I spent my childhood in a missionary boarding school, sent away at a young age, with my parents on the other side of the world. It took me many years, and my own therapeutic training, to understand what that had done to me. Since qualifying as a counsellor I have met more and more clients carrying the same hidden wound. They are often capable, articulate, successful people who cannot say why closeness feels so dangerous, or why they feel like a fraud in their own lives. Many have never been asked about their schooling in a way that mattered. Many therapists have never been trained to ask.

This is a practitioner-focused workshop on Boarding School Syndrome and how to work with it. We will look at:

**The key thinking.**

Joy Schaverien’s research and her ABCD framework, and Nick Duffell’s work on how the boarding system shapes the “strategic survival personality”.

**Clips from the BBC documentary "The Making of Them"**

used to bring the lived experience into the room and prompt discussion.

**Privilege, and why it isn’t the whole story.** Why “but it was a good school” and “your parents sacrificed for you” silence clients, and why the early loss of home, attachment and safety matters whatever the fees.

**From survival to living.**

What the move beyond survival strategies looks like, and how it can unfold in the therapy room.

**Practical ways of working.** Recognising the presentation, building safety and trust with clients whose defences once kept them alive, and avoiding common therapeutic pitfalls.

Description supplied by the event organiser.