March 13, 2025 • 41 mins
Miranda Barnhart Domenico, a mom of two, came to the Hoffman Process wanting to heal from a recent, painful breakup. Even before arriving at the retreat site, Miranda realized that she was coming for so much more.
With two difficult relationships behind her, Miranda discovered that blaming her ex-partners wasn't helping. Instead, she found that by looking back to her childhood she could heal what was driving the difficulties in her relationships.
As she joyfully recounts, Miranda was reunited with her young self at the Process. Her story gives us deep insight into the nature of negative patterns and the Negative Love Syndrome. Miranda can now talk about her painful childhood story without being nearly as triggered.
From the time she was young, Miranda had lived her life disconnected from both her emotional self and her Spiritual Self. Learning about the Quadrinity reconnected Miranda back to her Spirit and her emotions. Now, one of the most important things she wants to impart to her daughters is the understanding that feeling, and talking about, their emotions is vital to healthy relating.
We hope you enjoy this powerful Love's Everyday Raidus conversation with Miranda and Drew.
More about Miranda Barnhart Domenico:
Miranda Barnhart Domenico, a mom of two, moved to Colorado, on her own, directly after high school, balancing college and work while building a tech career. She embraced travel, outdoor adventures, and her career until building a family shifted her focus in her 30s. Though Miranda stepped back from some of the outdoor pursuits she loved, her dedication to being an athlete, an exceptional mom, and a driven professional never wavered. She hadn't realized that she wasn't doing any of those three things wholly as she had fallen prey to trying to master all three without emotion and a deeper purpose.
It wasn't until Miranda's divorce and other personal challenges led her to the Hoffman Process in 2019, that she rediscovered her authentic self. Now, she leads with vulnerability, inspiring others through connection. Once ultra-independent, Miranda channels that strength into leadership, mentoring at work, coaching young athletes, and finding purpose in empowering others. Her mission is clear: to show up authentically and create spaces where others feel inspired to do the same.
Follow Miranda on Instagram and LinkedIn.
As mentioned in this episode:
The Quadrinity - Symbol of the Process
Quad checks for grads and non-grads alike daily on Instagram at 6:00 pm PT
White Sulphur Springs, Hoffman's old retreat site
Bashing day:
Bashing is one form of Expression done in the Process. to help students somatically release the negative patterns. To let go of our patterns, we must exercise our free will – choose to step out of a pattern and take action using our Voice, Body, and Intention. Expression is not necessarily about anger – it’s about “claiming” your life. It’s about taking a stand. Sometimes that includes anger, but it can also be about joy, love, commitment, and empowerment. Read more...
Growth Mindset
• Developing a Growth Mindset by Carol Dweck, Stanford Professor
Recycling - Hoffman transformation tool
Brené Brown - Shame Resilience
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
Emotion does not equal crazy.
Emotion doesn't equal weakness.
I feel really strongly about that now. I
mean, it kinda makes me wanna cry talking
to you about it because I get emotional
because it makes me tingly to talk about
it because it's so important
that I show this to my daughters.
Welcome, everybody. My name is Drew Horning, and
(00:24):
this podcast is called Love's Everyday Radius.
It's brought to you by the Hoffman Institute,
and it's stories and anecdotes
and people we interview
about their life post process
and how it lives in the world radiating
love.
(00:48):
Hey, everybody. Welcome.
Miranda,
welcome.
Hi, Drew. Glad to have you. Yeah. I'm
I'm so glad to be here. Well, thank
you for agreeing to be here. Tell us
a little bit about
who you are and,
some of the stuff you do in the
world. Before we sort of drop into Hoffman,
how would you describe yourself?
(01:09):
I'm a mom, two girls.
I work in software sales. It's a very,
male dominated
industry,
just technology in general.
So navigating my way through that for most
of my adult life
definitely helped bring me to Hoffman, I think,
and has Hoffman has helped me after that.
My two girls, I've got a high schooler
(01:32):
and a third grader.
So they're in two very different places in
their life right now, but being a mom
to them, I'm
most proud of. So if you ask me
to identify myself, it's first as a mom.
Beautiful.
I have a high school girl as well.
What
a time period for them in their lives.
(01:52):
Right?
So powerful.
So powerful to watch them
learn so much.
All not from us, but from the life
they're living.
No. No.
No. So there you are, mom. It's 02/2019,
and
something happens acutely
(02:14):
or admin building
up. You sign up for the process and
take it in February.
What happened? What led you there? How'd you
get to this place?
There's so much that led me to it,
but it was really one major impetus that
threw me off a
cliff.
