Distorted development
Central to my own experience of being sent to boarding
school was a sense of abandonment. I now realise that
this sense of abandonment occurred primarily at an
unconscious and instinctive level. Consciously, I understood
why my parents had decided to send me to England: they were
working abroad and they, and I, believed that getting back
into the English education system at the age of 12 was the
only way to ensure that my education would pave the way to
university and a good career. To stay in Chile where we were
living would have meant going into either the local or the
American system – we were ignorant of how this might actually
have been the better option.
How else could I survive, without
distancing myself from the intensity of such feelings?
So I knew that my parents loved me, and that they were doing
this because they genuinely thought it was for the best. And yet,
my 12-year-old reaction to the 8,000-mile separation from family
was one of terror, pain, withdrawal into myself and an avoidance of
others. I remember being ashamed of my reaction; I had been looking
forward to school and had expected to find it exciting and fun. But
my almost instantaneous reaction, from which I never fully recovered
in the five years I was at the school, was a kind of emotional
paralysis and hyper-vigilance that I could not switch off. I now
realise that this response was a normal, biological response to the
experience of separation, probably exacerbated by my own innately
reserved personality and temperament. How else could I survive, without
distancing myself from the intensity of such feelings?
I now understand how difficult it is to achieve a healthy
separation from parents if it has not been allowed to happen in its natural
course.
Instead of engaging in a normal developmental separation from family
with the onset of puberty, I became fixated on returning home and escaping
from the school in which I found myself. Nick Duffell summarises this
experience: 'I now understand how difficult it is to achieve a healthy
separation from parents if it has not been allowed to happen in its natural
course. I suspect that a natural separation would occur some time just
after the onset of puberty'.2 However, a boarding school separation is not
natural or gradual, but rather an amputation. And the premature loss that
occurs can make it extremely difficult for an individual to feel that he or
she is ready to strike out alone and face the world as an adult. This is
something that I have worked on several times in personal counselling; but
early traumas do not heal easily or fully
3
and learning to live with their
memories is a key step in moving forward.
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