Sharon O'Farrell - Counselling, Psychotherapy, Hypnotherapy

13/11/2025

“NO” - THE MOST POWERFUL HEALING WORD

No. I won’t abandon myself anymore.
No. I won’t carry what isn’t mine.
No. I won’t pretend I’m fine so you can stay comfortable and avoid yourself.
No. I won’t shrink to keep the peace.
No. I won’t swallow my truth to avoid being too much.
No. I won’t betray my nervous system anymore.
Saying NO is not selfish. It is sacred.
It is the soul remembering its own worth.
NO is how you stop the trauma cycle mid-sentence.
NO is how you end the ancestral pattern of self-abandonment.
NO is how you finally come home to yourself.
And here is the deeper secret:
This kind of NO is actually a YES.
A YES to life. A YES to raw truth. A YES to alignment.
A YES to the part of you that refuses to disappear anymore.
Your softest NO is louder than years of people-pleasing.
Your trembling, nausea-inducing NO is braver than any spiritual concept.
So say it. Type it. Whisper it. Shout it.
Shake through it if you have to.
Your life will rearrange itself around your sacred NO.
The moment you say YES to yourself.
- Jeff Foster

16/10/2025

You will be too much for some people. Too loud. Too big. Too fierce. Too quiet. Too deep. Those are not your people. Don't shrink yourself to make others feel comfortable. Be your unique, beautiful, imperfect self

15/10/2025

Sometimes we can't see our own light and that's okay. We all have moments when we doubt ourselves, when we feel small, or when we've forgotten our own worth.

That's why the people we surround ourselves with matter so much. The ones who hold space for us when we're struggling. The ones who believe in us even when we've lost faith in ourselves. The ones who gently remind us of our strength when we can't remember it.
If you're going through one of those times right now, I hope you have at least one person in your corner who sees you. I mean truly sees you. And if you're struggling to find that person, please know that therapy can be that space too.

You are more than your doubts. You are more than this difficult moment.

And you deserve to be surrounded by people who help you remember that 💚✨

14/10/2025

This Nate Postlethwait quote really captures something very important about trauma healing that I think we don't talk about enough.

Trauma doesn't work on anyone else's timeline. It doesn't care that years have passed, or that someone thinks you "should" be grand by now.

When you've lived with something in your body for years (maybe even decades) without the words for it, without support, without being believed... that's not something you just "get over" because time passed.

And when you finally found the courage to speak about it, only to be met with blame or dismissal? That adds another layer entirely.

Healing happens at its own pace. It needs safety, patience, and compassion. It doesn't operate on timelines or expectations.

If this resonates with you today, please know: wherever you are in your healing journey is exactly where you need to be. You're not too slow, too sensitive, or too much. You're healing in your own time, and that's more than okay. This is how it works.

You're doing better than you think. 💚

10/10/2025

Today is World Mental Health Day 2025!

Mental health work means showing up on the days when you don't want to but it also means being gentle and compassionate with yourself too. It's sitting with uncomfortable feelings instead of numbing them. It's recognising patterns that have protected you for years and slowly, painfully learning new ones.

In therapy, we often talk about "doing the work" but what does that actually mean? It means getting curious about why you react the way you do. It means noticing the critical voice in your head and asking whose voice it really is. It means learning that the coping mechanisms that helped you survive difficult circumstances might now be keeping you stuck.

Here's what I want you to know: healing means you'll develop a different relationship with your struggles. It doesn't mean you won't struggle again, but you'll learn to respond rather than react. You'll build capacity to tolerate distress without being consumed by it. You'll recognise you can hold multiple truths at once, that you're doing your best also that there's room to grow.

If you're in therapy, keep going, especially when it feels pointless. Growth often happens in those murky middle months when nothing seems to be changing. If you're considering therapy, the fact that you're thinking about it matters, because ambivalence is often the first step toward change.

And if professional support isn't accessible to you right now, know that healing happens in many ways: through connection, through creativity, through movement, through small daily practices of self-compassion. There's no single "right" path.

Mental health isn't something we achieve and check off a list. It's something we tend to, continuously, with patience and imperfect effort.

Today and every day, you're allowed to be a work in progress.

09/10/2025

I came across this beautiful wisdom from John O'Donohue this afternoon and it really spoke to me.
It is a beautiful reminder that our truest belonging is found in that quiet, steady place inside ourselves. Within the ground of our own soul, as O'Donohue so beautifully puts it.

When we are anchored there, connected to who we genuinely are, the inevitable rejections and disappointments of life can't shake us to our core. We are home within ourselves.

Of course we still have an innate longing, need and desire for connection or community. That's human nature. However, it also means that we're not desperately seeking that in order to fill a void or prove our worth. We come to our relationships as ourselves, not as who we think we should be.

That's the real work. Finding our way back to that interior ground, especially when life has taught us to look everywhere else for validation. It is a homecoming worth every step of the journey.
Wishing you all a gentle ease into the weekend. 💚

08/10/2025

Sorrow prepares you for joy.

