Deirdre Judge MIACP Psychotherapist

12/06/2025

In Ireland, drink is part of the furniture. Pubs are where we celebrate and mourn. Pints are offered for bonding, for stress, for nerves, for no reason at all. We joke about “having a few” and slag off the “lightweights.” But there’s a darker side to this culture — one that many families...

17/12/2024

05/12/2024

How to survive Christmas with your family and in-laws.

Christmas is the ultimate pressure cooker for families, couples and individuals with so much stress to have a picture-perfect season.

Piece by Dr Ray O'Neill, Assistant Professor in Psychotherapy in the School of Nursing, Psychotherapy and Community Health at DCU, for RTE Brainstorm.

'George Michael's Last Christmas is festively Dickensian in its evocations of Christmas past, present and future. Last Christmas was so heartbreaking that George is determined this Christmas will be different, only to be trapped on repeat, before resignedly concluding ‘maybe next year’.'

'Mental health around Christmas is so acute, with the abounding loneliness of people unable to live up to the Hallmark Christmas ideals. We should always remember those enduring their first Christmases in bereavement, or as separated, or far from their homelands, and indeed consider if they want to know it’s Christmas time at all.'

'But often the most harrowing loneliest place, may not be grieving alone, but the grief of being at the heart of families and others and feeling so utterly and absolutely invisible and unappreciated. As Norwegian philosopher Lars Svendsen says, "what matters is not the extent to which an individual is surrounded by other people, but rather how that individual experiences their relationship to others." We may be ‘all together’ for Christmas, but some of us find these spaces distressingly divisive.'

Read more here: https://launch.dcu.ie/4icfxci



DCU Alumni DCU Global DCU Business School DCU Engineering DCU Educational Trust

27/11/2024

Every year, Hattie Kearney remembers her late son, Finn, who passed away only a couple of days after being born.

One year, she bought him a star, another she got his name tattooed on her wrist — Hattie’s way of making sure Finn will never be forgotten.

In the hospital, Hattie received the visit of Féileacáin, an organisation formed by a group of bereaved parents, which offers support to anyone affected by the death of a baby around the time of birth.

“They came in, they create these lovely memory boxes, there’s a photographer if you want them to come in and take pictures, all of this kind of stuff. They had all different types of supports for us at that time. I don’t know like what I would have done without them because they did create these memories.”

I wanted to figure out how to solve grief in a way and I just didn’t know what to do, I was completely overwhelmed and I just couldn’t sit there and be sad. I wanted to do something for him, I wanted to help in some way.”

That’s when she started sharing her experience with grief on Instagram via .

“It was basically my whole grieving story for everyone to see, in hopes that something that I would put up would maybe help other women or other families.”

26/11/2024

https://www.irishtimes.com/life-style/people/2024/11/23/cutting-off-family-members-it-had-never-occurred-to-me-that-you-could-grieve-somebody-who-was-still-alive/?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR1pGzgX89oiCR9WGNB4nAmPoezrqVuowBblAk74AVRF3HTtiThbRVfQSB0_aem_zuSovke7t2_VFAHH_1iDbQ

In an age of constant communication, the decision to go ‘no contact’ with a family member is more noticeable, but there is still sometimes too much societal judgement of those who take such a serious decision

23/10/2024