Upcoming Courses

Personal Development and Counselling Skills

Next group starting in January

2 x Saturdays and 16 x Wednesday evenings (60 hours)

Places limited to 16 per group

€10 per hour

Self-Exploration through Expressive Arts Retreat

16-18 February 2025

Three days in the West of Ireland

Places limited to 12 per group

€390

Stress Management Workshop

Saturday 26 April 2025

One day workshop 10:00am – 5:00pm 

Places limited to 16 per group

€90

Paula Short Personal Development Courses

Hello and welcome

Thank you for visiting my website and for exploring the ways that we might be able to work together. Whatever brought you here – curiosity about therapy or group work, feeling deeply challenged within yourself or in your relationships, or wanting to develop your professional or life skills – I hope you will find something of interest here.

If you are struggling to manage the usual highs and lows of life and are feeling somewhat overwhelmed or lost, please reach out. There is always something new to learn or experience that will make a difference in your life. I would love to be able to journey with you as you learn and grow.

Services available

Each individual is unique – therefore the personal journey to happier mental health will also be completely unique

Paula Short Personal Development Courses

One-to-one counselling sessions, in-person or via Zoom

Personal Development courses

Personal development courses and workshops

Personal development retreat

Three-day self-exploration retreats in the West of Ireland

Course feedback

“I’m not perfect … but I’m enough”

Carl Rogers

Blog and Articles

Blog Article

Treasure your survival kit

There is a lot of self-help and psycho-education available on the internet and some of it is super helpful. Unfortunately,...

Blog Article

Tricky days

Do you sometimes wake up feeling ‘off’, ‘in a funk’, ‘in a bad mood’, or just feeling ‘down’? In those...

Blog Article

Kintsugi

The ancient art of kintsugi involves taking a broken vessel and carefully joining the broken pieces with liquid gold. The...

Newsletter

If you would like to receive a quarterly newsletter with updates on available courses and retreats, please subscribe below.

* indicates required

Unlike the name implies, counselling is not about being given counsel or advice.  Counselling and psychotherapy provides a safe and confidential space for you to explore how to move forward in your life and to be supported in doing so.

Sometimes a few sessions of counselling will be sufficient to help a person find clarity and the resources needed to navigate a particular challenge.  Other people wish to go on a deeper journey of self-discovery and healing and this can take months or even years.  

Groups with me are a blend of experiential learning, sharing and group support.  Sessions are engaging, powerful and deeply nurturing. 

It is not unusual to wonder if we will ‘fit’ in a group.  We may wonder if we will be too loud, too quiet, too broken, too slow, too quick, or too different in some other way.  The beauty of group work is realising that we all ‘fit’ and can connect.

Online groups include a mix of people from all walks of life, including the technologically-averse! You will be amazed at how easy it is to use Zoom and how engaging and powerful the group experience can be.  Why not try a 1-day workshop to see what it is like for you?

Absolutely!  All courses and retreat fees are automatically broken into monthly payments; however, these can be broken down even further as needed.  Also, please let me know if you are in financial difficulty and I will do my best to reduce the overall cost.

I meet with all interested people beforehand for a brief one-to-one conversation to check their readiness for this kind of work and to ensure that participants are able to support others without judgment.

On the first session with all groups, we spend time discussing and formulating a group contract which includes confidentiality, respect and other elements.  This creates firm boundaries to protect the safe space.