Self Help and Learning Resources

What happened to you? Attachment theory extended - By Simon Partridge

A paper exploring the ACE's movement in the UK and attachment theory
Vyvyen Brendon - Prep School Children: A Class Apart over Two Centuries

In a compelling and sometimes shocking account, Vyvyen Brendon dwells not on the adult purposes behind a peculiarly British institution but on the lives of the children. This book continues the poignant story about the separation of parents from offspring which the author told in her acclaimed 'Children of the Raj'. But it focuses, with greater empathy than ever before, on the unique nature of the prep school experience both at home and in outposts of the empire. More than two hundred youngsters appear in these pages, describing their schooldays through memoirs, letters, diaries, poetry, fiction and interviews.
Toby Ingham - Retroactive Jealousy, Making Sense of It: How to stop obsessing about your partner’s past

Retroactive jealousy is an obsessional problem. It refers to someone who has become fixated upon thoughts about their partner and their past. Unchecked, it can destroy relationships. But there are alternatives, there is hope, and that’s what this book is about. The key to unlocking the problem and being able to enjoy your relationships is to find a way to look beyond your jealousy and at the roots of the obsessional worries that lie behind i
Toby Ingham - How to Improve Emotional Stability: Emotional stability, what it is, and how to improve it

This book describes experiences that show how paying attention to emotional stability tends to have the effect of settling the intensity of our agitated feelings. And once the intensity starts to settle, we can find healthier and more creative ways of looking after ourselves and those around us. The aim is to be able to look after ourselves and those around us better, so that we can be more settled and less emotionally reactive. To be more adaptable and to have our emotional stability less at the mercy of random events or other peoples’ ideas; so that we can live more emotionally stable lives.
Toby Ingham - A Guilty Victim: Recovering Creativity after Trauma and Abuse

The complex nature of grooming and abuse is often simplified by those who do not understand it and are left wondering why the victim allowed it to happen. A Guilty Victim challenges that misconception and explains how and why abuse continues and the impact it leaves on the victim’s life. It explains that we remain trapped in situations not because there is something wrong with us, but because of things that have happened to us. It is unusual to have permission to be able to illustrate the process of psychotherapy in action. William Smith bravely suggested his story be told to help at-risk children by showing adults how to recognise the warning signs in children’s behaviour. His long journey to recovery is also an inspiration to others struggling to come to terms with childhood trauma
Thurstine Basset - Reflections of a Survivor

I didn’t plan it that way but 60 years after first being left by my parents in a strange and unfriendly institution, a prep school in Berkshire, and 50 years after finally leaving boarding school and putting the experience behind me, I got to write a book about it
Thich Nhat Hanh - Peace Is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life

Lucidly and beautifully written, Peace is Every Step contains commentaries and meditations, personal anecdotes and stories from Nhat Hanh's experiences as a peace activist, teacher, and community leader. It begins where the reader already is - in the kitchen, office, driving a car, walking in a park - and shows how deep meditative presence is available now. Nhat Hanh provides exercises to increase our awareness of our own body and mind through conscious breathing, which can bring immediate joy and peace
The Dalai Lama - The Art of Happiness: A Handbook for Living

In this unique and important book, one of the world's great spiritual leaders offers his practical wisdom and advice on how we can overcome everyday human problems and achieve lasting happiness. The Art of Happiness is a highly accessible guide for a western audience, combining the Dalai Lama's eastern spiritual tradition with Dr Howard C. Cutler's western perspective. Covering all key areas of human experience, they apply the principles of Tibetan Buddhism to everyday problems and reveal how one can find balance and complete spiritual and mental freedom
Suzanne Zeedyk - Sabre Tooth Tigers & Teddy Bears

This Guide introduces readers to attachment – the need that all babies have to know that someone will share their fears and joys. It uses the analogy of ‘Sabre Tooth Tigers & Teddy Bears’ to make the ideas that lie at the core of the attachment theory understandable for everyone.
Stephen Porges & Seth Porges - Our Polyvagal World: How Safety and Trauma Change Us

Our Polyvagal World definitively presents how Polyvagal Theory can be understandable to all and demonstrates how its practical principles are applicable to anyone looking to live their safest, best, healthiest and happiest life. What emerges is a worldview filled with optimism and hope and an understanding as to why our bodies sometimes act in ways our brains wish they didn’t.
Stephen Porges - Article - Polyvagal Theory: A Science of Safety

Frontiers in Integrative Neuroscience article by Stephen Porges on the subject of Polyvagal Theory: A Science of Safety
Soosan Latham & Roya Ferdows - The Boarding School Girls: Developmental and Cultural Narratives

