How Parents Frak Up Their Kids: Advocating for the Hoffman Process
Parents... YOU are frakking up your kids.
Almost every day.
Whether you know it or not.
It's not your fault, it's simply the way of things.
Your parents frakked you up, you're frakking your kids up, and they will frak your grandchildren up.
My parents, the sweet and loving people that they were, frakked me up. I am frakking my children up, biological and step. When my wife and I have a baby, we'll frak that beautiful child up too.
Welcome to life!
But there's hope...there's always hope. In this case, the hope comes from the work of a man named Bob Hoffman. Over 40 years ago, he created something called The Hoffman Quadrinity Process. It's an intense transpersonal psychology...workshop, for lack of a better term.
I won't go into too much detail, but the goal of the Process is to identify patterns of your own behavior developed through something called the Negative Love Syndrome. As children, we either embrace patterns of behavior our parents exhibit, or we rebel against them, creating new patterns. We enter these patterns of behavior over and over again and this is how we relate to people in our lives.
As well as identifying these patterns, one learns to break the patterns, and learns how to break new patterns that arise.
My wife wanted me to go through the Process, as she had, before we got married. In fact, she required it. It was the most emotionally challenging, draining and uplifting experience of my life. Intense bonds are formed with the people you go through the Process with. Those people know more about me than almost anyone on this Earth.
The Process helps one strip away the layers built up around each of us and helps one live authentically. One might think that to live authentically might break the patterns of the Negative Love Syndrome and allow us to stop frakking up our children.
Remember when I said that my wife and I would frak up children we have together?
But I also said that we have both been through the Process...in theory, if we can live an whole, integrated, authentic human beings, we should be able to raise our child without imparting our patterns.
When I made this point to my very wise wife, she said, "Ah, but we still have patterns. We have the tools to deal with them more effectively, but we still have them."
The Hoffman Quadrinity Process may not create utopian parents, but I think everyone can benefit from this sort of grueling personal work.
I know a lot of great parents. I'm blessed to see the love and compassion they share with their children...and I don't often think "Doesn't matter how good of a parent you are...you're still frakking you kids up!"
At least with the Process, we can understand how we're frakking them up...and maybe we do it just a little less.