Boarding School Survivor? How You Might Have Been Affected
Dr. Sheri Jacobson
March 13, 2023
photo by Patrick Case for Pexels
by Andrea M. Darcy
Sent off to board as a child? And find yourself with issues as an adult that you struggle to get to the bottom of? The two might be highly connected. A boarding school survivor can find themselves with distinct symptoms now called ‘boarding school syndrome’.
What is boarding school syndrome?
Boarding school syndrome is not an official diagnosis. But it is a useful shorthand now used by mental health professionals that refers to a set of symptoms common in adult ex-boarders.
The conversation around boarding school trauma in the UK can be traced to psychotherapist Nick Duffel, who coined the term ‘boarding school survivors’. Himself an ex boarder, and recognising a distinct set of struggles in himself and others, he went on to form an organisation of the same name in 1990. The goals of Boarding School Survivors is to raise public awareness, offer help to other survivors, and provide specialist training for mental health professionals.
His work was expanded on by psychoanalyst Joy Schaverien, who did not herself attend boarding school but worked with many clients who had been sent as young children. She coined the term ‘boarding school syndrome’ in a paper she published in 2011 in the British Journal of Psychotherapy. It is also the title of the book she put out in 2015, where she dives in depth into the trauma of the ‘privileged’ child.
But wasn’t I lucky to go to boarding school?
You might have boarding school to thank for an outwardly successful adult life. But if inwardly you feel empty, and struggle to connect to others or feel anything at all? Then there might have been a hidden price.
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Boarding school can mean access to a high quality education, a well-connected lifestyle, and lifelong friendships. And for some students, who didn’t have a happy home life, boarding school was a good experience. It presented them with stability, safety, and friends.
But it’s not helpful to feel that just because others enjoyed boarding, or you enjoyed it part of the time, you aren’t allowed to also see how boarding school was in other ways traumatic. The truth is that for many children, being sent away registered in their brain as an abandonment and a trauma. And that for others, boarding school might have started out happy but ended up a place they were bullied or abused.
Symptoms of boarding school trauma
Symptoms of boarding school trauma manifest as relating and intimacy issues, identity struggles, self-esteem problems, control issues, and general mental health struggles.
Relating problems
“In order to adapt to the system, a defensive and protective encapsulation of the self may be acquired; the true identity of the person then remains hidden. This pattern distorts intimate relationships and may continue into adult life.” Joy Schaverien
The relating issues of boarding school trauma can be attachment issues (things that affect the way we connect and bond to others). These can stem from feeling abandoned by your parents.
Relating problems can also be related to the rigid environment the schools can present. It can be a place where emotions are frowned on, you have no privacy but are constantly monitored, and are judged and compared by the other students.
Symptoms can look like:
- separation anxiety (e.g. feel stressed when a partner is busy or goes away)
- abandonment issues (can result in being clingy or aloof in relationships)
- intimacy problems (seem fine socially but then shut down if anyone tries to get too close)
- sexual issues (can’t relax, feel judged, performance anxiety, etc)
- struggle to understand or be kind to your children (always angry, hard on them)
- avoid conflict or act out in underhanded, secretive ways
- feeling really uncomfortable around displays of emotion
- don’t trust others
- commitment issues (can blow hot and cold, etc)
- always deep down feeling alone even if with others
- being successful at life but useless at relationships.
Identity issues in boarding school survivors
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Children who are traumatised can first of all blame themselves, and then ‘cut off’ their feelings. This can lead to creating a false persona, a ‘survival’ self. Which can look like hiding any feelings that would see you judged as ‘weak’ or a ‘sissy’. In some it manifests as becoming an overachiever to hide weakness, or the school clown, or even becoming a bully.
Identity issues can also arise if you were from a different background, culture, race, or sexuality to those at your school or in your school clique.
Another way identity issues can form is if we are fed one narrative as a child that does not match the reality we then live in. We learn to doubt ourselves. For example, if you are constantly told you are a loved and lucky child, by the very parents who then shipped you off and left you feeling they wanted little to do with you.
Symptoms here can look like:
- having different personalities for different situations (one for home, one for work)
- not ever really knowing what you want or what you feel
- struggle to describe emotions at all
- pleasing others or going along with what you think is expected
- being seen as a bully by others
- can’t relax and be yourself around others.
Self-esteem challenges
A child who feels abandoned or rejected will blame himself, leading to long-term self-esteem issues. Otherwise confidence issues from boarding school can arise from being picked on, or from the competitive nature of the boarding school social hierarchies. Symptoms can look like:
- guilt and shame that you aren’t ‘grateful’ for your privileged upbringing
- deep down feeling worthless
- worried about being seen a failure of feeling one
- feelings of being a fraud and a fake
- feeling flawed and unloveable
- constantly feeling that others are judging you unfavourably
- never feel at home in your own skin.
Control issues
Boarding school is a very controlled environment. What you eat, what times you sleep, what you wear, things that other children have at least partial choice over, might have been out of your hands. Privacy was limited.
This has led some boarding school survivors to report symptoms like:
- can’t switch off, have to always be busy
- struggle to relax and enjoy life
- disordered eating or eating disorders
- sleep problems
- can be a perfectionist
- need to have control of situations
- more comfortable in regulated environments like work
- don’t like authority or being told what to do.
