Hi,

I'm very keen to find out if anyone out there has any real life negative feedback on the Hoffman Process. The reason for my request is as follows:

My wife attended the Hoffman Process in Dec 08 – prior to her going in we had a very loving relationship, like all relationships we had our issues, but if there was one thing never in doubt it was the love we had for each other. Pretty much day one of my wife coming out of the process she told me she didn’t think we had a future together, and quoted “with my new inner strength and the love I have for myself I don’t feel you fit in to my future plans, I now feel we have different perspectives on life and I need to follow my own path in life and do what truly makes me happy”.

We stayed together for the following 4 months (in separate bedrooms) and 1 month ago she moved out and said she cannot be in a relationship as she needs to focus on herself. The post below screams out a lot of similarities in what my wife has been saying to me post the Hoffman Process, excluding the recruiting of friends, and the aggressive nature of the Lifespring seminar.

[www.culteducation.com]

Post all of this happening I have spent a lot of time studying the internet and have found a lot of negative press around these residential LGAT type programmes. What I found was both interesting and scary. With regards to the Hoffman Process it was very difficult to find any real negative press, the interesting fact I found was the Hoffman Process seems to come from the same stable as EST, Lifespring etc………as Charles Ingrasci the current CEO of the Hoffman Process USA originally worked with Werner Erhard as an aide promoting EST, he then worked as a Director of Corporate Affairs at Lifespring with John Hanley, then latterly joined the Hoffman Process.

My view from what I have seen is this is a real slick operation that has taken a good look at all of the negative press around LGAT’s, and created an incredibly slick programme that minimizes negative press after their process. Ie: Landmark and Lifespring rely on re-recruiting attendees to maximize the revenue they would generate, the Hoffman Process maximizes their revenue in one swoop as they offer an 8 day residential programme that costs £2,300. People thereafter are not focused on aggressively recruiting, and because they are so hyped up from the guided visualizations and meditation sessions naturally want to promote the process to their friends as they are still on a serotonin high.

My biggest gripe with the Hoffman Process (as well as losing my wife) is the fact they are not accountable to anyone, they do not truly stringently pre-screen applications, and not being medically trained are not skilled enough to know when people are not suitable for the intense training they are putting people through. I ask you how can you truly assess someone by simply reading an application form……..?

My wife suffered from abuse as a child and also bouts of depression; speaking to a qualified psychologist I was told my wife should not have done this process as it seems to have caused dissociation, and has caused her to disconnected from some of her emotions, hence her black and white approach towards me.

Maybe I’m being a complete idiot and maybe my wife never loved me, but I find that very hard to believe as she often called me her rock, and told me no-one has ever stood by her like I did, and gave un-conditional love and support accepting all her quirks.

If anyone else has similar type experiences I’d be really keen to here from you.

OMG, finally stumbled upon this website and found some information about Hoffman Quadrinity Process!

Darren, trust your gut, you are NOT an idiot - I did the 8 day process in 2003. I was 42 years old, had done quite a bit of therapy, and had been sober from drugs and alcohol for 10 years. I had friends in AA who'd done Hoffman and they all said it was "transformative." I was encouraged to go by an AA "guru" type guy who'd been sober a zillion years. I should have gone with MY gut when I called them to sign up. I asked them if they thought it was right for me & I just remember some halfhearted response and I forked over my $3K (or however much it was). I could go into all the crap we did for those 8 days but ended up pretty much having a nervous breakdown when I got home. There was an inner core strength I had always had, even in my darkest days of drug addiction, but it was GONE after Hoffman. For the first time in my life I felt like I was losing my mind, had some psychotic & suicidal thinking that I'd never had before, and had to go on several types of medication just to stabilize. I was pissed off. I called them up hysterical and asked what I could do - they sent me a book - which I read. Reading millions of spiritual books always felt ok the moments I was reading them but I was having a real meltdown! My therapist was really pissed off when she saw the shape I was in and said that these people who run these things had no training and do not screen for potential bad candidates & should not be doing this work. Now, I would have thought I was a highly evolved and far along the spiritual path type person, and the stuff we did was not super confronting or scary to me. Just a bunch of yelling and screaming and tearing up shit and trying to destroy a stuffed animal, and a ridiculous exercise called "my negative grave", which I kept "failing" because I couldn't see myself as rotten enough. It was exhausting and really broke you down, but what I think happened to me was that it tore away coping skills that I STILL NEEDED. It took me several years to get my "self" back and anytime anyone asks me about it I say it's crap and I hated it. I wanted to sue those mofos but we signed tons of papers saying we wouldn't do that. I surfed the web for a while looking to connect with people who had awful experiences with it and couldn't find any. Then I found out that most of the people in my class left their significant other for someone else in the class! I had several more friends from AA do Hoffman and most of them said they went into a "deeper hell" than they'd ever known but were ultimately glad they did it. I remember how good it felt to take throw away that stupid plastic bat and all that paperwork I had from them.

