When someone you love dies, the world can feel as though it has stopped, even while everything around you carries on. Grief counselling offers a calm, unhurried space to feel what you feel and to find your own way to carry the loss. I’m Lydia Nightingale, a person-centred counsellor in Uxbridge, and bereavement is one of the areas closest to my heart. I see people in person across Hillingdon and West London, or online anywhere in the UK.
What grief and bereavement counselling involves
There is no timetable for grief and no right way to do it. Counselling isn’t about “getting over” a loss or reaching some tidy end point, it’s a confidential hour where you can put down everything you’re carrying and be met exactly as you are, by someone who won’t rush you or tell you how you should feel.
As a person-centred practitioner I trust that you know your own loss better than anyone. My role is to walk alongside you: to make room for the tears, the anger, the numbness or the guilt, and to help the grief become something you can live with rather than something you have to hide.
Losses people bring to counselling
- The death of a partner, parent, child or close friend, whether the loss is recent or from many years ago.
- Anticipatory grief, the heavy weight of knowing a loss is coming, perhaps while caring for someone who is seriously ill.
- Grief that feels complicated or “stuck”, when the feelings stay raw, or when a difficult relationship makes the loss harder to make sense of.
- A loss others don’t always recognise, a miscarriage, a pet, a friendship, or a death by suicide that you feel unable to talk about.
- The losses inside life changes, the end of a relationship, retirement, illness, or a move that quietly takes a chapter of your life with it.
How I work with grief
My approach is warm, gentle and led entirely by you. Some people need to talk through the story of what happened, again and again; others sit with feelings they’ve had nowhere else to put. There’s no script. We go at the pace that feels right, and you never have to perform being “fine”. Sessions are 50 minutes (£70), held weekly or fortnightly to begin with, for as long or as short a time as you need.
What the first few sessions look like
- We begin with a free, no-obligation 20-minute telephone consultation, a chance to ask questions and get a feel for whether we’re a good fit, with no commitment.
- In our first session together you can share as much or as little as you want about who you’ve lost and how things have been since.
- From there we meet at a pace that suits you, gently making space for the grief and for the parts of you that are still finding their feet.
When is the right time to come?
There’s no “too soon” and no “too late”. Some people come in the first raw weeks; others find that grief resurfaces months or even years on, perhaps around an anniversary or a birthday. Whenever you reach out, you’ll be met with the same gentle, unhurried care. If your loss sits alongside a wider life change, you may also find my work on loss and life changes helpful, and you can read more about ongoing bereavement counselling in Uxbridge here.
Sessions are held in a calm, private room near Uxbridge town centre, a short walk from Fassnidge Park and Uxbridge Underground, and I see people from right across Hillingdon, Cowley, Ickenham, Ruislip, Denham and Harefield, or online anywhere in the UK.