Ex-boarders themselves, Latham and Ferdows provide vivid and emotionally embodied narratives of everyday lives of The Boarding School Girls. This unique collection of stories explores key issues of identity and lifespan development to seek understanding of the influence of national, religious and family culture on development within two conflicting sets of cultural values. Combining unique qualitative data with illuminating tales of resilience and accomplishment in what is likely to simultaneously inform and inspire readers with feelings of joy and sadness, love and hate, abandonment and hope, but mainly trust and forgiveness
Simon Partridge - Trauma at the Threshold: an eight-year-old goes to boarding school

Personal experience and reflections on a workshop for boarding school survivors
Simon Partridge - Boarding School Syndrome: reconsidered in social context and through the lens of attachment theory [2021]

Abstract: I argue the time has come to expand the now recognised clinical diagnosis of boarding school syndrome to take account of its invisible precursors in the avoidant attachment patterns of British upper-class culture
Simon Partridge - A review and perspective on the book 'Prep school children, a class apart for over two centuries' By Vyvyen Brendon

Simon Partridge - A review and perspective on the book 'Prep school children, a class apart for over two centuries' By Vyvyen Brendon
Simon Partridge - A more complex take on boarding/residential school syndrome

A paper exploring new thinking on boarding/residential school syndrome by experienced ACE's writer and advocate Simon Partridge
Seen & Heard's YouTube collection of trauma & healing related videos

Seen & Heard's YouTube collection of trauma & healing related videos
Seen & Heard's YouTube collection of boarding school related videos

Seen & Heard's YouTube collection of boarding school related videos
Seen & Heard Q1 2024 Topline Survey Results

A short topline summary of anonymised data from the Seen & Heard ex-boarding and Independent schools online survey with 110+ respondents
Satish Kumar - You are Therefore I am: A Declaration of Dependence

René Descartes’ famous maxim ‘I think, therefore, I am’ considers the world in terms of dualism, division and separation. Yet the Sanskrit dictum, So Hum, is well known across India but not in the West, and can be translated as ‘You are, therefore I am’. A journey of the mind, You are Therefore I am examines the sources of inspiration which formed child monk, peace pilgrim, ecological activist and educatorSatish Kumar's understanding of the world as a network of diverse yet interconnected relationships.
Rupert Green - The Prep School Letters: A Memoir

IT IS AN ABSURD thing to be sent away to boarding school. But here’s Rupert, aged 8, walking through the dark corridors of conformity and mischief, searching for an identity. This tragi-comedy memoir, drawn from the actual letters Rupert wrote home, chronicles his disjointed world and brings to light the abandonment and loss felt then by the boy and the desire to heal as the man.
Rod Boothroyd - Warrior, Magician, Lover, King: A Guide To The Male Archetypes Updated For The 21st Century

his exciting new book describes the male archetypes of Warrior, Magician, Lover and King in a way designed for a 21st century audience. The author explains the characteristics of each archetype in its balanced form, as well as the inflated and deflated forms which can result from the emotional wounding we experience during childhood. If you've ever had difficulty understanding why you behave in the way you do, this book will provide you with clear answers
Rod Boothroyd - Finding The King Within: How to Access and Embody the Power, Authority and Leadership of Your Inner King Archetype

This book is probably the most detailed explanation of the King archetype so far written. It offers everyone, regardless of their level of experience or knowledge, new insights and new perspectives, and provides a detailed yet easily understood description of the role of the King archetype in men's psyche and the wider world today. As author Rod Boothroyd points out early in this book, what our modern world requires is not autocratic, controlling or even dictatorial kings, but a new model of Kingship which combines personal power, leadership and authority in a heart centred framework.
Robert Verkaik - Posh Boys: How English Public Schools Ruin Britain

In Britain today, the government, judiciary and military are all led by an elite who attended private school. Under their watch, our society has become increasingly divided and the gap between rich and poor is now greater than ever before. Is this the country we want to live in? If we care about inequality, we have to talk about public schools
Richard Beard - Sad Little Men

A public school education has long been accepted in Britain as a preparation for leadership, but being separated from your parents at a young age is traumatic. What sort of adult does it mould? Tackling debates about privilege head-on, Sad Little Men reveals what happens when you put a succession of men from boarding schools into positions of influence, including at 10 Downing Street, and asks the question: is this really who we want in charge?
Resmaa Menakem - My Grandmother's Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies

