Privileged Abandonment

Why Boarding On Insanity Exposes the Hidden Cost of Elite Upbringing

I can’t wait to see Boarding On Insanity. This isn’t just another documentary. It’s a reckoning. A truth bomb. A long overdue spotlight on a system so deeply woven into the fabric of the upper classes that it’s practically invisible, and yet, the harm it causes echoes across lifetimes and into the very structures that govern our world.

There was one point in the film’s write-up that reverberated through me:

“If the people who become world leaders have been conditioned that vulnerability is dangerous and unacceptable – as happens to children in boarding schools – how can they have any compassion for the most vulnerable members of society?”

Yes. That.

Boarding On Insanity | Dr Gabor Maté | Documentary Trailer #2 | Piers Cross

This isn’t abstract for me. I went to private school. I wore the blazer. I sang in the chapel. I smiled for school photos, even when my insides were screaming. I learned early how to look ‘fine’ while quietly vanishing. Sometimes I couldn’t keep the mask on. I rebelled, loud, confrontational, outrageous at times, not because I was bad, but because I was desperate for someone to actually see me. No one in my life was attuned. They performed the motions of care, but without presence, without listening, without real connection. I was dismissed. I was labelled. The more I reached, the more I was told I was too much. And so the message landed deep: I would always be rejected. I was never safe, not in my home, not in my body.

I was a day girl in a boarding school, but the grooming of emotional disconnection starts much earlier than that. I was surrounded by varnished floors, impeccable lawns, and a culture obsessed with appearances. But the truth is, my parents were working class, they clawed their way up, driven by a hunger for the kind of life they never had. They told us they worked constantly to give us “everything,” but they missed the point entirely. What they never had, and still couldn’t give, was emotional presence. Attunement. Safety. They weren’t shown how to feel or to connect, so neither were we.

This isn’t a woe-is-me confession. If you know my work, you know I’ve dedicated my life to breaking this cycle, doing the inner work, facing the darkness, and holding space for others to do the same. This is just one thread in the tapestry. But it matters, because while we had the postcode, the image, and my parents frequently fucked off on yacht holidays, I was dragging myself up on my own. Love was conditional. Attention came with performance. I learned early that opening my mouth was dangerous. When I did, I was met with shame and punishment.

So no, I didn’t grow up poor. But I did grow up emotionally alone. And the nervous system doesn’t care whether the pain comes from chaos or from control dressed up in luxury. No one asked if I was OK. And if they had, I wouldn’t have known how to answer. Because when harm happens in elite corners of society, it’s camouflaged. You’re assumed to be lucky. Safe. Cared for. After all, look at your postcode. Look at your uniform. But privilege doesn’t protect you from trauma. In fact, it often conceals it.

Some of the most devastating neglect I’ve ever witnessed has played out not in so-called ‘deprived areas’ but behind heavy wooden doors in affluent homes. Because wealth doesn’t teach emotional attunement. It doesn’t hold you when you cry. It doesn’t model safety. And it doesn’t show you how to feel. I spent years unravelling the myth that I was ‘spoilt’. That belief kept me silent for too long. For anyone still clinging to that narrative, that pain can’t exist in comfort, that trauma skips the privately educated, maybe ask yourself why it bothers you so much to hear otherwise.

The truth is, when someone rich or famous ends their own life and the headlines say, “But they had everything,” I just shake my head. That sentence reveals the collective madness we’re still under: the belief that happiness is an external trophy, a salary, a spouse, a postcode but here’s the truth:
Feeling terrified feels the same in a council house as it does in a fucking Porsche. Trauma doesn’t discriminate. And joy? Joy is not something you buy. It’s not in the next promotion, or the next romantic partner, or the next yoga retreat.

Joy is presence.
Joy is remembering.
Joy is coming home to the self beneath the stories.

And if we want true abundance, the kind that doesn’t vanish when the bank balance dips, then we need to stop chasing outcomes and start tending to our inner landscape.

Boarding On Insanity lays bare how children in elite institutions are taught to override that inner world. Taught that feelings are weakness. That needing someone is shameful. That softness makes you a target. Imagine the long-term impact of that. Imagine those boys in stiff uniforms, locked into systems where cruelty is normalised and connection is rationed and then imagine them 40 years later, running banks, armies, and countries.

We see it. We feel it.
Disconnection at scale.
Leadership without empathy.
Power without humanity.

The truth is, if our world leaders were once small boys punished for showing emotion, taught that survival depends on performance, and left to navigate loneliness with no emotional scaffolding then of course they lead from detachment, disassociation, and control.

Boarding On Insanity, from what I can tell, is not just a film — it’s a mirror. It asks us to look again at where we send our children, what we call “good schools”, and who we call “successful”.

If we want a different world, we need a different model of strength. One that makes space for softness. For crying. For regulation. For actual human connection. Otherwise, we’ll keep handing power to people who can command armies but can’t sit with a crying child.

And that, right there, is the real insanity.

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