An Evolving Man Podcast
An Evolving Man Podcast looks at leadership, peak performance, psychology, healing trauma, boarding school syndrome, spirituality and complexhealing. Every week there will be an interview or a podcast around topics ranging from self-development, leadership, relationships, spirituality, education, and peak performance featuring authors and leaders in these fields.
An Evolving Man Podcast
Boarding School, Neurodiversity & Shame: Adverse School Experiences | Ian Keys & Piers Cross AEM#146
In this episode of An Evolving Man Podcast (AEM #146), I speak with Ian Keys, an ex-boarder, youth worker and newly qualified counsellor, about what really happens when neurodiverse children move through a schooling system that doesn’t understand them.
Ian started boarding school at 11 and left with no qualifications, convinced he was “thick”. Decades later, after working with excluded teenagers, forest school groups, neurodivergent young people and national-level athletes, he began to see the truth: the problem was never his intelligence – it was the environment.
Together we explore:
- How dyslexia and neurodiversity show up in the classroom – and how easily they are misread
- Boarding school syndrome, dissociation and the survival strategies children develop
- The idea of Adverse School Experiences (ASEs) and how they sit alongside ACEs
- Shaming practices (like “being sent to Coventry”) and their long-term impact on self-worth
- What Scandinavian education offers as a different model: attachment, play, nature and trust
- Practical ways adults can begin to heal and “rewrite the story” after harmful schooling
This episode is for ex-boarders, neurodivergent adults, therapists, teachers, parents – and anyone who suspects that school left deeper marks than they realised.
🔗 Find out more about Ian’s work and writing on adverse school experiences via his website http://www.iankeys.co.uk/
If this conversation resonates, please share it with someone who might need to hear it.
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Piers is an author and a men's transformational coach and therapist who works mainly with trauma, boarding school issues, addictions and relationship problems.
He also runs online men's groups for ex-boarders, retreats and a podcast called An Evolving Man.
He is also the author of How to Survive and Thrive in Challenging Times. To purchase Piers first book: https://www.amazon.co.uk/How-Survive-Thrive-Challenging-Times/dp/B088T5L251/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=piers+cross&qid=1609869608&sr=8-1
For more videos please visit: http://youtube.com/pierscross
For FB: https://www.facebook.com/pierscrosspublic
For Piers' website and a free training How To Find Peace In Everyday Life: https://www.piers-cross.com/community
Many blessings,
Piers Cross
http://piers-cross.com/