You don’t have to grieve alone.
If you’ve found your way here, there’s a good chance something in your life has changed in a way you never wanted it to.
Perhaps someone has died. Perhaps they haven’t.
Grief isn’t only about bereavement. It can follow the end of a relationship, a life-changing diagnosis, losing a job, retirement, or any loss that changes the future you thought you were going to have.
Whatever’s happened, grief has a way of making the world feel unfamiliar. Things that once felt easy suddenly take more effort. People expect you to be getting on with life, while you’re still trying to work out what life looks like now.
One of the hardest things about grief is how easily it makes us question ourselves.
You might wonder whether you should be coping better by now, whether you’re overreacting, or whether what you’ve lost is even “big enough” to call grief.
The truth is, grief isn’t measured by what happened. It’s measured by what it meant to you.
Whatever’s brought you here, if your world has changed and you’re struggling to find your feet again, you don’t need permission to ask for support.
I’m Martin, and I work with people who are trying to find their way through grief, loss and life-changing events. My job isn’t to tell you how to grieve or how long it should take. It’s to help you understand what’s happening, make sense of your experience, and find a way forward that feels right for you.
Grief isn’t a sign something’s broken. It’s one of the healthiest things our minds and bodies know how to do.
Grief isn’t an illness, or something that needs fixing/healing. It’s a natural healthy process, your mind and body adjusting to a reality you never wanted. It’s the process of learning to live alongside a loss that can’t simply be undone. As painful as it feels, grief itself isn’t the problem.
What often makes it harder is trying to carry it without understanding what’s happening.
People can find themselves caught in endless “what ifs”. They blame themselves for things they couldn’t have controlled. They feel angry and then guilty for feeling angry. They wonder why they’re not coping as well as everyone else seems to, or why they still feel overwhelmed months or even years later. These experiences are far more common than most people realise.
Having someone who understands grief won’t take your loss away. What it can do is help you make sense of your experience, quiet some of the self-blame, and give you space to work through what’s happened without feeling judged or rushed.
I’m Martin Roddis.
Grief is what I know best, and what I care about most. If that’s what’s brought you here, you’re in the right place.
People often come to me believing they’re broken, or that they’re grieving in the wrong way. They aren’t.
Most don’t need fixing. What they need is someone who isn’t afraid of sitting beside them while they work out what this loss has done to their world.
You don’t need to know exactly what to say.
You’re allowed to be messy.
My job isn’t to rush you towards feeling better. It’s to help you make sense of what’s happened, at a pace that feels manageable.
Sessions are £50. We can do them however works best for you, in person here in Chesterfield, or online. There’s no fixed number decided in advance, we’ll figure that out together as we go.
Different minds grieve differently.
If you’re autistic, have ADHD, or experience the world differently, grief may not look the way other people expect it to.
You might find yourself processing things long after everyone else seems to have moved on. You might need to understand what happened before you can begin to feel it. You might feel everything at once, or almost nothing for a while. Funerals, family gatherings, and all the unspoken social expectations that come with loss can be exhausting in their own right.
None of that means you’re grieving incorrectly. One of the things I try to leave outside the therapy room is the idea that there’s a “normal” way to grieve. There isn’t. Every person brings their own history, relationships, personality and way of experiencing the world. Therapy should make room for that, not try to squeeze you into someone else’s idea of what grief ought to look like.
I’m autistic myself, so this isn’t something I’ve learnt from a textbook. I know what it’s like when the way you naturally process the world doesn’t line up with what’s expected of you. You won’t need to explain why silence feels more comfortable than conversation, why you’re analysing instead of crying, or why your grief doesn’t fit the picture other people seem to recognise.
Alongside my therapy work, I train organisations and professionals in neurodivergence and grief. It’s something I’m passionate about because neurodivergent experiences are still too often overlooked. The more we understand the different ways people process loss, the better we become at supporting them without expecting everyone to grieve in the same way.
When we work together, we start with how you experience the world. Everything else grows from there.
Does any of this sound familiar?
You don’t have to tick every box on this list. In fact, you might only recognise one or two. But if you’re reading them and thinking, “That’s me,” there’s a good chance we’d have something useful to talk about.
Perhaps you can’t stop replaying what happened, looking for answers that never seem to come.
Maybe you’re exhausted all the time, but sleep never really leaves you feeling rested.
You might find yourself feeling angry. Angry at the situation, angry at yourself, angry at the person you’ve lost. Then guilty for feeling that way.
Perhaps everyone else seems to have got on with their lives, while you’re wondering why you’re still struggling.
Or maybe you don’t feel very much at all. You feel numb, detached, or as though you’re watching life happen from a distance.
It could be that people around you don’t understand why this loss has affected you so deeply, or don’t even recognise it as a loss worth grieving.
If you found yourself nodding along to any of this, don’t ignore it. You don’t need to wait until things get worse, or convince yourself your grief is “bad enough”. If it’s affecting your life, it’s worth talking about.
