Beyond Boarding School: Making Sense of What Remains

Boarding school is often associated with privilege, opportunity and academic success. Yet, for some children, being sent away can also involve profound and largely unrecognised loss.

A child may learn to appear independent, capable and resilient while privately experiencing homesickness, loneliness or abandonment. The ways they adapt – hiding vulnerability, suppressing emotional needs and learning to cope alone – may continue long after they leave school.

Boarding School Syndrome

The term Boarding School Syndrome was developed by Jungian psychoanalyst Joy Schaverien to describe patterns sometimes experienced by adults who were sent away to school, particularly at a young age. These can include difficulties with trust, intimacy, emotional expression and belonging.

Schaverien also described how a child may develop a split between their vulnerable “home self” and the more defended “boarding school self” needed to function within the institution.

Psychotherapist and author Nick Duffell, who pioneered therapeutic work with former boarders, refers to the development of a Strategic Survival Personality. This protective self may become highly competent, independent and successful, while concealing a younger part that learned not to need too much, feel too deeply or rely upon others.

In adult life, this may appear as:

• difficulty asking for or receiving help
• discomfort with vulnerability and emotional closeness
• overachievement, perfectionism or a strong need for control
• withdrawing when relationships become more intimate
• emotional detachment or an ability to “switch off”
• minimising painful experiences because others “had it worse”
• a persistent sense of loneliness or not fully belonging

These are not signs of weakness. They are often intelligent adaptations developed by a child trying to remain emotionally safe.

My understanding of boarding

I understand the complexity of boarding both professionally and personally. I spent my early childhood overseas and was sent to a girls’ boarding school in the UK at nine, where I remained for nine years.

As a Third Culture Kid, boarding involved not only separation from my family but also from the countries, cultures and ways of life that had shaped my earliest sense of home. This can create a particularly layered experience of identity and belonging: the country described as “home” may not feel like home at all.

My own experience informs the sensitivity I bring to this work, but I will not assume that your experience was the same as mine. Some former boarders remember school positively; others experienced loneliness, bullying, neglect or abuse. Many hold a complicated mixture of gratitude, loyalty, sadness and anger.

There is room in therapy for the whole story – including both privilege and pain.