About Irene Brankin

About Irene

If you want to learn more about Irene, you’re in the right place.

Coach & Mentor

I work with women on a one-to-one basis. These sessions focus on discovering and nurturing ways to make decisions about your personal life, your work and professional life.

Groups & Workshops

In my workshops I enable, support and challenge you to allow your vulnerability, creative talents and uniqueness to become visible to yourself and the other like-minded women you share with.

Author

I have written two books to enable you to continue your journey after working with me: “The Visible Woman – More Lust, Less Must” and “I Don’t Care – The Art Of Divine Indifference”

"When I started training in psychosynthesis therapist, I was 57. It is at such times where it’s so good to meet other people who had the courage and the strength to not have given up in difficult situations in life. People who can provide a boost in the right direction. Someone who sees that you actually have the potential within yourself to produce. One such person was (and is) Irene Brankin, who was (and is) one of the fantastic teachers at PsykosyntesAkademin. a psychologist with extensive experience of psychosynthesis therapy. A very wise woman with a wonderful Scottish sense of humor. She could give me criticism in a way that made me grow in my role as a therapist. I’m forever grateful to her for the support she gave me during training."

Karin Tellås Hermansson

My Story

I am a Wife, Mother, Grandmother, cancer survivor and business owner.

I am also a Chartered Counselling Psychologist, a Mentor, an International Transpersonal Coach, Supervisor and Group Facilitator, plus Author of “The Visible Woman – More Lust, Less Must” and “I Don’t Care – The Art of Divine Indifference”.

I am passionate about drawing out women’s strengths and re-connecting them to their inner confidence.

I want you to know that it’s fine to be comfortable with your ‘uncomfortability’, and be successful in your own way without having to wear a mask of pretence. I want you to be yourself, by not allowing your self-doubt to be in charge.

My Books

The Visible Woman - More Lust, Less Must

Ageism is rife in our society and particularly so for women. Once over the age of 50, we are portrayed as too old, past it, invisible and sometimes even replaceable, both at home and in the workplace. Fuelled by the media our society is obsessed with youth. We only have to look at the ‘beauty’ treatments that attempt to halt the ageing process to know this. The message being don’t be yourself, don’t be real; be this ideal woman or else you’ll be invisible. But this view ignores all the positive things about ageing. With age comes the ability to view life in an easier way. It brings wisdom, experience, life skills and maturity. It was through my sense of anger and frustration at this waste of wisdom and life experience that older women possess that inspired me to write The Visible Woman. We shouldn’t accept this feeling of being put out to pasture as though we no longer have anything to offer society. It’s time to rise up to the challenge and the myth of ageing.

I Don't Care - The Art Of Devine Indifference

“I don’t care!” Have you ever wanted to shout that out loud? Do you find yourself doing things just to please other people, or because you think you ought to be doing it, even if you don’t want to? Then this book is for you. Without realising it, like many people around the world, you have inadvertently created a self-imposed cage around yourself, with bars made from invisible barriers like, “I can’t…”, “I’m too busy…”, “I’m not good enough…” and you crouch inside like a caged tiger, getting angrier and more frustrated each day. However, life need not be like this because you can give yourself permission to step over the threshold, into a new, more exciting and creative existence. You just have to say, “I don’t care!” and relinquish those old, limiting stories about yourself. This book will guide that personal transformation, enabling the longed for journey to re-connect with the ‘you who has always been there’ – Yourself.

The Spark

I remember it like yesterday. It was a Sunday morning, and I was sitting at the kitchen table, flicking through the local paper, the Sunday Post. The sun was streaming through the window and the delicious smell of the bacon my mother was frying wafted under my nose. As I waited for my breakfast, skimming the various articles about lost cats and cars for sale, I happened to come across something that really struck. It was a letter from a Danish man. He had written in to say how much he loved Scotland. At that moment I realised something – I’d really like a penpal! A Danish girl of my own age, 12 1/2, would be perfect. On a whim, I wrote to this man. It was highly unlikely of course that he would reply to me. And for some time there was no answer to my letter. Until, out of the blue, an envelope with a Danish stamp dropped onto the doormat.

My correspondent had no family. But a colleague in the bank where he worked had a daughter. Would I like to write to her? And so this was the beginning of a lifelong relationship. All these years later we are still in touch, close friends to this day. I am godmother to her son, and over the years I have attended all the various family occasions in Copenhagen: weddings, christenings, silver weddings and so on.

A fruitful, fulfilling friendship that has endured across the years and the sea, was all down to that spark of mine, a spark to do something different. At twelve years old I knew I was the kind of girl to challenge the norm and make my own decisions. And this is what drives me on today: I take my courage in both hands and do it anyway. Today that spirit of the twelve-year-old Irene is at the heart of the real me and my professional offering. I’m still that little girl who wants to stand up for what she wants, someone who is prepared to do something out of the ordinary to make the world a better place. Regardless of what others might think or what the outcome might be.

Many of us think about doing things like reaching out to strangers in newspapers. I could easily have not bothered writing to the Danish man. But I did. And that small act created something wonderful.

So now I take this gift of mine and use it in my work: to draw out that spark in others, nurturing that little flame that’s deep within and helping it burn brightly. Life-changing trajectories can be triggered by small events. By tiny sparks. That was my story. Sometimes that’s all it takes.