Find Your More: The Blog - More Love, More Resilience

For years I have thought of my True Self as being located somewhere inside me. I don’t mean like literally inside my body – but definitely inside me. It never occurred to me that this might be a misrepresentation. But there’s a problem with this way of thinking about the True Self – for me at least, it contributes to a sense of being separate. And the whole point of this spiritual approach is that we are not separate – we are all part of the wholeness of everything. When I saw the True Self as being inside, I saw it as being hidden away inside the walls that we create as children to keep ourselves safe. As if the True Self needs protection. As if!

Some ex-boarders find a lot of things hard. There’s a long list of things we boarding school survivors complain of, including: anxiety, dissociation, addiction, depression, difficulties with vulnerability & intimacy, and with relationships. But there is one thing which seems to be foundational to all of these – simply not feeling safe. When I asked the members of The Tuck Shop (my online community for ex-boarders) what they would like to focus on first, the majority of them identified safety. So that’s where we started.

Infants and children naturally expect love. We reach out to our parents and they respond with love. So what happens when that love is suddenly taken away? What happens when a child is sent away – at the age of six or eight, or 11 or 13 – to an institution which is devoid of love? At the age at which we found ourselves abandoned in a boarding school, our peers – no matter how friendly they were – could not provide the love we received at home. There was no one to give you a hug, sit you on her lap, tell you a story or hoist you onto his shoulders. So what did you put in the place of love?

This week I’ve been in recovery mode… From a weekend which was brutal, gruelling and exhausting. I was on a weekend workshop for women ex-boarders. During those two days I revisited my own time at boarding school and I listened to 13 other women share about theirs. I'm not sure which was harder to be honest. To go back to memories like these is only worth it if you know you’ll be able to process them and move on. The moving on – I hope – will happen at the second weekend of this course at the end of March. But what can I share with you?

The best gift you can give your beloved for Valentine’s Day isn’t roses or chocolates or a candle-lit dinner. The candles will soon burn down, the dinner will be reduced to dirty glasses and plates, the chocolates may last more than a night, but they’ll be gone within a week. If you’re the couple who still does something for Valentine’s Day, even though the rest of the year it’s a bit tense, then you haven’t given up. In that case, the best gift you can give your partner is the work you do on yourself. But maybe you’ve not yet figured out how to do that.

Where will you be on St Valentine’s Day​? Will you be out celebrating with your partner? Or sitting at home together saying ‘bah humbug – it’s so commercialised’. Or will you be sitting at home in separate spaces thinking ‘there’s no point – the spark has gone out.’ If it’s the third option, maybe you've given up trying. You never seem to agree on anything and you get triggered on a daily basis. It seems like nothing you do makes a difference. But if you really want to make this relationship work, read on...

In last week's blog post I talked about how childhood experiences can shape a 'Hero Child'. Hero Children were the responsible ones, the ones who comforted younger siblings and sometimes our parents. In adulthood this tends to show up as perfectionism, having to control everything and the tendency to be harshly critical. It’s obvious that much of this will be like a hand grenade thrown into a relationship. Nobody likes to be controlled or criticised and judged harshly when they get things wrong. Read on to discover how you can soften these Hero Child traits in yourself.

Do you speak harshly to yourself? I know that my harsh inner voice – my inner critic if you like – is something I created in response to what I experienced as a child. I remember my parents being harsh with each other and sometimes with my sisters. So the harsh voice was part of the background noise when I was growing up. I was the eldest child and I’m like many other women I know who were the eldest child. We were the responsible ones, the ones who comforted younger siblings and sometimes our parents, and we often acted as mediators or go-betweens when there was conflict. This role which is so often adopted by the eldest child, is sometimes known as the Hero Child, and it’s not confined to women.

How could three little words be so triggering? ‘The Tuck Shop’ – it turns out that it wasn’t always the happy place for children in boarding school In Tuesday’s workshop I had a flurry of comments about it in the chat... If you’re an ex-boarder and you’d like to contribute to choosing a better name for The Tuck Shop, join us – we start at 12pm next Tuesday.

It takes a degree of humility for anyone to recognise that their behaviour has been unkind or that they could be more emotionally available. So if you have already seen that in yourself, you’ve taken the first step – and it was a brave one. In this blog post I take you through six stages in the journey to discovering who you are and reconnecting with your inner life and those you love.

Talking with ex-boarder clients and their partners I notice a pattern where the partner feels dismissed, shut out, and even lied to. The relationship suffers because the ex-boarder is unable to show up fully with their partner – and often with their children as well. There are very real reasons why partners feel this way. Their experience is a mirror to the survival personality or mask which children create at boarding school to keep them safe. After wearing that mask for 5, 10 or even 13 years it becomes very difficult to take it off – the mask feels like safety, without it there is only vulnerability and fear. But to have a healthy relationship, we have to put the mask aside and let our partners in. Let’s take a look at the mask and how it impacts relationships.

If you really want to understand how the trauma of boarding school affects adult relationships you need to ask the ex-boarder’s partner. The wives and daughters of men who went to boarding school complain about them... * being defensive * avoiding conflict * being afraid to face their fears and other painful emotions * dissociating or disappearing when things get difficult * being dismissive of family members and their needs * being evasive or telling outright lies But there is a reason behind this behaviour - part of the ex-boarder's mask.