Counselling for Adult Survivors of Childhood Sexual Abuse — In Person in Dublin

You may have reached this page because something from the past still feels close

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Maybe you've carried this quietly for years, while building a life that looks steady from the outside. Or maybe something recent has brought it closer to the surface than it's been in a long time — a headline in the news, a documentary, another person's story that landed closer to home than you expected.

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Sometimes it's quieter than that. A memory surfacing out of nowhere. Or simply that it's become too hard to keep holding this on your own, after years of managing it quietly and well.

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Maybe you told someone once, a long time ago, and weren't believed — or weren't really heard — and some part of you has been carrying that alongside everything else since.

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Either way, if you're here, some part of you is wondering whether this can be different.

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Counselling can offer real support to adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse, even many years after it happened. It won't undo what happened, but it can help you understand how it's still shaping your life now, and begin to loosen its grip. Many women and men find that, with time and at the right pace, the experience stops running the show and becomes something they carry, rather than something that controls them.

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How to recognise the impact of it in your life now

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On the outside, you may look composed — holding down work, relationships, a full life. Privately, it can be a different story.

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You might recognise some of these in yourself:

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- Reactions that feel too big for the moment they happen in, and leave you confused or ashamed afterwards

- Feeling disconnected from your body, or constantly braced in it, as if you're never quite off duty

- Trust that feels hard-won, or impossible, in relationships that matter most to you

- A sense that part of you got left behind at a certain age, and never quite caught up to where you are now

- Shame that doesn't feel like it should be yours to carry, but won't shift however hard you try to reason with it

- Numbing out through busyness, screen time, alcohol, or anything else that quiets things for a while

- Struggling to know what you actually feel, or need, in the moment it matters

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This isn't a character flaw, and it isn't you being "too sensitive" or "too much." Your body learned to protect you the only way it knew how at the time, and in many ways it's still doing that job — long after the danger has actually passed. Your body is trying to speak to you; this work is about learning to listen to it, at your own pace.

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What you may be hoping for

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Women and men who come to this work are often hoping for similar things: to feel less controlled by what happened, to trust their own reactions again, to feel present in their relationships and in their own body instead of braced or absent from it. Some are hoping, simply, to stop being ambushed by responses they can't quite explain to themselves or anyone else.

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How counselling may help

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This work starts with what's difficult for you right now — not by asking you to retell everything from the beginning. We cannot change what happened. What we can do is look at how it's still showing up, and work toward healing what's still carrying that weight.

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Part of the work is gently making sense of your experiences together — noticing where trauma responses may still be quietly shaping your life, and where the adult you are today has been overshadowed by a younger, more frightened part. Over time, the aim is to help those parts feel less separate and more integrated, so you're responding to your life as it is now, rather than to what happened then.

Nothing here is good or bad — it's information. Your reactions made sense at the time. Understanding them is often the first step towards changing your relationship with them.

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What sessions involve

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Sessions are 50 minutes, in person. In an early session, there's space to understand how the work is structured and ask anything you need to before you begin.

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The work doesn't start with processing what happened. It starts with resourcing — building a felt sense of stability and safety in yourself — because without that foundation, revisiting difficult material can do more harm than good. Only once that stability is more reliably there does the work move toward the processing itself.

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This is not quick-fix work. It isn't six sessions and done. It has a defined shape and it takes the time it takes — and that pacing is part of what makes it safe to do at all.

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Who this work is for

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This page is for adult women and men who experienced childhood sexual abuse and are carrying its effects now — whether that's recently surfaced, long-acknowledged, or somewhere in between. You don't need a tidy account of what happened, or to have "processed" anything already, to begin. You don't need to know what to say. You're welcome to arrive exactly as unsorted as you feel.

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Practical details

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Sessions are held in person in Dublin. The first session is €80, and €70 per session after that.

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Client intake is kept deliberately small — currently two spaces — so that the people in this work get a therapist who isn't overstretched or under-resourced. Given the pace and depth this work needs, that's a deliberate choice rather than a limitation.

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Common questions

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Do I need to talk about what happened straight away?

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No. Sessions begin with what's difficult for you in the here and now, not a detailed retelling of what happened. Early work focuses on building stability and a sense of safety in yourself — the processing comes later, once that foundation is there.

 

How long does this kind of counselling take?

 

This isn't quick-fix work, and it isn't six sessions and done. It has a defined structure — resourcing and stability first, then processing — and it takes the time it genuinely takes, which is different for everyone.

 

Is this counselling only for women?

 

No. This work is offered to both women and men who are adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse.

 

What if I've never told anyone before?

 

That's alright. You don't need a tidy account of what happened, or to have told anyone before, to begin. You're welcome to arrive exactly as unsorted as you feel.

 

Next step

 

If this sounds like the kind of support you've been looking for, the next step is to get in touch through the contact form below.

 

There's no pressure and no obligation — it's simply a way to ask a question or find out whether there's availability right now.