21 Jan Boarding School Syndrome: hypnotherapy and how it can help
Being a therapist in South London, more specifically, a hypnotherapist, has brought many clients to my Brixton Clinic, who have been damaged not only by people, but my institutions.
Boarding School is obviously not a given ‘damager’; for a few, it is the wonderful place where they had friends, community, activities and a ‘riot’ of a time. But the clients I see coming to hypnotherapy (and they range from 25 to 85) are hounded by feelings of abandonment, not fitting in, unable to say how they feel or make meaningful attachments.
So how can hypnotherapy help?
Firstly, it’s the feelings we need to uncover; an adoption specialist recently said to me it’s a question of upstairs or downstairs behaviour. Sometimes, the upstairs brain is doing one thing and the downstairs body is doing something else. So you can logically think (when your dog walks out the door) that your dog has gone for the water bowl, while something twinges in your body which feels like grief/abandonment.
The intersting thing when you start to listen to the body (instead of the mind) is another story gets told; it’s a story of eg/ your seven year old part plonked at a school, knowing nobody and having to survive. Hypnosis used in therapy can help you access these younger versions of yourself who often act out when scared or triggered. Logically you can be telling yourself a very adult story, and yet your body is acting out the traumatised little kid.
Hypnotherapy is gently, non-threatening and actually often enjoyable. You can gently dig up memeories and feelings, explained why you act the way you do, what your fears and concerns are and then use therapy tools and techniques including hypnotherapy ones, to calm the body, soothe the ‘fears’ and align mind and body so you can go through your life without being triggered or driven by things that actually make you deeply unhappy.
Hypnotherapy helps you unpick the parts, go through the events which made you cover up or pretend or harden up – to simply feel safe. When we get to that more vulnerable part of ourselves, we can start to see who we are under who we had to become.
Hypnotherapy is a gentle process of recovery and repair. You can come to me in South London (serving Brixton, Clapham, Dulwich, Streatham, STockwell) or on Zoom, we can gently start this journey to meaningful relationships in which you feel safe.