Part of my frustation with that process was that I could never figure out what went WRONG. I saw people crazier than me there and my friends that went after me all said positive things about it. But I did have one friend whose fiance went, and when he came back he broke up with her but didn't bother even to tell her. She had to keep calling him to find out what happened but he felt like he didn't need to tell her he'd broken up with her because he was so serene from his process. The ironic thing is that one of the reasons I went to Hoffman was because I wanted to be able to break up with this guy I was with and didn't have the guts to do it - I stayed with him for another year after that.

So I don't know if this helps Darren...my heart goes out to you. I have been through many different cathartic workshops and such but Hoffman seems DANGEROUS to me. I hated it!

Dear Darrin and Driveallnight, welcome to the board.

And its shitty that untrained, irresponsible people can run workshops and have it be unregulated.

The Ross Institute message board has been in place for nine years and is searchable.

To ensure that your search covers the entire time of the message board's existence, select the all dates option.

Here is what comes up

[forum.culteducation.com]

Hello, I did therapy with a holistic therapist that was based on the Fischer Hoffman Process. The therapist did it in the early 80's and went on to do the therapy with clients in weekly sessions and he also ran a massage/holistic school.

So, I don't know about the 8 day residential process, but I can say that doing this therapy is the greatest regret of my life. I think and feel that the cathartic yelling and screaming is not good for us. I personally feel that I lost my 'center', my 'core'. I yelled into a pillow everyday for about 4 months, doing the admonition releases. I would feel happier and lighter, but now that I'm a decade removed from the experience I think I can see clearly that I did indeed weaken my center. My ability to trust myself weakened. This difficulty trusting myself to led misinformed decisions, not having that core within me to listen to and trust, which have altered the course of my life in a not so good way.

We all carry trauma from childhood. There are many paths to work on ourselves and let go of our trauma and blockages to well being (Qigong comes to mind). I personally believe that the yelling and screaming potentially sets a person up for a life of imbalance and possible mental and emotional difficulties. When we have our core, we can always return to that center for stability. I lost that and it's been a difficult life since then. I work to get better and my life is pretty good, there is plenty to be grateful for.

But, I write with the intent of sharing my regrets and to suggest caution with doing this therapy. All the yelling and screaming was detrimental to me. There are so many gentler, and gradual ways to work on ourselves. Find what suits you. Best of luck and Best Wishes.

I did the HP in 2014 and thought it crazy and scary. I am a trained therapist and work in the NHS. The methods used by the Hoffman teachers definitely feel like a cult..I was brutalised and traumatised by my experience. A lack of sleep, exhausting days and very little time for reflection and processing of events and exercises. I left the Process after completing the 8 day residential in the UK and 4yrs on I believe that I had a good outcome.

My husband attended the residential in 2015 and he has been damaged by the methods used..he ended up with extreme anxiety, panic attacks and was diagnosed by a psychiatrist as having chronic depression 12 months post Hoffman Process. He was on antidepressants for 1yr and it's taken 3yrs for him to stabilise.

I wouldn't recommend the Hoffman Process and would advise extreme caution before you or your partner decided to do it. It almost broke our marriage of 30yrs because my husband was so damaged and changed by his experience.

Earlier discussions of Hoffman Process here.

Lengthy discussion here. Lots of apologists came out of the woodwork.

[forum.culteducation.com]

Hoffman Institute

[forum.culteducation.com]