You will begin by exploring your own personal experience of the lead-up and experience of your first day at school. We will look at the ways young children manage that transition from home life to school life and that threshold moment as they transition from one to the other. You will have the opportunity to reflect on what that was like for you and understand how you adapted to this change.

Were you homesick at all? How did you manage your feelings? How were others treated who showed their sadness? We contact the loss that you may have felt or not felt when you went away to school and how you managed it. We explore the impact of the continual packing and unpacking of your trunk and how that can create two separate selves. A home self and a school self and how that can set up a feeling of homelessness that can continue into adulthood.

In this module, we go deeper into exploring how you developed your own strategy to cope with growing up in an institution in which there may have been little pastoral care and you may have felt unsafe. What character adaptations you had to make and what helped you manage when you had no regular parental support. I explain the Survivor Personality typologies defined by Nick Duffel, as well as adding my own and we look at ways these ways of being may help or hinder you now.

In this module we explore what it was like going through puberty and adolescence whilst in boarding school.  Where you learnt about sex, who your role models were and how this has shaped your current relationships with sex and your sexuality now. 

Here we explore different emotions, how they show up, how we feel about them and how we can regulate ourselves if we get overwhelmed. You will learn about Trauma and Complex PTSD and how that gets trapped in your body and how to support yourself. We will explore the impact of abandonment and how it shows up as an adult. You will learn about ways children manage their emotions such Disassociation and how to recognise this. We will look at ways to work with shame, how to lift this paralyzing emotion and develop self-compassion. 

In this module, we explore your own ways of looking after yourself. What it is like to take care of yourself and how you do it. How do you manage when you are ill? Do you take pride in being independent and not needing anyone? Do you abandon and neglect yourself now? How do you start to be compassionate to yourself when you had to grow up alone and do this for yourself? You will learn ways to change these patterns and how to implement more self-care so that you are less likely to suffer from burnout or depression.

We begin by exploring the impact that sending a child to boarding school may have on sibling relationships. We will look at how your own relationship with your parents may have been affected and explore different ways you may be able to talk to your parents about your schooling should you wish to. We look at the difficulties that may arise within your own present-day family when parenting your own children if you have them and ways that may help you with this. We look at Transgenerational trauma and how it impacts a whole family system and what you can now do to change that.

We look at how your present-day relationships may have been impacted by your school upbringing. We will look at attachment theory, how you identify and how this shows up for you in relationships. We look at the impact of hiding your emotions and vulnerability, why you may find criticism incredibly hard, and how you may carry an abandonment wound that can cause you to act out in relationships that cause you difficulties. You will learn ways to express yourself and improve your relationships.

Using the framework of Internal Family Systems Therapy, I will show you how to recognise the different parts that show up for you at different times and how you can support yourselves as an adult and turn compassionately to the parts of you that you have shut out, disconnected from, and split off when you went to school.

Children growing up in boarding schools have little privacy and boundaries are often crossed. Here you will learn what boundaries are important to you, why they matter and how to assert them in relationships to support yourself. We will look at influences on Self-Esteem and what you can action in order to boost your own.  

Boarding School inflicts certain values on children and pushes them into certain careers or belief systems about who they should be and how they should live their life. Many ex-boarders report feelings of anxiety in the workplace, and in this module we get to examine what lies behind this and how to manage it. This is your opportunity to look within and work out your own personal values and what matters to you. Are you in the career you want to be in? Do you feel you have autonomy to make your own choices or do you still feel captive by the constraints imposed on you from elsewhere?

In this final module we will reflect on all your learning and connect with who you are now at the age you are now. Your likes, loves, dislikes, passions. What brings you joy and nourishment. You will recognise your integrated self. We will reflect on your ending at your school, how you do endings today and find ways to do it differently if you wish to.

I will cover some of the impacts of being in an environment surrounded only by males and how this may shape your perception of women and yourself. We will also address the impact of the hierarchical nature of the schooling and “Lord of the Flies” environment that was prevalent for many.