Maria Dowling Therapy - A psychotherapist and counsellor in Dublin 13
About Maria
Qualifications and Registration
B.A. (Mod.) Soc. (Hons.), M.A., M.I.A.C.P
I have been in the field of counselling and psychotherapy since 1993, having achieved a Masters degree in Counselling that year in Denver, Colorado. I also hold a social science (Sociology) degree from Trinity College Dublin.
I have been an Accredited Member of the Irish Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy since 1997 and I am also an Accredited Supervisor with them.
Therapeutic Experience
For over thirty years now, I have worked with a wide range of issues, be it current crises that arise in a person’s life and require immediate and direct assistance, to the more developmental and cumulative disturbances in a clients life. Sometimes a recent event propels a person towards help. Sometimes a person’s trouble or suffering has been caused by years of being neglected, demeaned, or abused.
I worked for the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre for eleven years, gaining extensive experience in crisis management, sexual abuse and violence recovery and general trauma counselling and therapy.
I worked for three years with an organisation providing assistance to long-term unemployed men and women and therefore have a good understanding of the importance of work and productivity in a person’s life and how work issues impinge on the health and well-being of someone. I have worked with the effects of workplace bullying and harassment and bullying in general for many years.
Therapeutic Approach
My therapeutic approach is described as ‘Integrative’, as I draw on a range of creative approaches when working with clients. I am ‘Person-centred’ in my approach, in that I do not hold an ‘expert’ stance with my clients. I have great faith in my client’s ability to move in the direction of health, once they are given the respect and safety needed to explore what is troubling them. I am ‘Psycho-dynamic’ in the sense that I may seek to explore the unconscious motivation which may drive how people behave. I am ‘Humanistic’, as I believe in the potential for personal growth and change that can be achieved in a respectful, non-judgemental therapeutic relationship. I also draw from the ‘Gestalt Model’, in that I focus very much on what is happening in the ‘here and now’ of my experience of my client in a session and use this to increase their awareness of themselves and the process we are in together.
Whether we are working in addressing a current situation directly, or exploring past events in a person’s life, the focus of my work with clients is always to address current struggles and make for a better future. The events of the past are done and over. They only have life and power, if messages from them and pain, is carried into the present and is affecting a person’s current life. We only go back to the past to throw light on the present and to make the future more hopeful and less painful.