The consequences of racism can be found in our bodies - in skin and sinew, in bone and blood. In this ground-breaking, inspiring work, therapist Resmaa Menakem examines the damage, the physical consequences of discrimination, from the perspective of body-centred psychology. He argues that until we learn to heal and overcome the generational anguish of white supremacy, we will all continue to bear its scars. My Grandmother's Hands is an extraordinary call to action for all of us to recognize that racism affects not only the mind, but also the body, and introduces an alternative view of what we can do to grow beyond our racial divides.
Remitly - The Families' Guide To Overcoming The Challenges Of A Move Abroad

This guide covers the emotional adjustment, challenges, and resilience needed by children (and their families) who move abroad or transition into another school environment, including international and boarding schools.
R. Raven - Surviving Privilege - Memoir of Privilege and Trauma: A Journey of Healing and Resilience

Step into the hidden world of wealth, family secrets, and boarding school survival. This memoir pulls back the curtain on the truth behind a privileged life that many envy, yet few truly understand. Growing up surrounded by luxury, prestige, and societal expectations, the author reveals the emotional scars left by psychological abuse, neglect, and a family life built on secrets. Behind the polished facade of riches lies a reality of trauma, heartbreak, and the pursuit of healing. This deeply personal narrative shares the often unseen struggles of growing up in a world where perfection is expected, but emotional survival becomes the true challenge. Memoir of Privilege and Trauma explores the complicated dynamics of wealthy families, the toll of boarding school life, and the journey to overcome childhood trauma and psychological abuse.
Psychological_effects_of_boarding_students_in_school in Sri Lanka

Psychological_effects_of_boarding_students_in_school in Sri Lanka
Professor David Howe - Child Abuse & Neglect

This clear and compelling textbook provides a complete survey of the field of child abuse and neglect from the perspective of modern developmental attachment theory
Peter Sykes - Somewhere Never Home: Healing the Labels of Privilege

Somewhere Never Home is the story of a childhood lived everywhere and nowhere. Moving between Scotland, Africa, the Caribbean, and an abusive English boarding school, Pete grew up a classic Third Culture Kid: adaptable on the surface, fractured underneath. What looked like privilege hid the early wounds of emotional abuse, institutional harm, and the long shadows of Boarding School Syndrome and cPTSD.
Pete Walker - Complex PTSD

Note from Author: I have Complex PTSD [Cptsd] and wrote this book from the perspective of someone who has experienced a great reduction of symptoms over the years. I also wrote it from the viewpoint of someone who has discovered many silver linings in the long, windy, bumpy road of recovering from Cptsd
Person Irresponsible - Everywhere I NEVER Wanted To Go: But I did anyway...

In the latest iteration of her mid-life crisis, Person Irresponsible, England’s most invisible female adventurer, bought a ubiquitous white van, complete with toilet, bed and kitchenette. She only added a cat litter tray. Her mission: to fathom why people believed England was going down the toilet. Unexpectedly, she discovered quite a bit about the culture she is said to hail from. Having been trapped in boarding school from a young age and force-fed history lessons on men doing unspeakable things to one another, she came out the other side quite deranged
Pema Chodron - When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times

This accessible guide to compassionate living shows us how we can use painful emotions to cultivate wisdom, compassion and courage, ways of communication that lead to openness and true intimacy with others, practices for reversing our negative habitual patterns, methods for working with chaotic situations and ways to cultivate compassionate, energetic social action
Pema Chodron - THE PLACES THAT SCARE YOU: A Guide to Fearlessness

One of the most inspiring spiritual teachers of our time offers simple, practical advice for living with less fear, less anxiety and a more open heart. Bought in a hotly contested auction, The Places That Scare You is now available in massmarket, taking Pema Chödrön ’s spiritual teachings to a wider audience
Paul Francis - The Therapeutic Shamanism 3 Book Series

Suitable for both complete beginners and experienced practitioners alike, this series of shamanism books offer a comprehensive apprenticeship in shamanism for modern times. Each volume is full of eye-opening ideas, knowledge and insights, all explained in a clear and easy-to-understand way. As well as being thought-provoking, the books are packed with practical exercises and suggestions about how to put the theory and ideas into practice.
Nikki Simpson - Finding Our Way Home: Women's Accounts of Being Sent to Boarding School

Finding Our Way Home: Women’s Accounts of Being Sent to Boarding School shares the personal stories of sixteen women, all of whom were sent away to board at an early age. Their accounts delve into the depths of long suppressed emotions and feelings, and the lifelong impact that the early separation from their families has had.
Nicky Moxey & Linda Devereux - Exploring Boarding School Challenges for Women and Third Culture Kids: Worlds Away from Home

