Boarding School Syndrome Explained: Find Recovery & Hope with Joy Schaverien - AEM #10

Boarding School Syndrome Explained: Find Recovery & Hope with Joy Schaverien - AEM #10 | Piers Cross

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Күн бұрын

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@tjdiver1961 3 жыл бұрын

Thank-you Piers for that excellent interview, and thank you too Joy, I could listen to her for hours. The "ABCD" that Joy mentions also has an "E" - ETERNITY - she mentions it 22 minutes in, how a term, or a year, is an eternity to a boarding school child. I spent 10 years in two boarding schools and it was a life sentence. And at 48 minutes she says "you're separated from your family and you never find them again in the same way......when you go home home you've had experiences you can't convey to them". That is exactly my experience. I used to "go home" on holiday, but I didn't live there and I didn't know my family, I was just a guest staying for a couple of weeks, and I didn't fit in.

@chiefouko 9 ай бұрын

😢I felt the same since I have been 10 I have been in boarding school in Kenya. I don't remember a year that i spent with my parents. After high school I was shipped away to Australia.

@speedypete4987 3 жыл бұрын

A is for Anxiety that I have suffered for 60 years since BS at 5 yrs young. B is for Betrayal by the people who had responsibility to protect you and care for you(your parents). C is for crying at night after lights out; D is for Depression for 60 years along with Anxiety; E is for Education etc etc love this video.

@pierscross 3 жыл бұрын

Thank you for sharing Speedy Pete...

@vanessasworder 2 жыл бұрын

🦋🦋🦋

@c.guinevere 3 жыл бұрын

Thank you so much. I remember my first hours of boarding school vividly. I was in a school that was heavily Russian-influenced. I used to watch a movie over and over again in my free time at school. It was about a man who escaped a gulag and then survived in Siberia. I remember wishing I was in that situation instead of my own. I understand that better now, and why that movie imprinted so profoundly upon me...he was escaping prison!! I would have done anything to escape. My home life was not good but boarding school was worse. I went into it thinking it would be better. From one prison to another.

@pierscross 3 жыл бұрын

Hi C. Guinevere, thank you for your comment and reflections. For so many of us, our boarding schools were prisons. We were captive as Joy says. Thank you for your insights 🙏

@christinedennis678 Жыл бұрын

At boarding school in NZ we read a book called "The long march". about escaping the Russian country. I then escaped by pushbike and biked over 100miles to get home. I was a bad boy, That is now 49yrs ago, My mother has now died , I was always bad in her eyes and in my fathers eyes as well. The headmaster was going to cane me but I cryed and he let me go. I wrote a story about it at the time, Just shown it to my daughter.

@AnyaB18 3 жыл бұрын

Excellent point about politicians externalising the internalised feeling of imprisonment / captivity / suffering, Piers. Really enjoyed the whole chat. Thank you for doing the work you do!

@pierscross 3 жыл бұрын

Hi @Anya Bukshi, thank you for your comment. Really glad that you enjoyed the interview. Yes, I too really enjoyed interviewing her and watching the replay... Thank you for your support. Many blessings, Piers

@jackomile1838 10 ай бұрын

I am married to a man that was sent to boarding school at the age of 8 until 18 as the only one of three siblings (not sure why the other two were not sent). I am only starting now to understand how this has affected my husband - I always thought that it is a "privilige" to be sent to a private school and couldn't understand why my husband is so insecure and emotionally "frozen"..........all of a sudden it makes sense and I want to support my husband to acknowledge his trauma. Any advice? 😭😭😭😭

@pierscross 10 ай бұрын

Hi @jackomile1838, thanks for your comment and for sharing some of your experiences. I have created a playlist of videos for partners about boarding school syndrome here: kzbin.info/aero/PLc8DzH2Z1rJiCCDJ3cuZl0KhwhzCsrlIS I hope that this helps, take care, Piers

@bengreatorex502 3 жыл бұрын

Incredibly helpful interview: brilliant questions, detailed answers.

@pierscross 3 жыл бұрын

Good afternoon @Ben Greatorex, thank you for your comments. Glad that you liked the interview - many of the questions came from ex-boarders - I have many more yet to ask her. Hopefully in Summer I will interview her again, warm regards, Piers

@dsouchon Жыл бұрын

Thank you Piers and Joy. Well done.

@JonnyOwenTunes Жыл бұрын

I grew up in boarding school after being sent at 8. I identify with what youre saying and realise that many of my emotional problems are a direct result. I grew up thinking rampant homophobia was a logical and ethical inevitability. It was a bewildering revelation after I left to discover that there were actually people out there who were not homophobic. Being gay was more difficult I the 80s and 90s for anyone but I am sure my experiences there were acidic for the soul. Sexuality aside, I am at a loss to understand how any sane adult, let alone a parent, can think this institution is anything less than abhorrent. My parents knew I hated it - the local secondary school was framed as a scary awful place to keep me where I was. Ironically, I learnt since how much better the local state education was in all the ways that count - learning about your local community, your emotional life, your family and where you fit etc - and very often including, academically. At boarding school you learn that Latin is valued over happiness or empathy. It fosters the institutional psychopathy which is so evident in British politics, our history and the shame we inherit for Britain's abominable empire.

