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  • Psychotherapy in West London
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Psychotherapy in West London

Psychotherapy & Counselling with Marcus Gottlieb

Boarding School Survivors Therapy & Counselling in London

Boarding School Survivors Therapy for Ex-boarders

When Boarding School Syndrome symptoms surface, one-to-one therapy or group therapy with Marcus can help

Boarding School Survivors Syndrome is recognised by therapists as a very real psychological issue.

The costly form of education, particularly highly prized in the UK, that’s known as residential boarding – which is marketed and ‘sold’ to ex-boarders and to their parents as a ‘privilege’ – is in fact a poor recipe for a child’s emotional development and, therefore, often a disastrous preparation for the adult world.

Boarding School Syndrome and Relationships

Boarding schools, by substituting an institution for parents and family, seem often not to produce self-aware, self-connected adults who are at ease with themselves and able to form healthy, intimate relationships. Therapy’s goal is to address these difficulties and help you overcome them… Read more about Boarding School Syndrome and problems forming or maintaining relationships in adult life.

Boarding School Survivors Syndrome and Bullying

Therapy for ex-boarders who were bullied or abused at boarding school helps you come to terms with very difficult experiences that may up to now have affected and informed your life in all sorts of damaging ways. Boarding school is a 24/7 immersive experience with nowhere to hide or to run, and bullying at boarding school was remorseless and inescapable. If you were being bullied or abused, there was no let-up in the evenings, there was no safe refuge, and there were no parents around to protect you or to calm and reassure you, let alone to bring a complaint…  Read more about Boarding School Syndrome and the effects in adult life of having been bullied or the bully.

Boarding School Survivors Syndrome and Depression

It should not be a surprise that adults who, when they were children, were exiled from family life and brought up for 9 months of each year within an institution which took the place of their parents, exhibit symptoms of abandonment and trauma. Characteristically, male ex-boarders learned not to trust their feelings and especially their vulnerability. Female boarding school survivors became alienated from their very bodies at boarding school, and suffered profound though often barely visible wounds to their personal, feminine identity. People who were sent away to boarding school often show effects resembling people who have suffered the most deprived and neglected childhoods… Read more about Boarding School Survivors and problems with depression, anxiety and self-confidence in adult life.

Boarding School Survivors’ Symptoms

Do you recognise any of these signs and symptoms of Boarding School Syndrome in yourself (by no means a complete list)?

  • Does emotional intimacy make you anxious, or even seem impossible for you?
  • Have you lived most of your life in institutions of one type or another?
  • Do you function well at the social or financial level but very poorly on an emotional plane?
  • Do you have a difficult relationship with authority?
  • Are you unable to relax?
  • Do you often not know what you need or want?
  • Do you feel alone, even when surrounded by people?
  • Are there troubling gaps in your memory?
  • Are you terrified of failure?
  • Do you avoid your partner, in subtle or not so subtle ways?
  • Do you fear you are unlovable?
  • Do you bury yourself in work?
  • Have you struggled with addictions?
  • Do you have a pattern of not committing to relationships, or of wavering between alternate partners?
  • Do you avoid open and honest conflict, preferring secret or covert rebellion?
  • Do people react to you as if you’re a bully?
  • Do you see yourself always taking care of others?
  • Do you struggle with being a parent?
  • Is your top priority keeping out of trouble, and the worst terror getting ‘caught’?
  • Do you fear exposure as a fraud or impostor?
  • Do you suffer sleep disorders, sexual problems or other chronic, stress-related challenges?

Healing and recovery in Boarding School Survivors Therapy: becoming your true self

Whatever has brought you to consider therapy, there will probably be ways in which you are not functioning well, perhaps in relationships or in how you take care of yourself on a practical, daily level. Therapy gently supports, holds and contains you while you experience the feelings you may have been guarding, often rage and grief. In time, you will be freed up to live your life in a way that is true for you and not adapted to the survival needs of the boarding school child that you were.

The first step in Boarding School Survivors Therapy is to recognise the effects of what you learned as a child in the pressured, hot-house atmosphere of boarding school. This involves acknowledgement and often a somewhat painful acceptance of the strategies you used to survive as a boarder and which will have long since become second nature to you.

Boarding School Survivors Therapy then moves on to the task of how to re-learn ways of living a normal, rewarding life outside of institutions. The goal is to become an adult in ‘right relationship’ with himself or herself, equipped with the empathy, openness and boundaries necessary to enjoy fulfilling and truly intimate adult relationships. Ultimately the aim is to be able to be authentically happy being the person that you come home to each day.

