When childhood didn’t go to plan
Perhaps you learned to be fine a long time ago. Maybe it was a parent whose drinking or using meant you had to grow up before you were ready, watching for moods, keeping the peace, becoming the reliable one. Maybe you were sent away to boarding school too young and taught you not to need anyone. Maybe it was a loss or an absence nobody talked about properly.
Whatever the shape of it, you may have learned early that self-sufficiency was safer than needing anyone. And perhaps it’s carried you a long way. It’s probably part of why you’ are capable and successful in many areas of your life, and at the same time also quietly exhausted by the effort of never quite putting it down.
I work with adults across the different ways this happened:
Boarding school survivors Sent away young, and taught, often very effectively, to manage without the people you needed. This is a place to look honestly at what that cost, without it being framed as ingratitude for the education itself. → Find out more
Growing up around addiction If you grew up with a parent’s drinking or using shaping the household: the walking on eggshells, the caretaking, the codependency that followed you into adult relationships, this work is for you, whether or not you’d use words like “adult child of an addict” to describe yourself or find support in Al Anon or other 12 step programmes. → Find out more
Abandonment and early loss Losing a parent, a caregiver, or a sense of safety early in life leaves a mark on how you trust, attach and expect to be treated, long after the original loss itself. → Find out more
What the work involves
Most people arriving through this door are used to being the capable one, for others, and for themselves. The work often starts by naming that pattern, gently, before we go anywhere near what’s underneath it: the child who had to grow up too soon, and is still, in some quiet way, waiting to be found.
This is psychodynamic and attachment-informed work at its core. Understanding where a pattern began so it stops running you without your permission. Alongside practical work on relationships, trust and asking for help now, as an adult.
Creative practice often opens doors that talking alone can’t. Working with an object or image from childhood, writing a letter you never got to send, using drawing or toys to reach something that happened before you had words for it. These aren’t techniques for their own sake; they can be ways in, for material that’s often been locked away for decades.
Experience
I trained with Nick Duffell, the pioneer of boarding school psychotherapy, completing the Postgraduate Diploma in Specialist Psychotherapy with Ex-Boarders, the two-year CreativeCoupleWork training, and group facilitation training. Alongside this, I’ve worked extensively with codependency and with adults who had to grow up too soon.
Common questions
What is boarding school syndrome?
Boarding school syndrome describes the lasting impact of being sent away from home as a child, often before you were old enough to understand why. To cope, many children learn to switch off their feelings and become fiercely self-sufficient, performing being fine long after the need to. In adulthood this can look like difficulty with intimacy, a persistent sense of not quite belonging, or achievement that never seems to touch the loneliness underneath it.
I grew up with an alcoholic parent but I’m not an addict myself, is this still for me?
Yes. This work isn’t about addiction; it’s about what it did to you to grow up around it. Perhaps the hypervigilance, the habit of managing everyone else’s feelings before your own, the sense that you had to be the reliable one far too young. Many people in this position never drink to excess and still carry the same patterns of self-reliance and quiet exhaustion. If any of that sounds familiar, this is exactly the territory this work addresses.
Can therapy help with something that happened this long ago?
Yes. Time doesn’t heal what was never processed in the first place. What happened decades ago can still shape how you trust, rest, and relate to people now, even if you have built a successful life on top of it. Therapy doesn’t rewrite the past, but it can help you understand its hold on the present and loosen it. It’s never too late to give an old experience the attention it didn’t get at the time.
Getting started
If any of this sounds like your life, the next step is a free 20-minute introductory call. This is a chance for us both to sense whether this is the right work at the right time.