Services: Boarding Recovery

Nicola Miller Psychotherapy

Boarding recovery

Many adults are suffering long-term emotional or behavioural difficulties, which stem from having lost normal family life through being sent away to boarding school as children.

Amongst the general public, such an education is associated with economic advantage and privilege rather than psychological problems.

Sufferers, therefore, can find it difficult to admit to having a problem and symptoms are often hidden behind a brittle façade of competence. Shame from having had such a privileged start, can prevent them from acknowledging their distress.

Sometimes people feel emotionally cut-off as a result of living in an atmosphere where it was normal to keep silent about their feelings. They may also believe their experience of boarding was unproblematic and fun at times, but this can be an incomplete or distorted memory. To cope as child in a situation without family, home and adults who know us, it is usually necessary to normalise what is far from a normal situation.

When developmental needs have been compromised and attachments damaged, as well as traumatic events in a child or adolescent's life, complex trauma can result. I am one of a growing group of therapists aware of the hidden nature of this `trauma of privilege' and trained to help people move from surviving in the present to living a more satisfying life.

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