The history of Britain is massively built on the boarding school system.  It was created hundreds of years ago to support the class structure where-by the lords and ladies ruled over all the others, ruthlessly and without feeling. It creates children who are lost, feel unsafe, have survived being bullied and have learnt to bully.

It spawned the army and naval commanders who instilled discipline and heroic sacrifice in the services, and which then ensured the British forces, particularly the Navy, were victorious. 

The boarding school model then spread across the world into the colonies which these conquering forces invaded and took control of, and in which they then replicated the trauma onto the children of the peoples living all over the world.

Boarding schools continue to provide most of our politicians, our judges, business leaders, heads of churches, state bodies and national authorities.  The ethos of the boarding school has shaped our economics and our societies.  This has shaped the world we live in, and the world we have created.. and how we treat it.  The disconnection they embody, and the insensitive and abusive culture of boarding schools is at the heart of the disconnected, abusive and unfeeling relationship we have with the natural world and most of the indigenous people left alive after centuries of colonial invasion.

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My experience of surviving boarding school

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I was sent to boarding school form the age of 10, and my brother was just 9. We had just arrived from Kenya where I had lived all my life until then (it was still a British colony when I was born there!).  I remember being dropped off at a cold stately mansion in Sussex - it was January, and this was home to a small boarding school of maybe 80 boys, and then watching my parents drive away in a puff of exhaust smoke.

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Both my parents had been sent to boarding schools; both were emotionally illiterate, unable to show affection, never cuddled or even spent time with us.  They were harsh, judgemental, and easily angered to the point of slaps and the slipper. So I wasn't surprised to find myself in a damp and creaky old building, metal ex-army beds, school dinners morning, noon and night, and within weeks being beaten with a riding crop for playing football where I shouldn't have.

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I wasn't surprised by anything; but I was miserable, confused, was bullied, tried my best not to cry, and proudly managed to stop feeling so homesick after a just couple of weeks. Actually I stopped feeling very much at all, and I learnt that I was totally alone. There was no one in my life that I could go to, that I could tell how I felt, or if there was anything wrong; there was no one who would make me feel safe. I didn't realise this then; I was too busy coping - surviving, putting on a brave face, and having to take care of myself and a little bit for my younger brother too.

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And I have felt unsafe ever since, and largely still do - though at least I now know this and am able to give myself some of the care I so badly missed out on then.

I was about 32 when I suddenly realised, on waking one morning, that I hadn't actually enjoyed boarding school (I had been sent to a  bigger Public School when I was 13).. as I had kind of assumed - 'it was ok really, pretty good having dorm-fights and all that stuff, and freedom from the parents..'. I had thought, until I realised that I had actually felt nothing about it, because I wasn't able to feel anything - I had been too un-safe.., and underneath that nothing; I felt terribly sad, angry, and lots more sadness about that now. I had missed out on being with my family, my home, mates who I could hang out with, a bedroom I could chill in.. and just being at home and feeling like I belonged.

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Instead what I felt was all a massive front! A charade of confidence, bravado and superiority, as I had repeatedly been told I was in the top 1%, that I was privileged, lucky to be at a boarding school, and everything was just right.

In fact it wasn't.. I wasn't. I survived boarding school, a top university and then my masters degree before I crashed, had a break down. And it was the therapy I then started that has been the making of me, rather than the trauma of my childhood including those years at boarding school.  I discovered and learnt to notice the crippling anxiety that was lurking beneath my self-confident facade, anxiety that stemmed from living in unsafety, in an institution for nearly a decade - a prison sentence for a 10 year-old!  Years feeling unsafe.. scared, with no one there on my side, while I was bullied by staff and pupils, beaten for things I didn't understand, and all the while being told 'it was good for me'.  Bollocks!

Being in safe groups during this therapy, sharing my experiences with other similarly wounded 'boys' has enabled me to access the feelings which I had been forced to bury so long ago. To feel the grief, and some anger, and then to be able to address and heal my wounding.

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Hearing that I was not alone in my pain and alone-ness is very helpful. It validates my feelings; makes me feel a bit OK...

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I am still alone by default - I struggle to have real friends or to hold onto relationships. I easily befriend strangers, sometimes inappropriately.. and then cannot really open to them or trust any sense of developing affection.. and usually drop friends without realising.. as I internalised the 'out of sight, out of mind' strategy I had needed to cope with the home-sickness and abandonment I experienced as a young child.

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Doing this work has allowed my to shift some of the grief; to learn to nurture my self, my inner child who remained abandoned, and who I am now caring for and welcoming home. This work is making me feel alive and whole, and able to connect with my feelings, all of them, and especially at last, with joy and hope.