Beyond The Irish Question
Group Exploration from Oct 2025 - June 2026
Beyond the Irish Question is an eight-month, trauma-informed group exploration for people in Ireland and across the diaspora. It complements humanistic and integrative psychotherapy by inviting participants to notice how Irish history is carried not only in memory and text but in the body: in the silence that settles around painful family events, in shame passed down through generations, and in the resilience that enabled survival but can sometimes harden into distance or disconnection.
For psychotherapists and counsellors, this work offers more than personal reflection. It opens a unique professional resource: deeper insight into the cultural and intergenerational dynamics that shape both therapist and client. Many clients present with struggles that are not only individual but entwined with legacies of migration, famine, institutional abuse, and the long shadow of colonialism. By engaging these themes in a safe, trauma-informed community, therapists can expand their capacity to recognise when what seems personal may also be inherited or collective.
Psychiatrist Judith Herman reminds us that “remembering and telling the truth about terrible events are prerequisites…for the healing of individual victims.” Without space for compassionate witnessing, what is left unspoken continues to echo through families and communities. In our terms: what is not brought into awareness does not simply disappear, it repeats, shaping fate in relationships, identity, and society.
This program provides a well-held group field where silence can give way to story, shame to recognition, and isolation to belonging. It offers psychotherapists vital insights to carry back into their practice, enriching both clinical work and community life, while also supporting their own ongoing journey of healing and integration.
There is an Intro Session taking place on the 17th of September. Registration and more details are available at https://luma.com/4yyekblq
Website: https://beyondtheirishquestion.com/
Contact: contact@irishintegration.com
Simon Courtney is a psychotherapist and facilitator working at the intersections of trauma, ancestry, and cultural identity. Growing up between cultures shaped his awareness of the complexities of Irish belonging across borders and histories. His integrative approach combines developmental insight, embodied practice, and collective trauma principles to support healing and renewal. Through the Initiative for Irish Integration & Emergence and its flagship program Beyond the Irish Question, Simon creates spaces where inherited wounds can be met with care, and new possibilities for connection and belonging can emerge.
