Breaks in Therapy: dynamics, losses & opportunities | 10th November 2023

Fri, November 10th 

10:00 AM to 4:30 PM BST
Online Event

Brighton Therapy Partnership

Breaks in Therapy: Dynamics, Losses and Opportunities:

In this seminar with our three expert speakers, we will explore the meaning of breaks in our therapeutic work, and the spectrum of reactions we might receive in response to a pending break in therapy.

We will consider safety and security issues, the experience of those for whom trauma by separation is central to their narrative, profound experiences of loss in the absence of the therapist and creative opportunities for self-development while the therapist is away.

Session Three – “Breaks and the Repetition of Trauma: A Hidden Aspect of Boarding School Syndrome” – Professor Joy Schaverien

Why is it that some adults, who attended boarding school as small children, may seem impervious to breaks in analysis? Abandoned, Bereaved and Captive, children in boarding school learn to Dissociate. This is the ABCD of Boarding School Syndrome. This is not a single psychological wound but a series of traumas that is repeated every term time and every holiday break.

The pain of these broken attachments is such that, unconsciously, children learn not to be aware of their own suffering; they cut off from feeling. Many people are traumatised in childhood; and abandonment, separation anxiety and abuse are not exclusive to ex-boarders. But it is the repetition of these losses that makes ex-boarders particularly sensitive (or insensitive) to breaks in the frame.

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