Through personal testimonies, this book offers insights into the boarding school experiences of women and third culture kids (TCKs), examining the particular challenges for those who are sent away from their families and all that is familiar to board in a country that feels worlds away from home
Nick Duffell on The Brendon Marotta Show - Wounded Leaders

Nick Duffell talks about the wounded leaders produced by the elite boarding school system and how their psychology has shaped the world. Nick also shares how leaders can change their psychology, integrate these experiences and better connect with the people they serve
Nick Duffell & Thurstine Basset - Trauma, Abandonment and Privilege: A guide to therapeutic work with boarding school survivors

Trauma, Abandonment and Privilege discusses how ex-boarders can be amongst the most challenging clients for therapists; even experienced therapists may unwittingly struggle to skilfully address the needs of this client group
Nick Duffell - Wounded Leaders: British Elitism and the Entitlement Illusion: A Psychohistory

Political leaders in Britain are consistently drawn from a class born to be educated away from their families in institutions - elite boarding schools. This has a direct effect on their ability to love, to relate, to make good judgments and to develop the necessary leadership qualities for today's world. In this controversial and highly acclaimed book, the author guides the reader along the elite path through boarding school and Oxbridge to government, unpacking what he calls the Entitlement Illusion
Nick Duffell - The Making Of Them

In this thought-provoking book psychotherapist and ex-boarder Nick Duffell reveals the bewildering dilemmas confronting the boarding school child, and discovers a dark secret at the heart of the British psyche
Nick Duffell - The Herald Piece - The board generation

A piece in The Herald involving Nick Duffell after the Edinburgh University debate. Psychotherapist Nick Duffell and campaigner Sally Fraser proposed that boarding schools should be banned for children aged under 16
Nick Duffell - Guardian Article - Why boarding schools produce bad leaders

The elite tradition is to send children away at a young age to be educated. But future politicians who suffer this 'privileged abandonment' often turn out as bullies or bumblers. A psychotherapist explains why
Nadia Bolz-Weber - Shameless: A sexual reformation

aw, intimate, and timely, Nadia Bolz-Weber's latest book offers a full-blown overhaul of our harmful and antiquated ideas about sex, gender, and our bodies. Christians are obsessed with sex. But not in a good way. For nearly two thousand years, this obsession has often turned destructive, inflicting pain, suffering, and guilt on countless people of all persuasions and backgrounds. In Shameless, Bolz-Weber calls for a reformation.
Mike Lew - Victims No Longer: The Classic Guide for Men Recovering from Sexual Child Abuse

For millions of men on the path to recovery, Victims No Longer is the next step. The first book written specifically for men, Victims No Longer examines the changing cultural attitudes toward male survivors of incest and other sexual trauma.
Mathieu Ricard - Happiness: A Guide to Developing Life's Most Important Skill

Although we are materially better off than ever before, surveys show that we are depressed and listless. In his revolutionary book, Buddhist monk Matthieu Ricard shows that happiness is not just an emotion, but a skill that can be developed. Free of jargon, Happiness contains simple exercises that will train the mind to recognize and pursue happiness by concentrating on the fundamental things in life, and in doing so change the way we view the world
Mark Stibbe - Home At Last

In this ground breaking book, Mark argues that there are many thousands of wounded people just like him, men and women who suffer throughout their lives with homesick souls. This often leads to them being driven to succeed in their work while failing to engage emotionally at home
Margaret Laughton (Editor), Allison Paech-Ujejski (Editor), Andrew Patterson (Editor) - Men's Accounts of Boarding School: Sent Away

Men’s Accounts of Boarding School is a collection of writings by men about their childhood experiences of being sent away to boarding school. In these narratives, the men discuss their feelings through their years at school and how this has affected them in adulthood. They give individual views of how living away from home, in an institutional setting, has impacted on their lives
Marcus Gottlieb - Working With Gay Boarding School Survivors

A paper from a psychotherapists perspective about working with gay boarding school survivors
Lucia Cappachione - Recovery of Your Inner Child: The Highly Acclaimed Method for Liberating Your Inner Self

he Inner Child lives within all of us, it's the part of us that feels emotions and is playful, intuitive, and creative. Usually hidden under our grown-up personas, the Inner Child holds the key to intimacy in relationships, physical and emotional well-being, recovery from addictions, and the creativity and wisdom of our inner selves. Recovery of Your Inner Child is the only book that shows you how to have a firsthand experience of your Inner Child--actually feeling its emotions and recapturing its sense of wonder--by writing and drawing with your non-dominant hand
Locked Up Living Podcast - Taslim Tharani - Navigating Racism and Emotional Regulation in Boarding

