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  • Psychotherapy in West London
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  • Boarding School Survivors Therapy

Psychotherapy in West London

Psychotherapy & Counselling with Marcus Gottlieb

Boarding School Survivors Therapy & Counselling in London

Boarding School Survivors Workshops in London

Boarding school survivors are characterized by many positive qualities. Often there is an individuality and a creativity, a kind of self-confidence, resilience and stoicism, an ability to tough things out, and a capacity to endure privations with good humour.

But there are costs too. The humour sometimes covers profound emotional and spiritual wounds. In order to survive our schooling we may have amputated an important part of ourselves, a part that isn’t necessarily a ‘winner’ or ‘successful’, but that is vulnerable and available to experience love. Our partners may be aware of a certain subtle absence, a brittleness, a lack of trust or intimacy that has become second nature to us.

Boarding School Survivors Workshops: recognition of each other’s wounds

It is as if we were taught only too well how to be private, self-reliant, coping individuals. When it comes to adult, intimate relationships, we need to recover spontaneity, self-expression, the willingness to risk all and be hurt. Our caution and calculation are a huge obstacle.

This can be highly problematic for us to talk frankly about, because boarding school was sold to us as something that made us special and uniquely loved. We had the good fortune (we were given to understand) to have parents able and willing to make great sacrifices so that we would have a head start in life. These were places, after all, renowned for breeding strength of character, self-confidence and the qualities of leadership that would guarantee us status and success in the adult world.

Is it suprising then that we find it such a challenge to speak about the actual joylessness of our lives back then, the pain of enforced separation, the emotional withdrawal, the sense of being trapped, the torment of isolation that was in reality a large part of our daily existence, along with the shame we may still feel for apparently ‘failing’ despite such a ‘privileged’ start?

Boarding School Survivors Workshops: accepting our wounds and healing our scars

We were sent away to an institution that could feed us, educate us, teach us sports and social skills and how to be a confident manipulator, but one that could never give us a parent’s love.

The boarding schools we attended were full of contradictions and paradox. Within their security many of us learned to do pretty well without our parents being around, but also to disown our fears and our needs. While excellence was pursued, many were bullied or intimidated; while individuality was encouraged, hierarchical structures produced conformists or rebels, and sometimes casualties. While physical, intellectual and religious values were professed, we learned to repress our feelings and fear our sexuality, thereby losing a sense of being whole.

Boarding School Survivors Workshops: understanding our ‘strategic’ behaviour as adults

We adapted, of course, to this abrupt, bewildering, catastrophic alteration in our young lives. We learned the rules, kept ourselves busy and, from sheer necessity, we hid our longing for our home and family. We could not share our needs and vulnerability with others, and pretty soon we cut ourselves off from our loving feelings, because to miss as much as we did would be too painful to bear for long. How did we survive in a cold, rule-bound place where everything soft, warm and feminine was starkly absent? How did we learn to compensate, and how do we live this out today?

Now we may find ourselves experiencing problems in our lives – with our emotions, our relationships, our careers – which could have their roots in our schooldays, and in the need to survive which drives us to this very day. These difficulties could offer an invitation to look back, to tell our story, and perhaps to redeem something from our childhood.

Scope of the Boarding School Survivors Workshops

This workshop is open to those who wish to examine their boarding school history, consider the effect on their life, and look for ways of healing their wounds. The workshop is particularly suited to those who have not shared their experiences with others previously, and/or feel they have not yet lived their true potential because they are stuck in rebellion, anger or distress. No previous workshop experience is necessary. There is no age limit whatsoever.

Therapeutic approach used during the workshops

The perceptions of the participants are used as the prime source of material, in order to build a context for understanding the past and choosing the future. The workshop uses a range of methods, including meditative, gestalt and cognitive techniques, but as a participant you are never required to go further than you wish. Your particular behaviour patterns – the ways you adapted to boarding school in order to survive there – are due every respect, and it is not an expectation or requirement that you start to dismantle them overnight. But there is often much value in exploring them.

Boarding School Survivors Workshops Information

Brief details can be seen to the right (or below if you are viewing on mobile) and for more detailed dates, venue and fee information see the ‘Groups and Workshops’ page.

You may find some of the following Boarding School Survivors resources useful: 

Professor Andrew Samuels’ video on his personal view on the trauma and effect of boarding school and how it might be having a major effect on society as a result. See it here… 

Boarding School Survivors
New short film made by Arabella Smirnoff-Beroskin.

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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.

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