Why do a training specifically for female ex-boarders?

My colleague Sara Warner and I provided a training day for Therapists in London who wanted to understand more about the ways boarding school may have impacted their female clients and how to support them.

Due to the pioneering work of Joy Schaverien and Nick Duffell,  Boarding School Syndrome is becoming more widely known about in the Therapeutic community and this blind spot, is slowly becoming visible.

However, a woman's experience is still invisible to many.  Over the years I have heard things like, "I know boys suffer at boarding schools, but girls are fine."  "The schools are much nicer for girls, and girls are much nicer to each other."  My own experience of getting articles written in the press about girls' experiences has confirmed this bias and unless there is a male celebrity with stories of abuse, the press is rarely interested.

The trauma of abandonment, bereavement, captivity, and dissociation that a child goes through is the same regardless of gender.  A child being separated from their parents at a young age, having to fend for themselves and finding a way to survive this alien environment by building up a fortified wall around themselves whilst suppressing their feelings is the same.  How this can create an avoidant pattern of attachment with intimacy and relationships is the same.  How hypervigilance is developed and an inability to trust others is the same. How this creates a breakdown of their family unit which leaves its legacy in adulthood is the same.  How this impacts their own struggles with parenting themselves when they have no blueprint to do it.  It is the same.

What is different however is that girls are being brought up in institutions that were developed for boys.  Based on Patriarchal lines.

Boys are encouraged to lead and be the elite in society, whereas often girls receive the message of servitude. This is the message that is not exclusive to boarding schools in our society, but when girls are shut away in institutions with very few positive female role models, and the more distorted masculine values are encouraged such as being stoical and not being emotional, a girl learns to split off from her own feminine nature.

The often oppressive uniforms, the religious ethos in many schools, the lack of privacy, the competition and envy that is prevalent between girls and the huge amount of shame a girl experiences keeps the girl small.  Not feeling her worth.  Seeking approval and validation.  Pleasing. Suppressing her own needs and wants, and placing others before herself.  Learning that in order to succeed in this world she has to inhabit the more ruthless distorted masculine characteristics, and thus turn against her own positive feminine characteristics and therefore other women who display them.

Going through puberty and adolescence in an institution without a loving parent to reassure a girl about her changing body and a need for some autonomy, as well as seeking the approval of the boys in a co-ed school, leaves girls vulnerable to eating disorders. It is rare for me to work with a female ex-boarder who has not had a disordered relationship with food.

So, the woman who went to boarding school may show up in the therapy room with a smile on her face and a competence that hides the crippling low self-worth and a feeling of being broken inside.  It is important to see beyond the outer layer.  The small girl inside of me still questions if it is safe to come out,  but as a female therapist who specialises in this area,  It is important for me to walk the talk and role model a woman who is prepared to use her voice, speak up, and be seen.

We will be doing further trainings, so if you would like to be informed, please sign up to my mailing list.

Amelia