Taslim Tharani was born in the UK as was her older sister. Her parents were both born in Tanzania to parents whose background was in India. Taslim shares her experiences of being in a thrice migrant family. She talks about attending boarding school and the impact it had on her identity and emotional well-being. She discusses the decision to attend boarding school, the influence of racism, the emotional challenges, and the sense of homelessness.
Locked Up Living Podcast - Morag Edwards - The Shocking Experience of Being Sent to Boarding School

Morag Edwards is an educational psychologist and author. In this conversation she discusses her experience at a co-ed boarding school in the 1960s. She highlights the lack of female perspectives in boarding school literature and the predominance of male boarding stories. Morag shares her personal experience of being sent to boarding school at the age of 10 and the shock and anxiety she felt.
Karen Wilson - Atrocious Behaviour: Rebellion & Reckoning Inside the British Boarding School System

Atrocious Behaviour tells the story of a girl’s boarding school in the 1970s, where manners and obedience were core curriculum. Boarding school in the 1970s was a world of dormitory games, hidden contraband, and secret friends. It is also the story of their resultant punishments, school rituals and many small humiliations. While many have begun to write from the perspective of both examining the system and relating experience, this story also leads up to the drama of being expelled aged 10, the impact of the theatrical way this was handled, and learning to live with that experience in adult life After decades of sharing outrageous episodes of pint-sized rebellion, I gradually re framed the stories with new understanding both through a long career in teaching and raising two children myself. It begins with returning to the school (now long since reclaimed as a country house) 30 years later, with my husband and children, which turned out to be the beginning of new understanding of the impact of school culture on a child.
Karen Macmillan - Leading From Love - Apple Podcast

This really important episode with therapist Karen Macmillan explores what happens to the child and to the adult when someone is brought up in an institution without love.
Joy Schaverien - Boarding School Syndrome: The psychological trauma of the 'privileged' child

Boarding School Syndrome is an analysis of the trauma of the 'privileged' child sent to boarding school at a young age. Innovative and challenging, Joy Schaverien offers a psychological analysis of the long-established British and colonial preparatory and public boarding school tradition
Johann Hari - Lost Connections: Why You’re Depressed and How to Find Hope

Depression and anxiety are now at epidemic levels. Why? Across the world, scientists have uncovered evidence for nine different causes. Some are in our biology, but most are in the way we are living today. Lost Connections offers a radical new way of thinking about this crisis. It shows that once we understand the real causes, we can begin to turn to pioneering new solutions - ones that offer real hope
Joanna Brittan - Audio Podcast - Whistleblower Exposes 100 Years of Boarding School Abuse and Pedophilia

Whistleblower Joanna Brittan is BACK as promised with another riveting episode and story (this episode was originally supposed to be Part 1, but we pushed it back to be Part 2). This time we travel back to her childhood to reveal what she discovered growing up in the Sherborne boarding school system that set her on fire to continue the incredible activism work she does now as an adult, shedding light on and bringing attention to the abuses her brothers endured
Jo Brittan - Audio Podcast - Sexual abuse and entitlement in the English public school system

Jo is a remarkable woman who has led an extraordinary life. Many would see her as being highly privileged but her description and understanding of the pain experienced by little children left in boarding school is painful to hear. She also speaks out about the sexual abuse which took place in Sherborne Prep School, in particular but not only, and how nobody was held to account despite the evidence.
Jennifer Mullan & Natalie Gutierrez - The Pain We Carry: Healing from Complex PTSD for People of Color

This groundbreaking work illuminates the phenomena of complex post-traumatic stress disorder (C-PTSD) as it is uniquely experienced by people of color, and provides a much-needed path to health and wholeness. In The Pain We Carry, you’ll find powerful tools to help you understand and begin healing from repeated trauma.
James Harpur - The Examined Life

James Harpur entered a boys boarding school in the 1970s and survived to tell the tale. Powerful, poignant and humorous, the poems in The Examined Life re-create a vale of soul-making that, with its tragedy and comedy, heroes and villains, is like a microcosm of life itself
Jack Cornfield - After the Ecstasy, the Laundry

Most accounts of spiritual enlightenment end at the moment of illumination. But what happens after that? What is life like after the ecstasy? How do we live our understanding with a full heart? In this unique mix of practical and spiritual wisdom Jack Kornfield, author of the bestselling A PATH WITH HEART and one of the most respected Buddhist meditation teachers in the West, sets out to answer these crucial questions.
Isobel Ross - Almost Boys: The Psychology of Co-ed Boarding in the 1960s

