The Hoffman Process: A Week Long Emotional Healing Journey Equal to 10 Years Of Therapy

As I mentioned in January I’m going to start sharing more things regarding mental health as this is attributed to FEELING GOOD on the inside which is more important than looking good on the outside.  Of course, both are important or I wouldn’t be doing what I do.  What you wear 100% affects how you feel which is why I am such a big believer in the LOOK GOOD FEEL GOOD mentality.  In addition to looking good on the outside doing the work on the inside is crucial to living a happy and fulfilled life which is why I have done so much internal work on myself.  My hope is that sharing my journey with all of you will inspire you to find happiness and contentment and ultimately to help you feel like the best version of yourself!

The Hoffman Process

I completed The Hoffman Process last January and it was hands-down one of the best weeks of my life and the best $5K I ever spent.  The Hoffman Process is an emotional healing process created by Bob Hoffman in 1967.  It helps you identify the negative patterns that you picked up in childhood so you can release those and start living a life filled with peace and contentment even in the hard times.  It empowers you to look within for answers instead of always looking for people and outside sources to tell you what to do (which is something I struggled with for years).  It’s basically like getting 10 years of therapy in one week, yes it’s that transformational!

My Reason Why

Let me start by telling you why I went in the first place.  I have spent the majority of my adult life in 2 unhealthy relationships.  My first marriage of 12 years and my second one of 14 years both ended in divorce and I realized that I was the common denominator.  I was struggling with my relationship with my 2nd husband at the time and more importantly, I was struggling with my relationship with myself.  I wasn’t happy, I was filled with tons of anxiety and occasional depression and honestly, I felt like I had a deep dark hole in my soul that couldn’t be filled.  So out of desperation, I signed up for The Hoffman Process to do some deep healing work on my mind, body, and soul in hopes of finding some peace and happiness.

The Begining

I arrived on a Saturday and had to give my phone up for the entire week, yes, the ENTIRE week!  And although I did this with extreme hesitation afterward I didn’t even want my phone back.  I realized that I was spending way too much time on my phone and not enough time in the present moment.

There we about 30 other students with me which was amazing because it’s pretty profound what you can learn from other people’s experiences as well as your own.  Before I went I had to fill out a childhood inventory that took me about 7 hours.  I had to identify all the negative patterns I picked up in my childhood from my parents and break them down to my top 25 negative patterns that were having the most impact on my life.  I’ll name a few here to give you an idea of what I’m talking about.  Inability to set healthy boundaries, controlling behaviors, creating chaos, and minimization, to name just a few.

Once you’re there you do a ton of experiential therapy like beating a pillow with a baseball bat to get all of your anger out, and yes this might sound crazy but you’d be surprised at how much repressed anger you may have.  I was taught as a little girl to hide my feelings and pretend everything was just peachy even if it wasn’t so needless to say I had a ton of repressed anger and releasing it is crucial for healing.  I’m not going to go into all the other experiential therapy we did because I don’t want to ruin it for you in case you decide to do it but let me just say it was all so worth it!  All of the visioning and anger-releasing techniques did a great job of tapping into my subconscious which is responsible for 95% of our decisions by the way and helped empower me to start healing and making healthier decisions in my life based on what I wanted versus on what others wanted for me.

FEELING = HEALING

We spent the first 2 days in complete silence meaning we literally couldn’t talk at all to anyone not even our classmates for an entire 48 hours!  All of us would go to lunch and dinner together and had to sit in complete silence which was uncomfortable, to say the least.  But sitting in our uncomfortable feelings was exactly what we all needed to do to start really healing.  I’m sure you’ve heard this saying before: YOU HAVE TO FEEL IT TO HEAL IT and this couldn’t be more true.  As I said before minimization was one of my childhood patterns as well as stuffing feelings deep down inside in hopes of not having to feel them.  I could tell this was a problem for me because all of the stuffed feelings were creating chaos and dysfunction in my adult life.  But once I was willing to really feel my uncomfortable feelings such as sadness, guilt, shame, and anger and release them after really feeling them then and only then did I begin to start feeling some relief.  That black hole inside of me seemed to be getting smaller and starting to actually fill with light.

Toward the end of the week, I started working on forgiving others and myself for the chaos and trauma that I endured.  And by the way, many people think that trauma is a big bad scary thing like witnessing a murder but no trauma is defined by anything that happened to you that caused a deep disturbance.  So it could be anything from witnessing your parents fighting, to getting bullied at school or even seeing your parents drink too much alcohol.  Once I realized that I wasn’t alone and that everyone has had traumatic experiences in their lifetime I didn’t feel as alone and this helped me in my healing journey.

The End of My Journey

After the process, I felt like a completely different person.  I no longer felt like I had to please others after all this is my life and I’m the only one in charge of living it.  It also taught me to set clear boundaries for myself not the other person.  Boundaries are something I had to learn to set to protect myself.  I also learned that if someone can’t respect my boundaries it’s not my job to change them because I can only change myself and my circumstances. So instead of focusing on changing others, I started doing what I needed to take of myself and sometimes that means removing myself from the environment.

I felt an extreme amount of gratitude after completing The Hoffman Process.  My gratitude for God and for the relationship I had with Him was stronger than it ever had been before. I was grateful for my family and friends; Grateful for my health and my business.  I was grateful for the earth and the sky and the sun and for once I felt grateful for just being me.  The concept of only feeling gratitude after accomplishing something was gone and I could be grateful for just being, not doing.

The most profound thing I gained was this: I started looking within for the answers and began listening to my intuition (God speaking to me) because I was able to let go of a ton of guilt, anger, and shame that was holding me back.  Once I FELT and released my feelings I could really get in touch with who I was and what I wanted.

I feel happy, content, at peace, and finally like I can really feel my feelings without any fear or resistance which is really the key to happiness.  We can’t feel the good feelings if we don’t allow ourselves to feel the bad ones too!  The Hoffman Process taught me how to do just this and for that, I will forever be grateful!

The Hoffman Process Can Help You Too!

If you’re struggling in life to find genuine peace and contentment and feel like you may have some trauma you need to address then I highly recommend giving The Hoffman Process a try.  It was truly transformational and life-changing for me.  I know without a doubt I wouldn’t be sitting here in my office in my new apartment excited about my life for the first time in as long as I can remember if I didn’t complete this life-changing process!

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Thank you so much for stopping by today, I truly appreciate you!

XOXO, HEATHER