How this works
No two people grieve in exactly the same way, so no two therapy sessions are exactly the same either.
The first thing we’ll do is slow things down. You’ll have space to talk about what’s happened in whatever way feels natural to you. Some people arrive with a clear idea of what they want to say. Others have no idea where to begin. Both are completely okay.
People often tell me they’re worried about coming to therapy because they don’t know what they’ll say. Some apologise for crying before they’ve even sat down. Others worry they won’t cry at all, and wonder if that means they’re grieving “wrong”.
So, let’s get some worries out of the way before we even begin:
You don’t need to prepare for therapy. You don’t need a clear story, the right words, or a plan for what we’re going to talk about. You don’t have to make sense of everything before you walk through the door.
We’ll start wherever you are that day, and we’ll take it from there, together.
One of the things people often say they find most helpful is simply understanding what’s happening to them. Grief can be deeply confusing. One day you might feel as though you’re coping well, only to be knocked sideways by something small the next. You may find it hard to concentrate, struggle to sleep, forget simple things, or wonder why you’re reacting in ways that don’t feel like you. None of that means you’re falling apart.
A big part of my work is helping people understand how grief affects the brain, the body and our relationships. When you understand why you’re responding the way you are, it’s often easier to stop judging yourself quite so harshly.
From there, we begin to explore whatever feels most important. That might be guilt, anger or regret. Questions that have never found an answer. Conversations you wish you’d had. The practical realities of rebuilding life after a loss. Or simply finding a way to carry your grief without it feeling as though it’s carrying you.
I don’t believe there’s one “right” way to do therapy any more than there’s one right way to grieve. Alongside talking therapy, I draw on clinical hypnotherapy, somatic approaches and, where it’s genuinely helpful, sound therapy. These aren’t techniques I use because they’re fashionable or because everyone gets the same experience. They’re simply different ways of helping, and together we’ll decide what feels right for you.
I’ve spent more than twenty years supporting people, integrating a range of therapies, and I’m a qualified clinical hypnotherapist. Alongside my therapy practice, I run Grief Guides, where I provide training for individuals, organisations and professionals on grief, suicide bereavement and neurodivergence. Helping others understand grief, and how differently it can be experienced, has become an important part of what I do.
Alongside all of that, I’m currently in my third year of REBT training, working towards an integrative diploma. It’s a more targeted way of working with specific issues like anxiety, OCD, or low self-esteem. You can read more about that on my REBT page.
Experience and qualifications matter, but they’re only part of the story. What matters most is how you feel when you’re sitting in the room with me. My hope is that you’ll leave each session feeling a little less alone, with a better understanding of what’s happening, and confidence that you don’t have to carry it all by yourself.
Let’s have a chat.
Reaching out is often the hardest part.
Many people spend months, sometimes years, wondering whether what they’re carrying is “enough” to justify asking for help. They compare their grief to someone else’s. They tell themselves it wasn’t recent enough, serious enough, or that they should be coping better by now.
Grief doesn’t work like that. There isn’t a threshold you have to cross before you’re allowed to ask for support. If your loss is affecting your life, that’s reason enough.
You don’t have to decide today whether therapy is right for you. You only have to decide whether you’d like a conversation.
We’ll talk about what’s happened, what life has been like since your loss, and what you’re hoping might be different. If it feels as though we’re the right fit, we can decide together what happens next. If it doesn’t, that’s completely okay too. There’ll be no pressure, no expectation, and no obligation to book further sessions. Just a chance to be heard.
If you’d like to arrange an appointment or simply ask a question before deciding, I’d be very happy to hear from you.
Whatever’s brought you here, you don’t have to work through it alone.
Suicide Bereavement
Losing someone to suicide is its own kind of grief.
If someone you love has died by suicide, you may be carrying questions that have no clear answers.
Alongside the grief itself, there can be guilt, anger, confusion, relief, shame, or all of those emotions at once. You may find yourself replaying conversations, searching for signs you missed, or wondering if there was something you could have done differently.
These thoughts are incredibly common after a suicide. They’re also incredibly lonely.
People often don’t know what to say after a suicide, so they say very little. Friends and family may avoid the subject altogether because they’re worried about saying the wrong thing, leaving you feeling as though you’re carrying something nobody else wants to talk about.
You don’t have to protect other people from your grief here.
There’s no expectation that you’ll have the right words, or that your feelings will make sense straight away. However you’re experiencing this loss, we’ll start there.
Both Trudie and I have extensive experience supporting people bereaved by suicide. We’ve worked alongside individuals, families, workplaces and organisations navigating the aftermath of suicide, and have worked with organisations including Suicide&Co, SoBS and Bags for Strife.
My work in suicide bereavement has also extended beyond the therapy room. I served on the British Standards Institution (BSI) Working Group that developed BS 30480, the UK’s first standard for responding to suicide in the workplace. That experience has deepened my understanding of both the personal and wider impact of suicide, but the most important thing I bring to our sessions is simple:
A place where you don’t have to carry this on your own.
