School Reunions - A Fast-Track To Healing?

School reunions are a bit like marmite - they seem to provoke an extreme reaction.

Unlike reconnecting to old flames and friends online, there is no protection afforded by a screen - all of your physical self (additional grey hairs, rolls and wrinkles) is on show, whilst your emotional sensitivities and potential triggers run the risk of exposure from behind your carefully-curated, social-media highlight reel.

It seems that the degree to which the thought of one brings up anxiety, depends upon how much of your past (school-associated) trauma you have already processed.

And if you have never worked through any of the painful challenges you encountered (and the potential lack of emotional support that ensued), it is likely that the thought of being in close physical proximity with the very same people who were around at the time, might stir up those old, stuck feelings that are still held in your body…

…taking you right back to feeling exactly as you did all those years ago.

In other words, the unprocessed pain of your past hijacks your present, and your inner child or inner teenager takes over the reins as she scoots into the driving seat of your (now adult) life.

Luckily for me, I am attending no less than two separate school reunions next month.

And each is bringing up for me what remains unprocessed from those unique phases of my life: most significantly, how I related to myself, to others and to the world at those times, and where I was on that universal journey towards self-awareness, self-acceptance and self-compassion.

Given that you are not fully psychologically evolved until you are in your early 20s and that until that point, you are very much still merged with your parents (and their fears, values, self-limiting beliefs and coping mechanisms), it is no surprise that I was made to explore some deep teenage wounds.

Particularly because I went to boarding school, where your fellow inmates become your second family.

And, just like family, there are those that support and nourish you, and there are also those whose personalities rub up against yours.

It’s all part of learning who you are.

But it’s also a pretty harsh - drawn out - lesson when you may not yet have learnt how to regulate your feelings, you’re too young and lacking in self-worth to understand or know how to create boundaries, communal living offers no safe places to hide, the prevailing culture is one of maintaing a ‘stiff upper lip’ and there is no-one else on your (pubscent) team.

Plus hormonal, tween/teenage girls aren’t always the most compassionate of creatures.

I have many fun, happy memories of living within this extended family: mastering my adrenalin in order to complete hairbrained dares in the pitch dark after lights out, swopping notes on how we should attempt to ‘french kiss’ boys, learning why and how I should use a tampon or shave my legs, staying up all night in the unheated study chewing proplus capsules in order to complete a maths assignment that had to be handed in the next day.

But I also have more challenging ones.

And, until faced with the adrenalin-spiked, tear-fuelled realisations that my teenager was about to reimmerse herself back into the old dynamics of her past, I hadn’t ever bothered to address my: latent fear of judgement, lingering sense of intimidation, powerlessness to express or exert my needs and the sense of unhappy loneliness that flavoured it all.

Because in the end, all humans - and in particular teenagers - need to feel like they belong, however much they also think they want to be different.

(It didn’t help that I was half-french, had short hair and a rat’s tail).

But those two desires are not always possible to reconcile - especially on a consistent basis - in the melting pot of ever-changing friendships, trends, personal expression, sexuality and mood swings that characterise adolescence.

The good news, however, is, that it IS possible to create this for your inner teenager now, as a self-aware, self-accepting and self-compassionate adult.

And it all goes back to creating the space she needs to face her (old) feelings, validating these, and - if necessary - adjusting the outcome of any painful memories to ones in which she doesn’t feel judged, intimiated or powerless, she can express and exert her needs and she no longer feels alone.

However distant the challenges of your past, these will always come up again, at some point, in order to be integrated.

So why not fast-track this process and sign up for your next school reunion?!

After the necessary inner work that is provoked in you by the prospect, you’ll end up more connected to yourself, free of emotional baggage, confident to be who you are, and you might even make some new (old) friends!