Mental health struggles in boarding school survivors
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Anxiety and depression are common symptoms of trauma. And being ripped out of the family home and dumped at school is certainly traumatic for some children. Even more so if you were bullied or psychologically, physically, or sexually abused.
Trauma also often comes hand-in-hand with addictions and substance abuse, as you try to block the uncomfortable thoughts and painful feelings inside.
And workaholism is a common issue among boarding school survivors. The competition and rigour of the workplace can feel familiar or even comforting. And it creates the perfect place to hide from the stressors of other people’s expectations, and your own inner turmoil.
Women and boarding school trauma
Another point being raised by boarding school survivor charities is that the issue has been focused on male survivors, overlooking the unique issues women can have. This is particularly true as boarding schools were originally for males and are patriarchal institutions. Women survivors speak of feeling like it’s weak to be too ‘feminine’.
Who can help me if I am a boarding school survivor?
The good news is that boarding school trauma is getting more and more attention as more people speak up and share their experiences. There are now counsellors, coaches, and psychotherapists who specialise in boarding school syndrome.
There are also two organisations who offer resources and support here in the UK:
Are you a boarding school survivor? We offer a team of highly regarded expert therapists who can help with boarding school syndrome. Our main offices are on Harley Street and we can also offer appointments in the City of London, at London Bridge, or online.
Andrea M. Darcy is a mental health and wellbeing expert writer with training in person-centred therapy. She has written thousands of articles and is particularly interested in childhood trauma. Find her on Instagram @am_darcy
Very good article. It’s good that these things are being opened up. At Blundells’ School I was psychologically, physically and sexually abused and went on to hate authority, groups, institutions, teams and to have mental health and interwoven substance abuse issues for 35 years snd was unable to maintain a stable intimate relationship and to trust anyone. I’m so happy that boarding school trauma is now a recognised thing.
I have never in my life heard of this before and can’t tell you what a surprising sense of validation I’ve been given. This experience is so unique and uncommon that I simply abandoned making sense of it’s impact on me, because once I was out there wasn’t a single person who could relate.
It’s jarring enough simply to be placed in a boarding school but the one I attended was particularly shady with the image they presented our parents versus the treatment we experienced inside. Of course, we were children being dramatic and complaining cause we wanted to come home. It was easy to convince our parents to continue forking over tens of thousands of dollars in our best interest.
Only we had the most poorly equipped people to rely on, including the designated medical staff, who handicapped a girl in my class for the rest of her life by giving her two medications every day that should never have been taken together.
We were run like a military school by Chaperone’s who had no degree’s, certificates, diplomas that qualified them to be the adults we relied on. We had no one to help us with our classes; school was an individual and self paced experience we did on a computer. We had disciplinarian women who mostly sat in chairs all day and gave us consequences if we spoke in the cafeteria we spent every meal in, and we weren’t allowed to talk to each other in the dorms we shared. We could only contact our families on Sunday’s, and by email. We weren’t allowed cell phones and devices that allowed us to access the real world. It was mandatory that we drink 8 bottles of water a day and have two buddies to verify and document that you did, and if hadn’t by bed time they made you drink the full amount of what you had left or be given a consequence. There was also a rule that we were not allowed to use the bathroom for an hour after our 9pm bed time. Two girls wet their beds because they were expected to face humiliation before they were allowed to have autonomy over their bodies when organs responded how you’d expect them to after being forced to chug large amounts of liquid.
Some of us were unfortunate to endure a more personal and private hell with the adults put in charge of us.
When our school was shut down after being sued by multiple parents, it made the news because the lawsuits against it included sexual abuse, child abuse, and medical malpractice.
True story, look it up sometimes. It’s one of a string of boarding schools around the US all linked to each other and shut down one by one for being ran like a prison system and the horror stories we endured. The one I went to was Red River Academy.
You don’t have to publish this comment, I just wanted to add that if you’re interested in reading about it, you can either Google the school I attended and find the related articles or Google WWASP Schools and/or WWASP Survivor Stories for more in depth articles about all the schools involved. I think they’ve been talking about making a documentary on it.
I was sent to Boarding School at 10 yrs old. I was a high achiever and passed the 11+ at 10. I was only allowed to Board because my 2 years old sister went with me.
My father had recently left the Royal Navy, and my parents had discovered they couldn’t actual stand living 24/7 with each other. Mt father went overseas to work, and my mother moved in with her mother and went back to work. (she was only 33yrs old, have had us very young. BSchool seemed the best solution [ for her at least!
I had never even spent more than 2 nights away from home before. I was small for my age, and emotionally immature, though Scholastically advanced. I wore glasses, and had curly red hair with a tendency to frizz. I was perfect bullying fodder!
I can identify with all of the symptoms that are mentioned. I have been married 3 times, and have a tendency to bolt and withdraw when faced with a poor relationship. I could go on, but suffice it to say I am better educated than almost everyone I know, and ace Jeopardy every night. Yet I never achieved the level of success everyone, including me, expected. I have 2 Master’s degrees, and rose to become a Director in my chosen field, Even this was not enough, I still feel like a failure. I never got my Ph.D!