Boarding School Survivors Therapy for Ex-boarders with Marcus

Take the first step and contact Marcus to discuss therapy for Boarding School Survivors.

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Where to learn more about Boarding School Survivors Syndrome

Boarding Concern
The informative website of an organisation that challenges the boarding school industry’s practice of educating children in residential institutions and forcing them to adapt to a form of institutional life stuck in a discredited, abusive past. www.boardingconcern.org.uk

An Article by Jon Snow (journalist)
Jon Snow explains his experience and reaction to his Boarding School education

The Making of Them
British TV documentary filmed in September 1993 about young boys starting boarding prep school.

Boarding School Survivors Therapy Groups
Therapy Workshops for Ex-Boarders

Reflections of a Survivor (PDF file)

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Boarding School Survivors Issues Therapy

Boarding School Issues I Often Work With In One-to-one Therapy

  • Boarding School Survivors and Relationships
  • Boarding School Survivors and Depression
  • Boarding School Survivors and Bullying
  • Boarding School Survivors Workshops in London

Boarding School Survivors Workshop Programme

The pioneering 4-day workshop is spread over TWO WEEKENDS A FEW WEEKS APART. Participants are asked to commit to attending ALL 4 DAYS. The workshop has been running for two decades and was created and is still supervised by Nick Duffell, author of ‘The Making Of Them’.

NB. These courses are very popular so early booking is always strongly advised (and all the more so as some of the 2020 dates have unfortunately been cancelled due to the Covid-19 crisis).

Men’s Course – Summer 2021

Part One: Saturday 10 JUL – Sunday 11 JUL 2021
Part Two: Saturday 25 SEP – Sunday 26 SEP 2021
Venue: Hampstead, North London.
Times: 10am (arrive by 9.45) to 6pm each day.
Cost: £550 (£200 deposit to secure place).

Women’s Course – Autumn 2021

Part One: Saturday 02 OCT – Sunday 03 OCT 2021
Part Two: Saturday 06 NOV – Sunday 07 NOV 2021
Venue: Highgate, North London.
Times: 10am (arrive by 9.45) to 6pm each day.
Cost: £550 (£200 deposit to secure place).

Men’s Course – Autumn 2021

Part One: Saturday 02 OCT – Sunday 03 OCT 2021
Part Two: Saturday 13 NOV – Sunday 14 NOV 2021
Venue: Hampstead, North London.
Times: 10am (arrive by 9.45) to 6pm each day.
Cost: £550 (£200 deposit to secure place).

Men’s Course – Spring 2022 

Part One: Saturday 05 MAR – Sunday 06 MAR 2022
Part Two: Saturday 21 MAY – Sunday 22 MAY 2022
Venue: Hampstead, North London.
Times: 10am (arrive by 9.45) to 6pm each day.
Cost: £560 (£200 deposit to secure place).

Women’s Course – Autumn 2022

Part One: dates TBC
Part Two: dates TBC
Venue: Highgate, North London.
Times: 10am (arrive by 9.45) to 6pm each day.
Cost: £560 (£200 deposit to secure place).

More information, including how to book …

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Pesso Boyden Group with accredited practitioners Deborah Clarke and Marcus Gottlieb

Pesso Boyden Group with accredited PBSP practitioners Deborah Clarke and Marcus Gottlieb

Pesso Boyden Therapy (‘PBSP’) is a philosophical process for becoming whole.

It is a respectful, interactive group process that heals by embedding new memories in the brain and in the body

Most people consciously or unconsciously have memories – explicit or implicit – of 

1. deficits 

2. traumas 

3. having to take care of others when we were too young – e.g. protecting a sibling, providing the joy in the life of an unhappy parent, unconsciously becoming the ‘spouse’ of a widowed parent, or making the world right after hearing stories of injustice. 

When any of these three categories of memory appear in the client’s work, the client and therapist work together to externalise them, in order to illuminate the client’s ways of handling life and to facilitate change. The client is always in charge of this process – people and incidents from the client’s past will be symbolised in the here-and-now either by people in the group or by objects in the room, all chosen and placed by the client. 

The therapist then works with the client to facilitate an antidote to what happened in the past – a new memory which provides what the client needed at that particular time in their past, from a specific kinship figure. This new memory may be developed over several sessions in a number of steps. In the Pesso approach we don’t change our history; however, we do change our response to our history, leading to a new perspective. 

The way is opened to possibilities of greater pleasure, satisfaction, meaning, integration and connectedness.

 



Deborah has worked as a Performance Coach for over 16 years having trained with Coach U. Her background is in the arts as an actor, theatre director and artistic director. She has worked with a wide range of people from all walks of life. Having first encountered Pesso Boyden as a client, she felt inspired to do the training herself. Since graduating in 2013 she has been running Personal Development workshops using the Pesso Boyden system and is now accredited by the official PBSP U.K. organisation.

