UPDATE: This event was originally titled Working with Boarding School Syndrome and was due to be led by Amelia White. There has been a change of speaker, and Rory Singer will now be leading the session, bringing his perspective on the topic through a slightly different lens.
If you have already booked your place, please see the email sent out on 7th March for all the practicalities of the change, or email maddy@newroadpsychotherapy.com if you have any questions.
Led by psychotherapist and former boarder Rory Singer, this introductory workshop for qualified and trainee therapists will explore hidden separation trauma and survival mechanisms in high-functioning adults, particularly those who have attended boarding school.
Workshop focus:
Boarding school education is often associated with privilege and achievement, and many former boarders present as articulate, capable and self-contained. Yet for some, early separation from caregivers leaves a complex psychological legacy that remains largely unspoken. Beneath these clients’ external competence, therapy may reveal disconnection from affect, sensitivity to hierarchy, shame around dependency, and oscillations between collapse and superiority.
This experiential workshop will explore the clinical impact of prolonged childhood separation, considering how early emotional self-reliance shapes adult intimacy, identity, and relational defence. Rather than pathologising or criticising boarding education, the session will invite objective and compassionate reflection on how early separation and institutional expectations can shape the developing self, and how therapy may support the restoration of vulnerability, dignity and relational safety.
Informed by Rory’s lived experience, clinical practice, and ongoing enquiry into the structures that shape the human psyche, the session will look closely and carefully at how the culture of institutions such as boarding school continues to live within clients long after they leave.
Workshop format:
The session will be rooted in conceptual framing that draws on attachment theory, trauma awareness, and contemporary psychodynamic thinking, such as the work of Joy Schaverien. It will also encourage deepened clinical sensitivity through guided reflective exercises and structured discussion, designed to bring awareness to the ways in which institutional adaptation is embodied in the self and in the therapy room.
Aims for attendees:
Recognise subtle indicators of early institutional attachment rupture
Understand humiliation and grandiosity as survival adaptations
Work safely with defended competence and emotional distance
Navigate transference dynamics linked to authority and evaluation
Support integration without dismantling protective structures
For those wishing to explore the themes of this workshop in greater depth, details of a longer follow-up training will be made available at the end of the session.
About Rory Singer
The founder of New Road Psychotherapy, Rory is a psychotherapist with over thirty-five years of clinical experience and a particular interest in the mental and emotional impact of early separation and institutional adaptation - especially in high-functioning adults who can appear resilient yet face many internal struggles. He has written several articles on this topic, including The Hidden Curriculum, which examines the psychological lessons absorbed alongside academic instruction.
Coming from a long lineage of boarders, Rory is personally acquainted with the way in which boarding school attendance can hold a weighty sense of cultural inheritance as a perceived gateway to understanding independence, endurance and belonging.
Having spent five years living as an ordained Buddhist monk in his early twenties, Rory also understands how former boarders can remain drawn towards institutional culture, finding familiarity in the rhythms of hierarchy, conformity, and collective identity.
This institutional awareness has directly informed the culture of New Road Psychotherapy, which is intended to offer an egalitarian therapeutic space in which vulnerability if not equated with weakness and dependency can be explored rather than shamed.
About CPD Sussex
This event is hosted by CPD Sussex: an initiative focused on supporting the professional development of counsellors and psychotherapists in Brighton & Hove and the wider region.
Born from a dynamic partnership between New Road Psychotherapy and Connexus Institute, CPD Sussex offers low-cost Continuous Professional Development events created specifically for counsellors and psychotherapists (in-training and qualified) committed to growth, connection, and excellence in their practice.
We offer affordable bi-monthly workshops running from September through July. Join us on Tuesday evenings from 6:00 pm to 8:00 pm at the Connexus Institute training premises (5 The Drive, Hove, BN3 3JE), a warm and welcoming setting for learning and conversation.