Isobel Ross was a pupil at a co-educational boarding school in Scotland from 1965 to 1971. Unique about this school was that boy boarders far outnumbered girl boarders and by the late 1960s, the adults in charge had become confused about their duty of care. Words from Isobel’s adolescent diaries, anxious but perceptive, and her current voice, based on over thirty years as an educational psychologist, combine in this narrative to create a unique psychological perspective
Helen Jenkins - Talk Room Podcast On Spotify - Boarding School Syndrome

In this episode of our "Talk Room" series, titled "Being Your Best Self," we delve into the fascinating and complex topic of Boarding School Syndrome. Your host, Ian, along with co-presenter Wendy, welcomes Helen, an experienced therapist from Hope Therapy and Counselling Services, to discuss this often overlooked condition
Helen Jenkins - Boarding School Syndrome with Helen Jenkins : Healing Hidden Trauma - Audio Podcast

Today on The Wildheart Diaries, we kick off season 3 with a special guest and old school friend, Helen Jenkins. I’m delighted to chat to Helen about her work as an Integrative Counsellor whose area of expertise is Boarding School Syndrome. Together we discuss how growing up in abusive and neglectful environments severely impacts your self-worth and your ability to feel your feelings. We also talk about our approach to healing and reminisce about our school days when we first met.
Helen Jenkins - Boarding School Syndrome Article for Counselling Directory

Counselling allows a safe space for people struggling with boarding school syndrome to express feelings such as abandonment, guilt, and sadness. Here, integrative counsellor and boarding school syndrome therapist, Helen Jenkins (FdA therapeutic counselling) takes a look at the symptoms of boarding school syndrome, how counselling can help, and what clients can expect from working with a counsellor
Helen Jenkins - A client perspective of Boarding School Syndrome - Article for Counselling Directory

An article aimed at the therapist/counselling profession around working with ex-boarders and Boarding School Syndrome
Gillian Avery - The Best Type of Girl: A History of Girls' Independent Schools

A history of girls' schools, charting the development of individual schools and types of school, and examining all aspects of school life from uniforms, games and rules to how girls' schools were affected by the two world wars
Gavin Cologne-Brookes - Portraits from Paris: School and Travel Remembered from the City of Light

Written between 2019 and 2024, Portraits from Paris is a novelized memoir of a boarding-school childhood in 1970s England, interspersed with journalistic sketches of cities as diverse as Montevideo, Kolkata, and Moscow that draw from the travel-studded years between school and the author's move to France.
Feel Better, Live More with Dr Chatterjee - Apple Podcast - A Proven Prescription for Health and Happiness: Why Being Able To Forgive Improves Your Physical & Mental Wellbeing with Dr Fred Luskin

Today’s guest wants us all to understand why forgiveness matters for our mental and physical health. Dr Frederic Luskin is a clinical psychologist, researcher and speaker who has been teaching at Stanford University for the past 30 years. As Director of the Stanford University Forgiveness Projects, he has taught tens of thousands of people to live happier and more fulfilled lives through the practice of forgiveness, gratitude and meditation.
Dr. Fred Luskin - Forgive for Good: A PROVEN Prescription for Health and Happiness

Dr. Fred Luskin - Forgive for Good: A PROVEN Prescription for Health and Happiness
Dr Peter Levine - Waking the Tiger

Waking the Tiger offers a new and hopeful vision of trauma. It views the human animal as a unique being, endowed with an instinctual capacity. It asks and answers an intriguing question: why are animals in the wild, though threatened routinely, rarely traumatized? By understanding the dynamics that make wild animals virtually immune to traumatic symptoms, the mystery of human trauma is revealed
Dr Peter Levine - Healing Trauma

An indispensable guide offers methods to overcome the challenges faced after experiencing a traumatic situation--such as an accident, disaster, or childhood trauma--helping survivors heal their traumas rather than relive them
Dr Judith Herman - Trauma and Recovery

Trauma and Recovery is the foundational text on understanding trauma survivors. By placing individual experience in a political frame, psychiatrist Judith L. Herman argues that psychological trauma is inseparable from its social and political context. Drawing on her own research on incest, as well as a vast literature on combat veterans and victims of political terror, she shows surprising parallels between private horrors like child abuse and public horrors like war.
Dr Gordon Neufeld & Dr Gabor Mate - Hold on to Your Kids: Why Parents Need to Matter More Than Peers

In Hold on to Your Kids, acclaimed physician and bestselling author Gabor Maté joins forces with Gordon Neufeld, a psychologist with a reputation for penetrating to the heart of complex parenting. Together they pinpoint the causes of this breakdown and offer practical advice on how to ‘reattach’ to sons and daughters, establish the hierarchy at home, make children feel safe and understood, and earn back your children's loyalty and love. This updated edition also addresses the unprecedented parenting challenges posed by the rise of digital devices and social media.
Dr Gabor Mate - When the body says no