@pierscross Жыл бұрын

Hi Johnny, thanks for your comment and for sharing some of your boarding school journey. I am sorry to hear the impact for you. You might be interested in this podcast with Marcus Gottlieb kzbin.info/www/bejne/iZK1hGaGl6x5mcUsi=uV-D7AhF1mhZgbb6

@JonnyOwenTunes Жыл бұрын

@pierscross Hi Piers. Thank you so much for taking the time to reply. And for sending the link. I've already watched it ... this and all your videos I've watched so far have been excellent. Such a relief to find validation and understanding. It's only now in my 40s that I am finally recognising that my mental health challenges are so interlinked with my school experience. For years, I have looked for answers and had various 'diagnoses', tried CBT, counselling, psychotherapy - and all the home remedies from less healthy drugs and alcohol to the more virtuous yoga and jogging. I have made a life of sorts and have some good friends, so it's far from all bad. But when my foundations are wobbled, all the issues come crashing back to the fore as has recently happened. And suddenly, I feel rage, loneliness, resentment, sadness etc, but it all feels so anachronistic - as though I am 8 years old. The sun will come out again soon and I am forging on with my campervan renovation, so keeping out of trouble. I am in awe of your journey and how superbly you have made sense of things in your videos. Kudos to you for helping others. I hope you are well and finding peace

@biljanakocanovic6778 4 ай бұрын

Wonderful, much love...🥰

@pierscross 4 ай бұрын

Yes, Joy's work is amazing. Take care, Piers

@ravenorama 3 жыл бұрын

i had nightmares about being prison for years and I never connected it to boarding school, but it makes total sense.

@pierscross 3 жыл бұрын

Hi @Simon Raven, thanks for your comment. Interesting about your nightmares. I too had nightmares for months post school and also didn't associate it with what happened. Take care, Piers

@ravenorama 3 жыл бұрын

@@pierscross nightmares about 'being prison' is an interesting Freudian slip!

@cozmicrahop9415 Жыл бұрын

@@ravenorama LMAO

@lemsip207 8 ай бұрын

Boarding school syndrome has trickled down into British culture even for those who never attended a boarding school or knew someone who had. It's in the Government, in the state school education system, the church, the military and the mainstream media and entertainment business. Supertramp wrote and recorded a song called The Logical Song to describe boarding school syndrome. It was on the Breakfast In America album. I think Peter Gabriel spoke up against them too. Phil Collins who only attended day schools wrote about the dynamics in Genesis caused by three of them being ex boarders after he and Steve Hackett had joined the band. I think they were the first members of the band who weren't ex boarders. I never liked Harry Potter novels and films and only saw one film in the cinema. I much preferred His Dark Materials. But even the main character Lyra grows up believing she is an orphan and is raised at first by nuns and then the scholars and housekeepers of one college in Oxford University. Who she believes is her uncle is actually her father and she was born to a married woman her father had an affair with. That woman comes into her life when she is older and steals her away. Will on the other hand lives with his mother but his father is an explorer and has been missing for years. He later finds his father when he enters Lyra's universe as his father went missing there. But as a child growing up I would read stories about children who in boarding schools.

@jackrabbitron Жыл бұрын

Amazing how deeply one's feelings from boarding can be buried. You don't realize it's happening at the time.

@RussellBowman-r9h Жыл бұрын

Such great content again Piers. Thank you Joy too for all you work. One point that you touched on was the question of "is sending children to board, child abuse?". The idea of home life being so bad that boarding may be "ok" is, in my view, forgetting that if home life is that bad, the care system exists to place that child with a good enough family. Class difference again in the UK. I think we should move to call it out as abuse. Having said that, I do wonder about weekly boarding and would be interested to know both your views on this. Do weekly boarders present for therapy?

@pierscross Жыл бұрын

Hi, thank you for your thoughtful comments. In answer to your question. Yes, people who were weekly boarders present all the time for therapy. As Joy says in her book, "Exile is the state of being for many in boarding school. The children are effectively homeless no longer fully belonging at home nor at school." I feel that it is as hard because we don't belong at home and so it can be quite depressing. Thank you, Piers

@speedypete4987 3 жыл бұрын

Alice Miller calls it being an “enlightened witness” thank you Joy for being such a compassionate caring witness.

@pierscross 3 жыл бұрын

Hi Speedy Pete, thanks for your comment. I love the comment enlightened witness which I have not heard before. Take care, Piers

@nedim_guitar Жыл бұрын

You didn't talk about the refugees and if they experience similar things psychologically. Or did I miss it? Are there any resources that talk about that?

@pierscross Жыл бұрын

Hi Nedim, thanks for your message. Great question. I would say it is very much similar to this condition of boarding school syndrome - the breaking of attachment, you lose everything when you leave your home, you can't go back (as Joy Schaverien says in her book, Boarding School Syndrome - "The children are effectively homeless, no longer fully belonging at home nor at school." I would say that refugees, in my opinion, would struggle with the same thing but with "school" being substituted for the new country. What a great question. And a deeper psychological question would be if the leaders who are causing this refugee crisis went to boarding school, how might that impact their decision making. Might someone who was made "effectively homeless" as a child project this homelessness onto others. As Peter Levine PhD says, "In an insidious way, trauma contribute to the motives and drives of our behaviour. That is to say that the man who was hit as a child will feel compelled to hit as an adult." If you substitute 'hit' with 'homeless' you start asking some powerful questions... Thank you Nedim, this is a great area of research...Piers

@nedim_guitar Жыл бұрын

@@pierscross Thank you for your reply! I didn't see it until now. I was asking because I was a refugee myself, came to Sweden from war torn Bosnia and Herzegovina in late 1992 (second day in Sweden, I turned twelve). Actually, I recognized and could relate to a lot of things there, so this whole issue intrigued me.