Notting Hill Therapist | Marcus Gottlieb Psychotherapist & Counsellor
Marcus Gottlieb is a highly experienced London-based psychotherapist with a particular interest in boarding school survivor syndrome. Having trained alongside Deborah directly under Al Pesso and his closest collaborator Lowijs van Perquin, he is steeped in the work of PBSP and a strong believer in the client’s genetic impulse towards health and expression of their unique potential and individual destiny. He became an accredited Pesso Boyden therapist in 2021.
An Introduction to the Pesso Boyden Method

 

An opportunity to learn about and observe the distinctive techniques of this respectful body-based psychotherapy.

Suitable for both psychologically interested professionals, people seeking personal development/CPD and for people not in the therapeutic professions seeking to address entrenched issues. For all those who are interested in living a larger life. A special price of £35 for the day includes lunch and refreshments. CPD certificates will be available.

PBSP (Pesso-Boyden System Psychomotor) is a powerful, deeply respectful, psychotherapeutic process that uses feedback, ritual, objects and role players in a unique manner to heal the traumas, wounds and losses that affect our personal map of the world.

Its central goal is the imaginative creation of an ‘ideal’ healthy past that a person’s brain processes so that they emerge feeling differently about themselves. As Albert Pesso said, ‘Humanity is responsible for the meaning that surrounds us. The task for each person is to create a meaningful life and then live it with existential courage and passion.’

As well as gaining new perspectives, clients often experience increased pleasure, satisfaction, meaning and connectedness following a PBSP session and find themselves psychologically freer to make the changes they wish for in their lives.
Date: Saturday 7 October 2017
Venue: Notting Hill, London W11
Time: 10.00 am – 4.30 pm
Cost: £35 (inc lunch & refreshments)

 

Register Your Interest


Boarding School Survivor Syndrome Conference

BOARDING SCHOOL: Surviving the Syndrome
Broken Attachment and Childhood Trauma

University of Brighton

Saturday 9 September 2017
9.30 am to 5.00 pm

Conference for psychotherapists, counsellors, mental health workers, boarding school survivors and other interested people.

Conference overall aims are to:
§ Present key aspects of what has been published about the psychological and other effects of boarding.
§ Explore helpful therapeutic approaches for clients who are former boarders.
§ Consider current research and a possible agenda for future research
§ Enable networking amongst those interested in this important topic

Chair: Pam Howard, School of Applied Social Science, University of Brighton.

Speakers: Nick Duffell, Joy Schaverien, Alex Renton, Thurstine Basset, Anni Townend, Olya Khaleelee.

Group Discussion Facilitators: Marcus Gottlieb, Leslie Lund, Nicola Miller, Simon Partridge, Boarding Concern Directors.

For more details, contact Laura Williams:
southcoastevents@brighton.ac.uk

Pesso Boyden Workshop with Ana María Ruiz Sancho and Marcus Gottlieb

 

Pesso Boyden Therapy is a respectful and highly respected, body-based psychotherapy with distinctive techniques aimed at addressing entrenched issues. It is an interactive process that creates new body-based memories to heal emotional deficits of the past.

An exceptionally powerful personal development tool, it uses feedback, systematic procedures, objects and role players in a unique methodology, in order to repair the early traumas, wounds and losses that can powerfully influence the brain’s map of the world.

In shifting underlying perspectives, the way is opened to the possibility of greater pleasure, satisfaction, meaning and connectedness, and an enhanced freedom to effect longed-for changes.

It is expected there will be between 8 and 12 participants, with an absolute maximum of 15. The day will start with an explanation of Pesso Boyden and an experiential introduction, followed by 4 actual client sessions of an hour each.

Venue: Philadelphia Association, 4 Marty’s Yard, London NW3 1QW
Date: Saturday 3 June 2017
Time: 0930 to 1800
Cost: £75

Register Your Interest



Ana María Ruiz Sancho is an experienced psychiatrist and a psychotherapist. She is also a specialist in group dynamics and an Institutional and Team Motivation Consultant.

Ana is the Founder and a Director of VocAcción, as well as being a qualified Pesso Boyden psychotherapist.


Notting Hill Therapist | Marcus Gottlieb Psychotherapist & Counsellor

Marcus Gottlieb works with relationships, sexuality, abuse and trauma, with a particular interest in boarding school survivor syndrome. Qualified in Pesso Boyden as well as other psychotherapies, he is also an Alexander Technique teacher.

Contact Marcus

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