Guidance Counsellor · Dublin
Most of us aren’t held back by our circumstances. We’re held back by what we quietly believe we’re allowed to want. My work starts there.
What people say
I’d been stuck in the same spot for years, always telling myself I’d sort it “eventually.” A couple of sessions in and I was actually moving — not because Donncha pushed me, but because he helped me see I’d been waiting for permission that was only ever going to come from me. I’m doing the thing now. Still can’t quite believe it.
I’m great at planning and useless at starting — story of my life. Donncha cut straight through that. I left with one small step I couldn’t talk my way out of, and once I’d done it the rest stopped feeling so massive.
I came in thinking I needed a new career plan. What I actually needed was to see that the thing holding me back wasn’t my CV — it was the story I kept telling about myself. Once that shifted, everything else got a lot clearer.
This wasn’t surface-level stuff. Donncha gently helped me look at the bits I’d been avoiding for a long time — the fears, the old patterns — and somehow it never felt heavy. I walked out lighter, and a bit braver.
I’d written off the work I actually wanted as “not for someone like me.” Donncha never once let that slide. He helped me name what I really wanted and take it seriously — and I’m further down that road now than I ever thought I’d get.
A bit about me
The ceiling on most people’s lives isn’t money, or luck, or time. It’s identity.
I’m Donncha. Before I ever sat across from anyone as a guidance counsellor, I worked in bike shops, garages and gyms, and I gave tours for a living. I came to further education later than most, then did a Masters in Guidance Counselling at DCU. These days I work in adult and further education.
The work taught me the thing it all comes down to: the quiet story people carry about the kind of person they’re allowed to be is the real limit. Change that story, and everything downstream of it starts to move — the choices, the steps, the life.
What you actually want
Name it, and here’s what becomes possible:
I’m a qualified guidance counsellor with a Masters from DCU. Over the years I’ve helped hundreds of people into the work they wanted, out of the patterns holding them back, and into who they really are.
The consultation
We start where you’re standing and work out, plainly, what’s actually holding you back. It’s rarely what you think it is.
You’re at a crossroads, you sense you want something different, and you haven’t given yourself permission to name it yet.
You want a quick CV tidy-up or a list of job titles. This is identity-first work — the inside before the outside.