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Shaunna Impey Charles (Dame Street/Rathmines Centres)

“My aim is to make sure that every person who accesses our service receives respect and quality psychotherapeutic interventions that are tailored to meet the needs of the client”.

Qualifications and Accreditation

  1. 2023: 4-day training Attachment Theory in Clinical Practice at the Bowlby Centre, London
  2. 2021-2022: I have completed the Foundation Course: Psychoanalysis at the London British Psychoanalytic Society.
  3. 2021-2022: I have completed year 1 Post Foundation Course: Psychoanalysis at the London British Psychoanalytic Society.
  4. 2010-2013:MA(Hons) in Psychotherapy,
  5. 2008-2020: Hdip in Counselling and Psychotherapy Dublin Business School
  6. 2007 BA(Hons) Social Work, – Robert Gordon University Scotland
  7. 2002-2004: Hdip in Social Studies
  8. Accredited with the Irish Association of Counselling and Psychotherapy (IACP) Reg number: M12482
  9. Shaunna attends regular continuous professional development training and is committed to the codes and ethics of the IACP.

About Me

I am a fully accredited Psychotherapist registered with the Irish Association of Counselling and Psychotherapy (IACP Membership Number: M12482). I have been seeing clients therapeutically for more than 10 years. I received a Master’s in Psychotherapy from Dublin Business School in 2013. I worked as a social worker in settings such as cardiac rehabilitation groups, acute general hospital, adult safeguarding team and child and adolescent mental health services. I have many years of experience working with adults and young adults in homeless services.

In my spare time, I enjoy keeping active, spending time with family, friends and reading.

My clients

I see a range of clients from different backgrounds and diversities. I work with individuals who suffer from: relationship issues, such as separation anxiety, rejection, abandonment, and intimacy. I also deal with clients with employment issues, depression, anxiety, social anxiety, sleep problems, health anxiety, somatic bodily symptoms, and burnout among the working professional.  I also have a specialist interested in working with people who have been diagnosed with Complex Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (C-PTSD) or suffered early childhood adversities.

My Approach

My approach is psychodynamic, relational and trauma-informed.

As we grow up in our environments, I believe we find ways to adapt to situations that we find very stressful or that cause considerable anxiety. While these adaptive strategies were helpful and necessary when we were children these same strategies may be less adaptive in your relationships today.

My focus is to help the clients become aware of the unconscious motives, drives, defences and conflicts that keep them repeating the same patterns of behaviours with themselves and in their current interpersonal relationships. I use psychoanalytic techniques such as transference, countertransference, projective identification, free association and others in my practice.

My work is informed by Object Relations theorists and others such as Ferenczi, Klein, Bowlby, Sullivan, Fairbairn, Kohut, Balint, Daniel Stern, Winnicott, Stephen Mitchell, Mark Solms, Allan Schore, Beebe, Fonagy, Lieberman, Van der Hart and others.

Using a deep theoretical understanding of developmental theories and techniques affords me the knowledge and skills to work with clients from a place of evidenced based practice.

Therapy seems to work best in a collaborative and reflective relationship. Using a relational approach means that fundamentally the healing capacity lies in the collaborative relationship between the client and the therapist. Clients learn about themselves by exploring their interactions in the therapeutic relationship.

I approach all of my clients with warmth and curiosity and provide emotional support to enable them to feel validated, understood and seen. Psychotherapy offers the possibility for a transformative shift in life that can lead not just to the stabilisation of symptoms but to add meaningful change in the client’s relational lives in a long-lasting way.

Shaunna’s fee is €75 per 50min session.

Email: shaunna.impey@citytherapy.ie

Continuous Professional Development (CPD)

I place a lot of value on continuous professional development. With neuroscience research and the ongoing development of psychoanalytic theories, we are learning more about how the mind works, which in turn is informing psychotherapy practice. It is essential that we, as practitioners keep abreast of all this research and information.

Psychotherapist