Research of embedded counselling among Irish teachers is distinctly underdeveloped. Embedding counselling skills within pre-existing helping roles widens access to emotional and mental health support in brief empathic moments of connection between helpers and help-seekers. Within education, embedded counselling can enhance teacher-student relationships with positive social and academic outcomes. This study reveals new understandings of embedded counselling teachers’ lived experiences and addresses a gap in current research. The study explores lived experiences of embedding counselling skills among Irish post-primary teachers. In-depth interviews were conducted with eight post-primary teachers who use counselling skills informally within their general teaching role.  An interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) of interview transcripts was performed that ensured a deep, iterative, reflexive inquiry into teachers’ subjective and individual experiences. Through cross-case analysis, four group experiential themes were identified: 1.) Privileging Relationship: "All in the relating”, 2.) Working with an Additional Lens: "Reaching into my toolkit", 3.) Being a Helpful Presence: "Being properly there" and 4.) Navigating Identity: "A ditch each side of the road". Teachers’ accounts illustrated how they worked with heightened self- and other-awareness while embodying person-centredness and prioritising teacher-student relationships to support student welfare and learning. They valued embedded counselling as an enriching addition to their role that enhanced wellbeing self-efficacy but some experienced role conflict, structural obstacles, and demanding cognitive and emotional load.  Personal development, support, supervision, and ethical sensitivity emerge as important resources for teachers embedding counselling. As the first of its kind in Ireland, this pioneering research importantly highlights opportunities and challenges of embedding counselling within teaching and contributes to existing conceptual and practice understandings. Key recommendations include counselling skills education for pre- and in-service teachers, mandated supervision, inclusion of embedded counselling within professional counselling education, and development of embedded counselling policy.