Grief & Bereavement Counselling | Manchester-Based & Online Across the UK

I'm Stuart Walker, an MBACP Registered Integrative Counsellor & Psychotherapist based in Manchester, offering grief and bereavement counselling online across the UK, including support following bereavement by suicide.

Alongside my private practice, I have extensive professional experience supporting people and families bereaved by suicide.

The world keeps moving, even when yours has changed.

Grief doesn't always look like grief.

You may still be working, looking after other people, laughing at something funny and getting through the ordinary parts of the day.

Then something catches you.

A song.

A place.

A date.

Something you would have told them.

There is no timetable for grief and no right way to carry someone, or something, you have lost.

→ Book a Free 30-Minute Introductory Conversation

Grief Changes the Shape of Everyday Life

Grief is often described as letting go.

In my experience, it is just as often about finding a new way to stay connected.

An empty chair.

A conversation that should still be happening.

A message you cannot quite bring yourself to delete.

A birthday, anniversary or ordinary Tuesday that suddenly feels different.

You may still reach for your phone before remembering they are no longer there.

You may hear a song and find yourself back in a moment you thought had passed.

You may cope perfectly well at work and find everything catches up with you when you get home.

Loss reaches into ordinary life.

It can affect relationships, sleep, concentration, confidence, identity and the way you imagine the future.

The person may no longer be here. The relationship you had with them doesn't simply disappear.

There Is No Right Way to Grieve

For some people, grief feels overwhelming.

For others, it arrives quietly.

Exhaustion.

Anger.

Numbness.

Anxiety.

Irritability.

A sense of disconnection from people or from life itself.

You might cry every day.

You might hardly cry at all.

You might want to talk about the person constantly.

You might find talking about them almost impossible.

You might have good days and then feel guilty for having them.

None of that tells us how much somebody mattered to you.

Grief isn't a test of how well you're coping or how much you loved someone.

Grief Is About More Than Death

Sometimes we grieve more than the person we lost.

We grieve conversations that will never happen.

The future we imagined.

Advice we'll never receive.

The relationship we wish we'd had.

Things left unsaid.

Things we wish had happened differently.

And sometimes the version of ourselves that existed before everything changed.

Loss can also take other forms.

The end of a relationship.

A change in health or independence.

Fertility and pregnancy loss.

A family relationship that has broken down.

A future that is no longer going to happen in the way you imagined.

Anticipating the death of someone you love.

Grief can be about the life that changed as much as the life that ended.

There Is No Timetable

One of the hardest parts of grief can be the feeling that you should be doing better by now.

People usually mean well.

They ask how you're doing.

They give you space.

Then gradually the messages become less frequent.

Work carries on.

Families carry on.

The world carries on.

But grief doesn't follow somebody else's timetable.

A loss can remain part of your life months, years or decades later.

That doesn't necessarily mean you've failed to “move on”.

Perhaps moving on was never quite the right idea.

We may learn to live differently around a loss while continuing to carry a relationship, memories and love with us.

Therapy isn't about helping you forget.

It's about finding a way to live with what has happened without having to carry it alone.

Bereavement Counselling

Bereavement can change more than how you feel about the person who died.

It can change the shape of a family.

Relationships can become closer, more difficult or simply different. People may grieve in ways you don't understand, while struggling to understand yours.

There may be things you wish you had said.

Things you wish you hadn't.

Questions about what happened, decisions that were made, or moments you find yourself returning to again and again.

Sometimes people come to bereavement counselling soon after somebody dies.

Sometimes it is months or years later.

There isn't a point at which a loss becomes too old to talk about.

Counselling gives you somewhere to speak about the person who died, the relationship you had with them and what their absence means now.

It can also give you room for the parts of bereavement that can be harder to say elsewhere.

Anger.

Relief.

Regret.

Guilt.

Resentment.

Or simply how much you still miss them.

Bereavement counselling isn't about finding the right way to grieve. It is about having somewhere your grief doesn't have to be explained, hurried or made easier for somebody else.

Suicide Bereavement

Bereavement by suicide can bring particular questions.

