About Mary

Mary Owens

B.A., M.A., M.I.A.H.I.P.

Diploma in Biodynamic and Integrative Psychotherapy

Mary is a qualified and fully accredited psychotherapist based in Galway city centre. She worked as a journalist, a community worker and a radio producer before she completed her Diploma in Biodynamic and Integrative Psychotherapy at the Trácht Psychotherapy Foundation. She has been in private practice in Galway since 2010.  Mary has provided counselling and group facilitation at NUI Galway Student Counselling Service and has produced a number of mental health videos and educational initiatives for students. Mary has experience working with a wide range of client issues including anxiety and panic, mood change and depression, sexuality, relationship difficulties, sexual abuse and trauma, anger management, parenting issues, stage of life transitions, bereavement, self-harm and suicide. Since qualifying, she has completed on-going professional training in suicide prevention and in recovery from sexual violence and trauma.

Ethos and Approach

Mary Owens belongs to the Humanistic and Integrative tradition in psychotherapy. The humanistic approach values each of us as a unique human being with the freedom and responsibility to shape our own lives. ‘Integrative’ refers to the practice of drawing from more than one tradition or body of theory in psychotherapy in the interest of best meeting the client’s needs.

She is a member of IAHIP, the Irish Association of Humanistic and Integrative Psychotherapists, and adheres to its standards and strict code of ethics http://iahip.org/code-of-ethics.  IAHIP is the longest established association for accrediting psychotherapists in Ireland. Its role is to set and maintain standards in humanistic and integrative psychotherapy, accredit qualified practitioners, training courses and supervisors, foster research and represent its members nationally and internationally on matters relating to psychotherapy.

The biodynamic and integrative approach brings greater body awareness into the process of psychotherapy.   Our emotional life has a physical presence – we recognise feelings very often by how we sense them in our chest, heart, stomach, shoulders, back, head, neck. If we are cut off from our emotions, we can sometimes find ways to re-connect with them meaningfully in psychotherapy through the body. Mary combines talk therapy with body awareness through, for example, movement, relaxation and mindfulness techniques, to help clients integrate buried feelings and experiences or to help them regulate physical symptoms that they find overwhelming. This approach is particulary helpful in dealing with stress, anxiety, panic and trauma.

Guided Imagery

Imagery and symbolism are used in many different approaches to psychotherapy, including Freudian, Jungian and Gestalt. Mary works with ‘active imagination’ as devised by Carl Jung, where the client is guided by the therapist to explore the meaning of their own spontaneous images. Working in this way operates at several levels at once, drawing on the functions of feeling, sensation, thinking and intuition, at both conscious and unconscious levels of our mind. This process can bring to light where clients are really stuck and what needs to happen next in order for them to move on.

Tá Gaeilge líofa ag Mary agus tá sí ar a compórd ag obair trí mheán na Gaeilge mas mian leat.