For years, Micheál Ó Mathúna was doing what so many people do: keeping busy, pushing through, and convincing himself everything was fine.

Today, the Cork therapist, facilitator and founder of The Health Zone believes that strategy comes at a cost. Through workshops, one-to-one sessions, a podcast, and now his self-published book, The Eleven New Commandments, his work centres on helping people reconnect with themselves.

Rather than presenting himself as someone with all the answers, Ó Mathúna speaks openly about the personal struggles that led him to this work.

“For a long time, I was living disconnected from myself without even realising it,” he says. “Like a lot of people, I got very good at keeping going, pushing through, doing what needed to be done, and carrying on as if everything was OK. But underneath it all, there was a lot of unprocessed trauma, anxiety, and exhaustion.”

The breaking point came with burn-out.

“Burn-out was probably one of the biggest turning points for me. My own body more or less forced me to stop. It was like everything I’d been over-riding for years, my needs, my emotions, my boundaries, all caught up with me at the same time.”

Instead of seeing depression and anxiety simply as illnesses to overcome, he says he came to view them differently.

“They were showing me where I’d gone off track, where I’d abandoned myself, and where something........

© Evening Echo