Psychotherapy & Counselling
Face to Face in Dublin & Online
Helping you make sense of your experiences and create meaningful, lasting change.
Do you find yourself feeling stuck, overwhelmed, or returning to the same patterns in your relationships or everyday life? Perhaps you're struggling with anxiety, low mood, or a sense that something isn't quite right. You may already understand a lot about yourself, yet still wonder why certain thoughts, feelings, or experiences continue to repeat.
I'm Emma Stakelum, an accredited psychotherapist offering face-to-face and online psychotherapy for adults and young people. I work from a psychoanalytically informed perspective, providing a warm, confidential, and professional space where you can speak openly without judgement. My aim is to help you understand not only what you are experiencing, but also why these difficulties may have developed and how they continue to influence your life today.
Many people begin therapy seeking relief from anxiety, depression, relationship difficulties, stress, grief, trauma, or significant life changes. While reducing emotional distress is an important part of therapy, my work also focuses on understanding the experiences, relationships, and recurring patterns that may be contributing to these difficulties. Together, we explore these with curiosity rather than judgement, helping you make sense of your experiences and develop a deeper understanding of yourself. As this understanding grows, many people find they feel less restricted by familiar ways of coping and better able to make meaningful and lasting changes in their lives.
Therapy is a collaborative process, and there is no expectation to know where to begin or to have all the answers. My role is not to tell you what to do, but to listen carefully, ask thoughtful questions, and work alongside you to better understand your unique experiences. Whether this is your first experience of therapy or you are returning after previous counselling, I aim to provide a space where you feel heard, understood, and supported in exploring whatever has brought you to therapy.
What is Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy?
Psychoanalysis is a, form of talk therapy dedicated to uncovering the powerful, often hidden forces that shape our emotional lives, relationships, and suffering. Its core premise is that the root of our most persistent problems does not lie in our conscious thoughts, but in the unconscious mind.
Unlike therapies that focus on modifying surface behaviour or managing immediate symptoms, psychoanalysis aims for structural change. The method uses free association,inviting the client to speak about what that comes to mind without censorship, to bypass the individual's usual psychological defences.
The goal is to bring the unconscious into the light of consciousness. This process illuminates the deeply buried memories, conflicts, and desires often stemming from early life experiences, that fuel our current patterns of behaviour, repetitive struggles (known as the compulsion to repeat), and emotional pain. By giving voice and symbolic representation to these repressed forces, the individual gains the self knowledge necessary to break painful cycles and achieve genuine psychic freedom.