Every client who comes to see me

has their own unique story and place in the world and together we work through traumas, manage anxiety, grieve or let go of the past. I find that with my client we work naturally and work with what the client brings to the session in a very organic and creative fashion. I love how solution-focused practice encourages the clients to think of the outcome of therapy and to allow those best wishes to act as a guide throughout. Some clients only have a few sessions with me others stay and enjoy a monthly check-in as part of their self-care. Reiki
I had my first reiki treatment about 20 years ago in my hometown of Limavady in Northern Ireland. I connected immediately to it and after the session I felt peaceful, calm and boy did I sleep that night. It was a few years later when I started my own journey into reiki when I came across a mindfulness centre in Edinburgh. Reiki came in and out of my life quite sporadically for years, and yet it always found me. I imagine if you are reading this then you have stumbled upon reiki too. I always get asked what is reiki, and while I can give the technical answer, “Reiki is a Japanese technique for stress reduction and relaxation that also promotes healing.”, I don’t feel I am ever really answering the question. It is not something to be explained in simple terms, it is more something to be experienced. Many people experience a feeling of calmness, peacefulness during and after a reiki session. Often a practitioner can ‘pick up’ on ailments or injury. It is a beautiful way to practice self-care and to take care of your wellbeing. Reiki can help with a wide array of emotional and physical symptoms and can have some quite profound results. It can also simply be a bit of me-time where you can relax and allow the energy to do what it needs to do.

24/04/2026

Watching someone you love struggle and not knowing what to say is one of the hardest feelings.

So we fill the silence. Offer suggestions.
"You need to get out more."
"Have you tried mindfulness?"
"At least you have your health."

All said with love and conern but not touching the void.

The truth is, people in pain rarely need advice. They need someone willing to sit with them in it — without rushing them out the other side.

Often, it is just being with them in it that offers the most comfort. Watching a movie, going for a walk, just being there.

Image credited to refugeingrief.com

16/04/2026

That wired-but-tired feeling. You know the one.

You're exhausted. Properly drained. But when you finally sit down, your brain won't stop. The to-do list loops. The conversation from this morning replays. Your body is begging for rest but something in you won't let go.

It's one of the most common things people describe when they come to see me. Not big dramatic stress. Just this constant low hum of being switched on, all the time.
And we've completely normalised it. "That's just life." "Everyone's like that." "Sure I'll sleep when I'm dead."

But your nervous system isn't designed to run on high alert all the time. And when it does, it starts to show. In your sleep, your patience, your mood, your health.

The fix isn't always a holiday or a bath or a better morning routine. Sometimes it's about understanding what's keeping you stuck in that gear — and whether the way you're living is actually sustainable.

That's something worth being curious about.

15/04/2026

There's this idea that you need to hit rock bottom before therapy makes sense. That you need a big reason. A diagnosis. Something dramatic.

But that's not what I see in my practice.
Most people who contact me are functioning. They're going to work, showing up for their families, holding things together. From the outside, they look fine.

They're just tired of how much effort it takes to keep looking fine.

Something's been sitting with them for a while. Could be months. Could be years. They've managed it, worked around it, told themselves it's not that bad. And then one ordinary afternoon they think, "I can't keep doing this the same way."

And that takes more courage than most people realise.

You don't need to be falling apart to deserve support. Sometimes the right time is just the moment you stop pretending it's fine.

If you've been thinking about reaching out for a while, that's worth paying attention to.

I am available in person in NI and online and work health insurers, AXA, Aviva and Bupa.

14/04/2026

"I'm grand" might be the most expensive sentence in Northern Ireland.

We say it at work. We say it at home. We say it to the GP, to our partners, to ourselves.

And most of the time, we half believe it.

But "I'm grand" has a way of keeping everything at arm's length. The stress. The tiredness. The thing you've been carrying for months that you never quite get round to talking about.

It's not dishonesty. It's habit. We learned early that getting on with it is what you do.

The problem is, your body doesn't say "I'm grand." It says it through the tight chest, the broken sleep, the short fuse on a Sunday evening.

Sometimes the bravest thing isn't pushing through. It's letting someone in. It can even be a gentle but honest check in with self, how am I today? How is my body feeling? What do I need for myself today?

Therapy can give us a bit of space to really figure out, How am I?

10/04/2026

For years, trauma was defined by the event. The thing that happened. But that's only part of the story. It's the imprint it leaves on your nervous system. The event passes. The response can stay for years.

Two people can go through the same experience and be affected completely differently. That's not about strength or weakness. It's about what your nervous system was carrying going in, what support was around you, and whether you had the chance to process it afterwards.

This is important because a lot of people dismiss their own experiences. "It wasn't that bad." "Other people have been through worse." And so they carry something they've never named, wondering why they still feel the way they do.

If your body is still responding as though something difficult is happening — even when it isn't — that's worth paying attention to. Not because something is wrong with you. Because something happened to you, and your system is still protecting you from it.

That's what therapy creates space for. Not going back to relive it. But helping your nervous system understand that it's safe now.

If this lands for you, feel free to share it with someone who might need to hear it.

08/04/2026

Imagine a fire alarm going off in your house.
No smoke. No flames. Just the alarm, screaming anyway.

That's what anxiety can feel like in the body — and it's one of the most exhausting things to try to explain to someone who hasn't experienced it.

Your nervous system is designed to detect danger and protect you. When it works well, it raises the alarm when there's a real threat, and quietens back down when the danger has passed.

