I was born in Slovakia in a Hungarian minority family. My Nationality was Slovak, and I went to Slovak language speaking school, but we spoke Hungarian at home. During my childhood, I received hospital treatment on few occassions and I became fascinated by the nurses. I decided to become a nurse. Unfortunately, that dream of mine did not come through back then. In 2004 I came to Ireland and started working in a nursing home as a Multitask Attendant. The caring nature and the encouragement of the nurses were my main motivators for me to apply for nursing again in 2007. This time successful, I was ready to start my career in psychiatric nursing. However, just 1 month before taking on the nursing course I lost one of the most precious persons in my life, my mom. Despite struggling with grief I decided to take on the nursing course. Not surprising, as a result of ongoing stress in college on top of the grief, I needed help, which I got through counselling. I had to learn how to cope, which took some time and support.

During my college years, I learned a lot in college and various practicum placements about all the mental health issues that people experienced, from depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, psychosis, trauma and eating disorders. I encountered several people who made an attempt to take their own lives or who were grieving the loss of someone due to taking their own life. I felt that due to my bereavement, I was able to connect/ empathise with these people more. I learned then that you never quite get over someone being taken from you, you just learn to cope. This became my aim as a mental health professional, to help people to get a place where they feel they can cope with the difficulties life sends their way.

In 3rd year of nursing, I learned about CBT. The more I learned about it, the more I became fascinated with it and I knew that after completing the nursing course, I would continue with my education in CBT. In 2011 I qualified in Psychiatric nursing and in 2015 I qualified in CBT at the master’s degree level.

As a child I witnessed alcoholism and other substance misuse in my close environment, I never understood why would people continue to abuse these substances knowing about the negative consequences on their lives. Nursing gave me the answers to these questions as well. I became more aware of addiction as often linked close to mental health difficulties. People either abused substances as coping skills for their life difficulties or their addiction led to mental health difficulties. Then in 2020 the COVID pandemic hit the world and it seemed that substance misuse spiralled and ever since it is getting worse , causing individuals, families and the society lots of concern at many levels. As psychotherapist and a nurse I often came across to people who suffered from mental health difficulties and addiction, but I felt stuck. In spite of all the efforts to teach coping skills to clients to improve their lives, often falling back with the addiction, they ended up enduring the same difficulties again. To help these clients motivated me to take on a course in addiction counselling. In 2022 I completed the course in Addiction Counselling and Psychotherapy at Master’s degree level.

My aim is to provide an environment where people can be helped and supported through difficulties they are experiencing, without judgment, and find collaboratively solutions that will work for them, leading to happier lives.