With compassion, warmth and empathy, Dr Gabor Maté draws on deep scientific research and his acclaimed clinical work to provide the answers to critical questions about the mind-body link - and illuminates the role that stress and our emotional makeup play in an array of common disease
Dr Gabor Mate - The Myth of Normal: Illness, health & healing in a toxic culture

In this life-affirming book, Gabor Maté connects the dots between our personal suffering and the relentless pressures of modern life – showing that ill health is a natural reflection of our disconnection from our true selves. Drawing on four decades of clinical experience, and stories of people transforming their bodies and minds, Dr Maté offers a hopeful pathway to reconnection and healing
Dr Gabor Mate - In the realm of hungry ghosts

In this award-winning modern classic, Gabor Maté takes a holistic and compassionate approach to addiction, whether to alcohol, drugs, sex, money or anything self-destructive. He presents it not as a discrete phenomenon confined to a weak-willed few, but as a continuum that runs through (and even underpins) our society; not as a medical 'condition', but rather the result of a complex interplay of personal history, emotional development and brain chemistry.
Dr Diane Poole-Heller - The Power of Attachment

In The Power of Attachment, Dr. Diane Poole Heller, a pioneer in attachment theory and trauma resolution, shows how overwhelming experiences can disrupt our most important connections― with the parts of ourselves within, with the physical world around us, and with others. The good news is that we can restore and reconnect at all levels, regardless of our past.
Dr David Burns - When Panic Attacks: A new drug-free therapy to beat chronic shyness, anxiety and phobias

Bestselling author and behavioural psychiatrist Dr David Burns will teach you 40 powerful new anti-anxiety techniques and show you how to select methods that will work for you. The goal is not just feeling a bit better, but complete recovery.
Dr David Burns - The Feeling Good Handbook

Bestselling author and behavioural psychiatrist Dr David Burns reveals powerful new techniques and provides practical exercises that will help you cope with problems and learn how to make life a happier, more exhilarating experience.
Divine Charura and Colin Lago - Black Identities and White Therapies: Race, respect and diversity

This vibrant new book springs from the continued failure of the counselling and psychotherapy profession to adequately prepare trainees to meet the needs of today’s multi-ethnic, multiracial and multicultural society. The editors, both highly experienced trainers and academics, have gathered together here a group of new and established writers who draw on personal and professional experiences to present an array of fresh ideas and approaches.
Dillibe Onyeama - A Black Boy at Eton

Dillibe was the second black boy to study at Eton - joining in 1965 - and the first to complete his education there. Written at just 21, this is a deeply personal, revelatory account of the racism he endured during his time as a student at the prestigious institution.
Deb Dana - The Polyvagal Theory in Therapy: Engaging the Rhythm of Regulation

Written for all therapists who want to understand this groundbreaking theory as it might actually show up in their day-to-day practice, this book offers a comprehensive approach to polyvagal-informed intervention. Worksheets and experiential exercises designed to map and shape autonomic response provide therapists with a road map for bringing polyvagal theory into their clinical practice.
Daniel Kupfermann - “Don’t Be So Sensitive!”

Alternately hilarious and heartbreaking, this memoir tells how an ostensibly loving, even enviable 1970s boyhood - with a large house in London, and a holiday home in Praia da Luz - degenerated into a fiasco of drunkenness, anti-semitism, and neglect. It's a touching story of how a sensitive, stammering boy almost self-destructed completely with drink as he battled anxiety and depression - only to turn what he was always told was his greatest curse into a virtue.
Christine Jack - Recovering Boarding School Trauma Narratives

Recovering Boarding School Trauma Narratives: Christopher Robin Milne as a Psychological Companion on the Journey to Healing is a unique, emotive and theorised narrative of a young girl’s experience of boarding school in Australia
Chris Braitch - Seen & Heard founding director talks life and purpose with Piers Cross

Chris Braitch - Seen & Heard founding director talks early years, boarding school, life and purpose with Piers Cross on his Evolving Man Podcast
Charles Spencer - A Very Private School

In this poignant memoir, Charles Spencer recounts the trauma of being sent away from home at age eight to attend boarding school
Cathy Wield - Unshackled Mind: A Doctor’s Story of Trauma, Liberation and Healing