It violently sweeps everything out of your house, so that new joy can find space to enter. It shakes the yellow leaves from the bough of your heart, so that fresh, green leaves can grow in their place.

It pulls up the rotten roots, so that new roots hidden beneath have room to grow. Whatever sorrow shakes from your heart, far better things will take their place.

~ Rumi

27/09/2025

You know that feeling when someone's hurting, and all you want to do is make it better? It's natural, isn't it? We Irish have always been ones to reach for the kettle, offer a shoulder or search for just the right words to ease someone's pain. But sometimes the kindest thing we can do is resist the urge to make it all okay.

When grief comes calling (and it comes for us all eventually) those well-meaning phrases can feel like stones thrown at an already broken window. "Everything happens for a reason," "They're in a better place", "At least you had them for as long as you did."

Sound familiar? I know these words come from love, but they often land like a door slammed shut just when someone needs it wide open. Grief deserves to be honoured, not hurried along. There is no silver lining to be found when your world has been turned upside down and that's perfectly okay. It's also normal in grief.

So what can we do instead? We can show up. We can sit in the uncomfortable silence. We can bring soup or homebakes without being asked, remember the difficult anniversaries and say their loved one's name out loud. We can create space for the tears, the anger, the confusion..... all of it.

Your presence is the present. Your willingness to witness their pain without trying to fix it is more powerful than any carefully crafted words. Sometimes the most healing thing you can say is simply, "This is awful, and I'm here."

Have you experienced this yourself? Those moments when someone tried to cheer you up when all you needed was someone to acknowledge that yes, this really is as hard as it feels? You're not alone in that. And neither are the people you're supporting through their grief.

Let's get better at sitting with the hard stuff together and drop the 'toxic positivity'. What has your experience been? I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

24/09/2025

"Had I not created my whole world, I would certainly have died in other people's." - Anaïs Nin

Sometimes we find ourselves drowning in expectations, judgments and definitions that aren't our own. We lose sight of who we are in our innate need to belong or fit in to how others want us to be.

Therapy offers a space to dive deep and discover your authentic self and to create a world that truly fits who you are, not who you think you should be. It's about learning to breathe in your own truth rather than suffocating in borrowed dreams.

Your inner world deserves to be explored, honoured and lived from. You don't have to remain submerged in someone else's vision of your life.

Ready to surface? Let's explore what your authentic world looks like together.

18/09/2025

When someone's in survival mode, telling them to "just let go" isn't the answer they need to hear.

People hold on tight when they're struggling because they need something (anything!) to feel secure. They'll only be ready to release their grip when they've found something else they can trust to support them.

In my experience, when difficult memories surface strongly, people need reassurance that this pain or experience won't be as devastating as it was when their world first turned upside down without warning.

One of the most healing thing we can offer is patience while someone finds their footing again. The most important takeaway is that "Letting go" is a process, dependent on many factors relating to the individuals circumstances. It's ok that it might take some time. Recovering a sense of safety first, is important 💫✨💖

What does support look like to you when you're going through tough times? 💚

10/09/2025

The difference matters. 🧠

While AI chatbots are designed to keep you scrolling and engaged, therapy is designed around your well-being and growth. Real healing happens in relationship with someone trained to recognise what you need, even when it's not what feels comfortable in the moment. Your mental health deserves more than an algorithm and it most certainly deserves genuine human connection and professional expertise.

Learn more about why ChatGPT shouldn't be your therapist: https://at.apa.org/a51dd1

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/14HgndmfM8E/

Unlike mental health professionals, chatbots are designed to keep you engaged—not necessarily to support your well-being.

Learn more about why ChatGPT shouldn't be your therapist: https://at.apa.org/a51dd1

08/09/2025

Of course it may be an instinctual response to want to comfort someone in grief by encouraging them to look forward and to find hope in what's ahead. But what many people don't realise, is that your loved one isn't just missing from today. They're missing from tomorrow, next week, next Christmas and every other milestone yet to come.

When someone we love dies, yes, we lose them in that moment but what many people forget is that we lose them from every single moment that comes after. Over time the ripples of grief and the subsequent fallout continue into a future we do not have with them. There is nowhere this absence does not reach.

That empty chair at the dinner table will be empty at every family gathering. The phone that doesn't ring with their voice won't ring tomorrow either. The future you had planned together has disappeared completely.

This is about understanding that grief isn't just about the past. It's about recognising that loss reaches into every corner of our lives, including the life we're still living. This isn't about being negative or staying stuck. However, the reality is that we live in a largely grief-illiterate world that often just don't get it.

The piercing edges of that absence may soften with time but the love remains. That's not something to fix or get over or ‘be strong’ for. Strong for whose benefit?

If you're walking this path, it's completely normal to feel the heaviness of all those future moments without your person. Your grief makes perfect sense. Everyone grieves differently and individually. There is no right or wrong. The absence feels so big because the love was so big.

And if you're supporting someone in grief, remember that there is much more to grief than losing the person they loved (as if that's not already enough!). They're missing who they would have become together.