About Amelia White

Many of the people I work with have built successful careers, businesses, and outward lives, yet internally they feel something  is missing. There may be a yearning for something unknown and may find that their closest relationships remain distant. They are capable, driven, and highly functioning. Yet something quieter, something more personal, has never quite worked in the way they hoped and they can't make sense of it 

That pattern often has roots that go back a long way. For many, it begins at boarding school.

I'm a therapist, facilitator, and writer specialising in the psychology of boarding school experience. I work with ex-boarders who are ready to understand how their early years shaped them and to begin changing the patterns that have followed them into adult life.

I'm an ex-boarder myself. Through my own therapy, and years of working closely in this field, I came to understand how profoundly those early experiences had shaped me, my relationships, my emotional life, and my way of being.  That personal knowledge sits alongside my clinical training, and it informs everything I offer. When clients speak about the particular culture of boarding school, the self-sufficiency it demands, the grief that was never named, the fears of intimacy and the loneliness they may have felt and still feel, I understand it from the inside.

My work is grounded in the foundational research of this field. I trained with Nick Duffell, whose work on the Survival Personality has become central to how we understand the long-term impact of boarding. I attended a formative workshop with the late Joy Schaverien, whose concept of Boarding School Syndrome gave language to what so many ex-boarders had carried without words. I contributed to the book "The Unmaking of Them," published by Routledge, and I am currently writing a book on healing for ex-boarders of all genders.

Over more than 14 years in practice, I have worked with individuals in private practice, trained therapists working in this area, delivered workshops and professional training, and created and facilitated Healing Beyond Boarding School -  an online group programme for ex-boarders.

The programme is my my personal creation of my personal and professional experience.  It brings together former boarders from all over the world of all ages who share this particular history, and guides them through a structured process of understanding, grief, and change. If you are wondering whether it might be right for you, please look through the page dedicated to it. 

I am registered with the British Association of Counselling and Psychotherapy and work within their ethical framework. I am based in Brighton and Hove and work online.

• 15 years of 1:1 Therapy to individuals. Face to face and Online.
• Created and facilitate the Online "Healing Beyond Boarding School"   Course.
• Delivered Training on “Working with Women Ex-Boarders with Sara Warner. London, Nov '23
• Delivered “Boarding School Survivors” Workshops for Online Events.
• A Tutor on the Person-Centred Foundation Degree course at East Sussex College.
• Facilitator of the Personal Development groups for the Post-Graduate Humanistic Psychotherapy Students at Brighton University.

• Facilitated groups at The Boaders School Survivors Gatherings in London.
• Worked for Winston’s Wish, a charity specialising in offering bereavement support for young people and families suffering the loss of a parent.
• Worked for the NHS at the Brighton Women’s Centre, where Counselling and Psychotherapy is provided to women with mental health difficulties.
• Counsellor for women affected by sexual violence for Rape Crisis in London.
• Counseller for young people aged 16-26 at the Youth Advisory Centre in Hove.
•  Facilitated groups for women with drug and alcohol concerns at the Oasis Project.