Unshackled Mind is a story of hope and resilience, written by an A&E doctor and ex-boarder who endured years as a psychiatric patient, diagnosed with treatment-resistant depression. Cathy’s life has been a constant battle, marked by frequent hospital detentions, episodes of suicidal thoughts, and self-harm. Despite psychiatry’s best efforts to treat her—including numerous medications, electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), and even brain surgery—these interventions only deepened her suffering. However, through profound self-discovery, she uncovered the true causes of her emotional turmoil, sparking a transformative shift in her mindset. Unshackled Mind outlines her extraordinary journey to freedom and the remarkable healing that followed
Brene Brown - Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead

In a powerful new vision Dr Brené Brown challenges everything we think we know about vulnerability, and dispels the widely accepted myth that it's a weakness. She argues that, in truth, vulnerability is strength and when we shut ourselves off from vulnerability - from revealing our true selves - we distance ourselves from the experiences that bring purpose and meaning to our lives
Bhante Gunaratana - Eight Mindful Steps to Happiness: Walking the Buddha's Path

rom the best-selling author of Mindfulness in Plain English! In his classic and engaging style, Bhante Gunaratana delves deeply into the noble eightfold path, the Buddha's most profound teaching on bringing an end to suffering. With easy-to-understand and specific advice, Eight Mindful Steps to Happiness offers skillful ways to handle anger, find right livelihood, cultivate loving-friendliness, and overcome the mental hindrances that prevent happiness.
Anne Power - Early boarding: Rich children in care, their adaptation to loss of attachment

An article from a 2013 Attachment Journal exploring the effect of early years boarding schools for rich children in care, and their adaptation to loss of attachment
Anne Power - Discussion of trauma at the threshold: The impact of boarding school on attachment in young children

A discussion and exploration piece from the Attachment Journal in 2007 created in response to Simon Partridge's original article in the same publication
Anne Power - Contented Couples: Magic, Logic or Luck?

What is the secret of a long and contented marriage? In this book, Anne Power interviews eighteen contented couples in the USA and the UK to discuss how they found each other and what made it work. As well as couples brought together by family arrangement or random romance, we meet those introduced deliberately by friends, or through agencies and the internet. Almost all the couples interviewed had faced major challenges along the way – but their attachment grew and relationships survived. In this book they tell us why.
Anne Power - Boarding School And Broken Attachments - Article June 25 Private Practice

Anne Power, therapist, covers in this informative article how Boarding is supposed to make children 'independent', but surely not so cut off that they can't have a fulfilling relationship - 'This article was first published in Private Practice, June 2025 issue, published by BACP. ©'
Andrew Kavchak - Westminster School

In this autobiographical account, Andrew describes his preparation for Westminster’s special entrance exam, his experience as a Canadian in an elite boarding school in the heart of 1970’s London, and the long-term impact on his life. He also outlines the history of an institution whose graduates include Prime Ministers, generals, colonial administrators, scientists, philosophers, and artists
Anabel Gonzalez - It’s Not Me. Understanding Complex Trauma, Attachment and Dissociation

This book, which is aimed at patients and family members of people who have been through adverse situations that fit with what we call complex trauma, will present and explain some of the psychological problems that these situations can produce. Based on work done with patients who have a history of trauma or attachment disorders, different ideas are presented that can help overcome dysfunctional post-traumatic patterns
Alex Renton - Stiff Upper Lip

Award-winning investigative journalist Alex Renton went to three traditional boarding schools. Drawing on those experiences, and the vivid testimony of hundreds of former pupils, he has put together a compelling history, important to anyone wondering what shaped the people who run Britain in the twenty-first century
Alex Renton - In Dark Corners BBC Radio 4

What will be uncovered when a light is shone in the dark corners of Britain's most elite boarding school? Alex Renton presents a story of class, power and privilege.
A_confluence_of_liminality_in_a_rural_learner transitioning to boarding school in South Africa - A Study

A_confluence_of_liminality_in_a_rural_learner transitioning to boarding school in South Africa - A Study
A study into Indigenous peoples and residential schooling - United Nations

A study into Indigenous peoples and residential schooling - United Nations
“Why are we exporting a model of inequality around the world?” - Robert Verkaik, Journalist and Author

This article exposes how elite English public schools are profiting from overseas franchises while benefiting from tax breaks at home.
"On Finding The Missing Horses." A Psychotherapy case study - By Sarah Hamilton

Reflections on Boarding School: Insights from Sarah Hamilton’s sessions with “Joe”
Dr Bessel Van Der Kolk - The Body Keeps The Score

The effects of trauma can be devastating for sufferers, their families and future generations. Here one of the world's experts on traumatic stress offers a bold new paradigm for treatment, moving away from standard talking and drug therapies and towards an alternative approach that heals mind, brain and body.

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