Since completing a four year Diploma training with the Tivoli Institute in Dun Laoghaire in 2005, Orla has continued to explore with interest how the psychotherapy process and relationship can facilitate growth and healing.  She has done extensive training with the Dublin Gestalt Centre and has also trained in Play therapy and Art Therapy. Orla has an interest in the impact of Mindfulness on personal wellbeing. She uses a creative relational approach in her work. 

Through her current practice in the Dublin Gestalt Centre and in Rathfarnham, and formerly in The Newlands Centre for Counselling and Psychotherapy in Clondalkin, Orla has a broad range of experience working with people who: –

• …experience depression, anxiety, stress and distress.
• …find themselves repeating destructive, upsetting or confusing patterns and behaviours in life and in relationships.
• …find themselves responding to events with emotions that seem extreme or who feel devoid of emotions.
• …are exploring issues around relationship, sexuality, sexual orientation.
• …have experienced the trauma of neglect or abuse of any kind.
• …want to take charge of their lives but feel stuck in some way.

Orla believes that everybody has the potential to live their life in a more deeply satisfying and resourceful way. She believes that psychotherapy can help facilitate a growth in awareness of how we are in the world and how we engage with that world, which can help us to free up and engage with life more fully. It can help us to become aware of and to resolve  blocks to wellbeing which, when outside of our awareness, keep us stuck in old patterns or behaviours.  

Orla is a fully accredited member of IAHIP and attends regular work supervision. In 2018, she successfully completed a training in Supervision with The Dublin Gestalt Centre.