But for a lot of people — particularly those who've been through chronic stress, difficult experiences, or times in their life when they didn't feel safe — the system gets stuck. It keeps signalling threat even when everything around you is fine. Your body is reacting to a danger that isn't there anymore.

That's not you being dramatic. That's not anxiety being "all in your head." That's a nervous system that learned to stay on high alert, because at some point, that kept you safe.

The good news is that it can be retrained. The system that learned to stay braced can learn to come back down. It takes time, and it usually takes support — but it is possible.

If this resonates with you, feel free to leave a comment or get in touch.

06/04/2026

Most people have heard the word "dysregulation." Very few know what it actually means.

Your nervous system is running in the background all the time — scanning, assessing, deciding whether you're safe or not.

It has three basic states. When it senses safety, you feel calm, present, and able to connect with people.

When it senses threat, it mobilises you — heart rate up, muscles ready, adrenaline released. That's fight or flight. When the threat feels too big to fight or run from, it shuts you down. That's freeze — the flatness, the numbness, the going through the motions.

A healthy nervous system moves fluidly between these states. Activated when you need to be. Resting when the moment passes.

The problem is that life doesn't always allow for that recovery. Chronic stress, difficult experiences, or a childhood where things weren't safe — these can keep the system stuck. Not broken. Stuck.

So if you're someone who feels constantly on edge, or flattened and disconnected, or swinging between both — that's not a character flaw. That's a nervous system that learned to protect you, and hasn't had the chance to learn that it doesn't need to anymore.

That's what we work on in therapy.

If any of this resonates, I'd love to hear from you in the comments — or feel free to reach out directly.

02/04/2026

Helplessness is learned. That's what Seligman's research showed.

But here's the part that gets left out of most retellings — it could also be undone.

The dogs in his experiment had been exposed to shocks they couldn't control. Eventually they stopped trying to escape, even when escape became possible. They lay down and accepted it. Their nervous systems had learned that nothing they did made any difference.

Seligman tried everything to reverse it. Rewards. Encouragement. Showing them what to do. None of it worked.

The only thing that worked was physically guiding them through the experience of getting out. Moving their legs. Walking them through it. Until they felt — in their body, not just their head — that their actions could change something. It had to happen at least twice before they would try on their own.

The brain doesn't learn control through words. It learns through experience.

I come back to this a lot in my work. When someone has been stuck for a long time — in a job, a relationship, a way of seeing themselves — the answer is rarely more information or insight. It's small, repeated experiences of agency. Moments where something they do actually changes something. However modest. However small.

That's how the nervous system starts to trust again that effort is worth making.

Agency is learned the same way helplessness is. Gradually. Through experience. One moment at a time.

What's one area where you've noticed that shift — where something small started to change how you felt about what was possible?

01/04/2026

If you've been feeling flat, numb, or like you've just stopped caring about things that used to matter to you

In the 1960s, a psychologist called Martin Seligman made a discovery that changed how we understand the human mind. He found that when living beings are exposed to repeated threats they have no control over, something shifts. They stop trying. Not because they're weak — because their nervous system has learned that nothing they do makes a difference.

He called it learned helplessness.

It moves through three stages. First: I can't do it. Then: nothing I do matters. And eventually, in humans: it's me. I'm just like this.

Now think about your phone. War. Climate. Costs rising. Political chaos. Threat after threat, most of it completely outside your control. Your nervous system registers all of it. And over time, it quietly moves through those same stages.

That's why so many of us feel numb right now. Switched off. Not quite ourselves.

You're not broken. You're not apathetic. You're a human nervous system that has been exposed to more uncontrollable threat than it was ever designed to handle.

The question isn't what's wrong with you. It's what small experience of control can you give yourself today.

Helplessness is learned. So is agency.
💬 If this resonates, I'd love to hear your thoughts below.

30/03/2026

That numb feeling when you scroll the news has a name.

Most of us are absorbing threat after threat through our phones every day. War. Climate. Economic pressure. Political chaos. And somewhere along the way, a lot of us have just... stopped feeling much.

That's not apathy. That's not you being cold.

In the 1960s, psychologist Martin Seligman discovered something he called learned helplessness
Animals exposed to repeated, uncontrollable stress eventually stopped trying to escape — even when escape became possible. It wasn't the stress that caused it. It was having no control over it.

Your nervous system works the same way.

When threat is constant and feels outside your control, the brain eventually goes quiet to protect you. The flatness, the exhaustion, the sense that nothing really matters — that's not weakness.

That's a nervous system that has been overwhelmed for too long.

What the research also showed: the only thing that reversed it wasn't information or encouragement. It was experience.

Small, repeated moments of agency — until the brain learned again that actions could make a difference.

Helplessness is learned. So is agency.

If any of this resonates, I'd be glad to hear your thoughts below.

24/03/2026

Your nervous system is not broken.

It is doing exactly what it was built to do. The problem is the world it is trying to do it in.

Most of us are carrying more than we realise right now. And yet so many people are quietly confused about why they feel so off. So wired. So worn down.

This is not a character flaw. It is physiology.

When your nervous system never gets the recovery it was built for, it recalibrates. High alert becomes the new normal. Small things start to feel enormous.

The carousel above walks you through what is actually happening in your body — and some small, real things that can help bring it back down.

Does any of it sound familiar?

23/03/2026

Sharing something a little different today.

I've been connecting the dots between the Stanford Prison Experiment and global events — and the psychology of it all is pretty hard to ignore.

Would love to hear what you think.

Address

Aghanloo Industrial Estate
Limavady
BT490HE

Telephone

07922073781

Website

http://www.emmadoorish.com/

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