"Support received from Bereavement Service"

I contacted the GM Bereavement Service on the advice of my GP because I was struggling to function and cope after losing my Dad which was made worse by the pandemic and the circumstances in which it happened.

The tipping point for me to ask for help was having my first panic attack which was frightening mentally and surprisingly physical. Before I had the panic attack I could never have understood what people meant about anxiety and didn't believe I was the sort of person who would ever suffer from something like that.

I was contacted by a lady from the Bereavement Team and felt able to talk openly and freely about how I was feeling. I'm not normally the sort of person who opens up to strangers easily and I do have friends and family that have tried to do everything they can but there are things that I felt more comfortable saying to a stranger.

The lady who rang me was amazing - non judgemental, supportive and caring - she called me regularly and listened to me and let me cry. She gave me links and resources to different places to learn about some coping mechanisms that might work for me and most importantly was able to give me the information I needed to access some specialist counselling.

My head was such a mess after my Dad died - without this service I truly believe I would still be in a mess as I didn't have the motivation or clear headedness to think properly for a while. I had slipped into a routine of withdrawing from people around me and drinking too much to get to sleep.

Having the comfort of knowing that there was someone there checking up on you, making sure you're OK and checking that plans are being followed up and helping access formal counselling was invaluable to me.

It must be a hard job to listen to people in my situation or worse and still be able to maintain such a caring persona.

Thank you to this support worker and everyone else at the Bereavement Team. In my opinion your services are invaluable.

Though I hope I don't need to access anything like this anytime soon and I hope that no-one I know does either, if it is needed this service would be the first I recommend.

You put me on the right track to be able to deal with my loss in as best way as I can.