Jamie-Lee O’Donnell has opened up about completing therapy and how she approached her relationship with her family afterwards.
The Derry Girls star, 39, spoke candidly about her personal life in an appearance on the Dish podcast with hosts Nick Grimshaw and Angela Hartnett.
O’Donnell said she wanted a “new start” for herself after she finished therapy, which she described as being “pretty intense and really tough”.
“All the healing’s done,” she said, adding that she decided to sell her house and move to Barcelona, where she has been living since February 2025.
“I know, it’s mental. I’ve always been hyper independent and if I wanted to do something, I'd done my research and then just did it,” O’Donnell explained.
“There's a lot of good and bad with that. You sort of learn by mistakes but thankfully, it's worked out really well.”
A particularly difficult decision she made as a result of the therapy was to cut off her family, she continued.
“I had to go no contact with my entire family. It's just one of those things,” she said. “The more I've talked about it and been honest about it, I'm seeing that it's, unfortunately, not the most unusual thing for adults.”
In an interview with Hot Press last year, O’Donnell said she started therapy to “unpack a lot of stuff from my childhood”.
“It was sort of running after me for a while – like, I suppose, a lot of people. It was a few years, trying to figure it all out, and come to terms with everything,” she said.
“I finally felt like this year was the time to put it to bed for now, and start looking forward.”
O’Donnell, who is set to star in the forthcoming BBC six-part comedy Hopley Hall, added that she would not have “ever discussed” going through therapy before actually doing it.
“I don’t think it’s a traditional Irish characteristic, unfortunately,” she reflected. “There is that culture sometimes, especially up North, of just saying: ‘Get on with it.’
“Yes, that’s beneficial for survival, and I understand why people have that mindset – because I did, for a long time. But it got to a point that it was quite difficult, and it was working against me.”
