Emotions, health, and stress
How the Hoffman Quadrinity Process works
As women, we regularly consider our emotional needs to be last on our list of priorities
— if they’re even on the list at all! And we find many logical, rational-sounding
explanations for why this has to be the case. “If I didn’t have to work so much,"
we say, or “If only my children weren't sick," or “I can’t right now because my
parents need my help." Whatever the excuse, we often put our own emotional needs
to the side to plow through and get “our work" done. But as the demands pile on
and time for reflection and renewal dwindles, many women suffer not only emotionally,
but physically.
One method that we often suggest to women seeking a way to address emotional issues
is the Hoffman Quadrinity Process. We have seen it transform the lives of women
who were “stuck" on emotional issues. This program helps people integrate the four
essential aspects of their being: emotions, intellect, spirit, and physical body.
A 2006 study done at the University of California Davis has found that participants
in the Hoffman Process have done as well or better than those using other interventions
in significantly reducing depression, anxiety, interpersonal sensitivity, or obsessive-compulsive
symptoms, especially in the long term. This study also found significant, lasting
increases in emotional intelligence, forgiveness, spirituality, energy, and vitality.
We asked the Hoffman Institute's President, Raz Ingrasci, to summarize what the
Process teaches so that women can get a better idea of what it offers for better
emotional health.
Actions speak loudest, but emotions speak first
The old saw that “actions speak louder than words" is very true, but it’s only half
the equation. Our actions are mostly guided by how we feel — in other words,
though actions might be loudest, emotions always speak first, and they guide our
actions far more than our intellect. Indeed, the emotional brain reacts at lightning
speed compared to the intellectual brain. Raz suggests that we think back to the
last time we felt humiliated, upset, angry, or insulted. “It takes only a millisecond,"
he says, “to put us into a state of paralysis. We’re reeling, trying to come up
with words to use in conversation, but we’re struck dumb." And it’s minutes or even
hours before we can articulate that feeling to someone else or even ourselves.
From the experience with 70,000+ who have attended the Hoffman Process, Raz estimates
that about 80% of human behavior stems from our emotional brains, which can confuse
us when we react in ways that we know, intellectually, are counterproductive. Raz
suggests that one way around this dilemma is to learn to identify our emotions more
readily. As he explains, “The naming of an emotion takes place in the intellectual
brain, though the feeling itself exists in the emotional brain. When it is named,
those two spheres are connected and you feel more whole."
When we recognize the power of our emotions and give them due regard, our lives
can improve dramatically. As Raz says, “There’s an old axiom, ’What you can feel,
you can heal.’ The best way to begin dealing with an unwanted emotion is to allow
yourself to experience it." Burying our emotions only means they will arise again
at another time in different circumstances, but always inconveniently. To tap into
the power of emotions, Raz suggests, “the best strategy is to become aware of your
feelings and move with them, allowing your body to experience your sensations and
emotions." This is how we work through problems and eventually heal. If your emotional
states are overpowering or frightening to you or others, seek professional help.
Negative love and our family patterns
A negative pattern is...
...a reaction that is:
- compulsive
- emotionally charged
- automatic
...and
As humans, it’s our great fortune that any negative patterns we are capable of learning,
once we become aware of them, we are also capable of unlearning.
(Adapted from
The Hoffman Process, p 25.)
Once we can name our feelings, the next step is to figure out where they originated;
where did I learn that feeling? We tend to reproduce the behaviors we learned from
our parents as a way of earning their approval, attention, and love. Bob Hoffman,
creator of the Hoffman Process, called this the Negative Love Syndrome because these
behaviors are rooted in the experience of not getting enough love.
These behavior patterns play out in our adult lives as well. Many of us end up seeking
relationships that are similar to what we saw in our parents because this is how
we learned about love. How often have you, or one of your friends, lamented not
only that you “married your father" but that you’re “becoming your mother"? There
are good reasons why they (or you) might feel an echo of your parents in your own
behavior — your parents were the people who formed your perception of how
an adult behaves and what adult relationships should look like. And they, in turn,
were formed by their own parents. These patterns and perceptions, whether positive
or negative, can continue from generation to generation virtually unexamined.
