The Full Story
About
Hello, I’m Des Keane. In 2010 I began working with ACCORD, Ireland’s foremost couples and relationships counselling service. For over fifteen years now I have gained a wide range of experience with ACCORD, counselling both couples and individuals. Working from a starting point of relationship issues, the clients have often taken me to areas such as anxiety, depression, addiction, communication problems, coercive control, domestic abuse and many more areas , too many to list here.
Although I have specialised in couples work, I have gained almost as much experience working with individuals as I have with couples. As an ACCORD counsellor I have been presented with clients whose issues may present as relationship issues, but whose problems began much earlier in life, long before they even met their current partners. I believe that our earliest experiences of life shape the coping mechanisms and thinking habits we bring with us into adult life. Examining those early experiences can often be the key to shedding light on current stresses.
During the Covid epidemic ACCORD moved online for the first time. Having received excellent training in online counselling from Counselling Tutor, followed up with further training from Counselling Tutor in online couples counselling, I began seeing clients from all around Ireland for virtual sessions. I soon realised that online counselling was in no way a poor relation of in-person counselling and, in fact, has many advantages. For instance, it does away with the inconvenience and expense of attending my counselling room, and it offers opportunities for counselling to clients who do not live near a counselling centre. This is why I have chosen to set up my own online counselling service for private clients.
Theoretical Background
My main training and approach to counselling is in the Person Centred Approach developed by Carl Rogers in the 1940s and 1950s. His approach places the client, not the therapist, in the expert role. He believed that the client could be helped to find his/her own solutions to problems once they were provided with what he called his Core Conditions. These conditions were:
Empathy
Congruence
And Unconditional Positive Regard.
I base my approach to client work firmly within the Rogerian tradition. Although I may draw on other influences, when it suits the needs of the clients, I never stray too far from the Core Conditions of the Person Centred Approach.
Qualifications
T
B.A. in English, Irish and Philosophy. Trinity College Dublin in 1983
H. Dip Ed from Trinity College Dublin in 1984
Masters Degree, MSt, from Trinity College Dublin in 1999
Accord H Dip in Counselling (Couples and Relationships) from St. Patrick’s College Maynooth in 2018
Certificate in Online and Telephone Counselling, from Counselling Tutor in 2020
Certificate in Online Couple Counselling, from Counselling Tutor in 2020