I have spent more than 4,000 hours professionally supporting people and families following a bereavement by suicide.

Across those conversations, I have heard versions of the same questions many times.

How did I not know?
Was there something I missed?
Why didn't they tell me?
Could I have done something differently?

The search for answers can become relentless.

A conversation gets replayed.

A message is read again.

A memory suddenly seems to mean something different.

Alongside grief there may be guilt, anger, confusion, disbelief or even relief that somebody is no longer suffering.

Sometimes apparently contradictory feelings exist alongside one another.

There is rarely a single, simple explanation for why someone dies by suicide.

Therapy cannot provide answers that don't exist.

What it can provide is somewhere those questions can be spoken.

Somewhere guilt can be explored rather than immediately reassured away.

Somewhere anger is allowed.

Somewhere you don't have to protect other people from what you're thinking.

You don't have to make your grief easier for somebody else to hear.

Grief and Men

Men don't necessarily experience grief differently, but many have learned to carry difficult things in particular ways.

Some throw themselves into work.

Some stay busy.

Some focus on practical tasks because practical problems have solutions.

There are arrangements to make.

People to contact.

Things that need sorting.

And sometimes it is only when those things stop that the loss becomes harder to avoid.

Grief may appear as irritability, exhaustion, frustration, withdrawal or a feeling that life has somehow lost its colour.

People often expect grief to look like tears.

Sometimes it does.

Sometimes it looks like carrying on.

Sometimes it looks like coping.

Sometimes it looks like becoming someone you barely recognise.

→ Men's Counselling & Psychotherapy

Counselling & Psychotherapy After Loss

You don't need to decide whether you need counselling or psychotherapy.

Sometimes you need somewhere to talk about the person who died and what life feels like without them.

Sometimes grief begins to touch much older parts of your story.

A bereavement can change how you understand your family, childhood, relationships or yourself.

It can bring old losses back into view.

It can raise questions about identity.

Who am I without this person?

What happens to the future I thought I was going to have?

Why has this loss affected relationships around me?

How do I carry someone with me while continuing to live?

Psychotherapy gives us room to become curious about those questions without trying to hurry towards an answer.

The aim isn't to get over your grief. It is to understand what this loss means in the life that continues around it.

→ Explore Psychotherapy

→ How I Work

A Space to Bring What You're Carrying

You don't need to arrive knowing what you want to say.

You don't need to tell the story in the right order.

And you don't need to make what happened sound more manageable than it feels.

Some sessions may contain tears.

Others may contain memories, anger, silence or laughter.

Sometimes we may talk about the person who died.

Sometimes we may talk about what you had for dinner.

Both can belong in grief.

Because the person who died was part of a life, not simply the cause of a bereavement.

There is room here for the person you lost, the relationship you had and the life you're living now.

What Might Change?

Therapy cannot change what happened.

It cannot bring somebody back.

And I would be wary of promising that grief eventually becomes smaller or disappears.

What can sometimes change is your relationship with it.

You may begin to understand feelings that have frightened or confused you.

Guilt may become something you can examine rather than something that simply condemns you.

You may find ways of talking about the person without feeling you are making others uncomfortable.

Memories may begin to contain more than the circumstances of their death.

You may allow yourself moments of happiness without feeling that you have betrayed somebody.

And gradually there may be more room for life alongside the loss.

Not instead of them. Alongside them.

Practical Information

Sessions last 50 minutes and cost £60.

I offer a free 30-minute introductory conversation, giving us a chance to meet before you decide whether you'd like to begin.

Sessions are available online across the UK.

I'm currently accepting new clients.

→ Fees & Practical Information

Not Sure Yet?

You don't have to be ready to contact me.

You might prefer to read a little more first.

→ Explore Articles on Grief & Bereavement

→ Thinking About Counselling? Start Here

→ How I Work

→ Meet Stuart

→ FAQs

Ready When You Are

Whether your loss happened recently or many years ago, you're very welcome to get in touch.

You don't need to know where to begin.

You don't need to have found the right words.

And your grief doesn't need to look a particular way to belong here.

Sometimes the first step is simply finding somewhere you don't have to explain why it still matters.