Here is a list of statements that you can review to see if the Quadrinity Process
is for you:
- I feel that something is holding me back and want to take the limits off.
- I experience too much stress, and I’m not having enough fun.
- I know what I should do, but often can’t generate the will to do it.
- I often feel angry, resentful, embarrassed or depressed.
- I flip flop between dominating and intimidating people below me and avoid being
dominated by people above me,
- I feel intimidated, coerced, and manipulated and can’t stand up for myself.
- I work compulsively, often to the detriment of other aspects of my life.
- Meaning is going out of my marriage, my career, or life in general. I often feel
I’m just going through the motions.
- There’s a lack of intimacy in my life — I’ve been unsuccessful in creating relationships.
- I’m either unemotional and disconnected from my feelings or my feelings are running
me.
- I’m in recovery from substance abuse (clean and sober for 90 days minimum) and want
to deal with the original pain that led to addiction.
- I recognize that my parents were not as loving and supportive as I wanted them to
be, or that bad things happened in my childhood.
- I see myself passing my own suffering on to my children.
The Hoffman Process is focused on helping you to be your true self, not the “mask"
you create to meet your parents’ and society’s expectations. In order to find our
authentic selves, we have to examine where our emotions and motivations stem from.
We are what we’ve learned — but we can change that!
As children, we learn from our parents and caregivers. When a child has a negative
experience with a parent, he or she typically assumes the blame for it. If a parent
ignores, dismisses, or rejects a child—whether because the parent was preoccupied
with work, or didn’t know how to address their feelings, or simply was out of sorts
that day—the child assumes he or she was somehow “bad" or unworthy of love.
This childhood feeling of being unlovable becomes an internal state and persists
into adulthood. This is the underlying source the negative love syndrome.
The responses we develop as children to try to elicit the love we needed from our
parents often imitate the very behaviors that made us feel so unworthy. As Bob Hoffman
noted, “our unconscious reasons for adopting negative behavior patterns from our
parents are:
- the hope that they will love us if we are like them.
- to vindictively punish our parents by reflecting their negativity back to them.
- to punish ourselves for feeling unworthy and unlovable."
Such unexamined negative love strategies persist into adulthood, causing us difficulties
in our adult relationships and even affecting our physical health.
We may feel disheartened when we realize just how young we started learning our
negative emotions and behavior patterns, but we can take comfort in the fact that
these are learned behaviors, which we can transform with time and practice. As children
we had no choice, but as adults we can choose to heal. This is the goal of the Hoffman
Process for emotional healing.
“From a human doing to a human being"
Most of us simply react or do as we’ve been shown in any given situation. In his
book,
The Hoffman Process, Tim Laurence talks about transitioning from a
human doing to a human being. The Hoffman Process helps to unwind this programmed
behavior by examining all parts of the self — emotions, intellect, spirit
and body — along with the patterns we have developed, so we can choose what
to keep and what to change, thereby empowering us to have a more free, open, loving,
spontaneous experience of life.
Though most of us have been conditioned otherwise, our emotional health deserves
a place on our “to-do lists," and it’s time we start paying attention. Women deserve
to take the time and space to reflect on the negative patterns you’ve always imagined
are simply a part of “who you are." The Hoffman Institute has developed dozens of
tools to help work through negative patterns and provide positive alternatives.
If you’d like to learn more about tapping into the full range of your emotional
expression, visit the Hoffman Institute website.
The impressive results of the
UC Davis research study on the Hoffman Process can be found on their site
as well.
Our Personal Program is a great place to start
The Personal Program promotes natural hormonal balance with nutritional supplements, our exclusive endocrine support formula, dietary and lifestyle guidance, and optional phone consultations with our Nurse–Educators. It is a convenient, at-home version of what we recommend to all our patients at the clinic.
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Related to this article:
References & further reading on emotional
healing
Original Publication Date: 07/08/09
Last Modified:
08/17/2009
Principal Author: Marcelle Pick, OB/GYN NP