I had been in a relationship
(02:35):
for about two and a half years,
a romantic relationship,
which with who I thought was the love
of my life, who I thought was my
forever,
and he broke up with me.
I literally went off the deep end. I
stopped sleeping. I stopped eating.
I was barely functional
for my kids.
(02:56):
I was showing up to work, getting through
the day, and then crying all night,
blaming myself. I was just blaming myself
for all of it.
I didn't know how to express any of
it. I didn't know how to get through
any of it.
And
I made a phone call to one of
my friends. I basically said I can't I
can't do this anymore. I'm on the precipice
(03:17):
of
not wanting to be here anymore.
I have to do something.
It's interesting, this friend.
Him and I had gotten close over the
years,
and he had talked to me about the
Hoffman process in the past,
about how it helped him
to really just get in tune with who
(03:38):
he was.
And he saw something in me even before
this happened.
So he saw something in me enough to
know that there was more inside of me
than I even realized.
So when this happened, he, you know, said
immediately,
it's time, Miranda. If you can do this,
(03:59):
it's time
for you to go and do the Hoffman
process.
I had no
idea
how deep this all went.
I thought it was a breakup.
So you're going to Hoffman to essentially heal
from the breakup is what you're thinking.
That's what I'm thinking. Yeah. I had no
(04:20):
concept until I started doing the homework,
the pre
work of
holy cow. There are so many more things
that brought me here to this state in
my life
going all the way back.
I was just living. I was just living
a life. I was almost 40 years old
(04:41):
when I went to the Hoffman process. And
for that many years, I had just been
living my life.
No
concept
of the choices that I could be making
to act differently. I didn't I just didn't
understand.
I also wasn't in tune with any of
my own fears.
I wasn't in tune with any of my
(05:01):
vulnerability.
I was doing things that I had no
idea I was doing them.
And we can go back
before this relationship.
I said I have two daughters. They are
from a marriage. They are not this relationship.
I shouldn't have married this man, but I
can't say that. I can't live with regrets
now because I have two really fabulous girls,
and I'm here today because I was married
(05:24):
to him.
And I'm here today with this
clarity from Hoffman because I was married to
him, so I don't have a regrets to
that. But really, honestly, we shouldn't have gotten
married.
We weren't meant to be married.
It was a very abusive relationship that I
stayed in way too long.
I stayed in it because
(05:45):
I had to think back further,
and that's what Hoffman really opened up for
me. I could blame everything on this boyfriend,
then I could blame everything on this bad
marriage that I was in, but why did
I get into this boyfriend situation? Why did
I get into the bad marriage?
Hoffman taught me that it goes so much
further back,
(06:06):
that I really need to examine my relationship
with everyone else around me, primarily my core
parents,
as we talked about,
and
understand
why I act the way that I act
and why I respond the way that I
respond.
Be able to then make some choices based
on that.
(06:27):
So take us into
your process. You do the paperwork. You begin
to
see the through line
of your present
to the past.
What happens when you first show up and
in those early days?
Typical ultra independent Miranda. I was gonna control
(06:47):
the situation.
I was gonna be all over it. I
knew what was gonna happen. I knew how
it was gonna happen.
And boy, did I get my socks knocked
off when I first showed up to the
process?
This concept of the quadrenity,
I really had no concept of it. I
was living
my entire life through my physical being and
through my intellect.
(07:09):
I was not in touch anything with anything
emotionally or spiritually
at all.
Ultra independent
Miranda
with her brain on,
got told that she wasn't allowed to work
out while she was there, was like,
you want a bet?
So the first morning, I woke up and
(07:29):
I worked out in my room. Well, I
very quickly realized I didn't need to work
out because I was gonna be working
so many other things
that would just exhaust me. That by the
end of the day,
I could barely keep my eyes open. I
could barely
sit, stand without trying to fall asleep.
Also,
I was, like,
(07:50):
so connected and calm with myself at the
end of every day that sleep was very
easy,
which I was surprised at.
So I get to the process and I
learn about these things and I throw myself
in. I
threw myself in
a %
into all of the visualizations,
(08:11):
into all of the writing, into all of
the journaling.
So much so
that it would became difficult for me to
actually even speak to other people around me
because I was so
inward.
So there was one night we were allowed
to go out at the end of the
day and go be in the hot tubs
and the pools. We were in hot Sulphur
(08:31):
Springs
at the time
and I just remember barely being able to
drag myself out of my room, but something
called me to the other people around me.
I was so stuck inside.
Then I went out. I walked into the
hot tub. I didn't get in the hot
tub because I wasn't quite ready for that
yet, but I walked out to towards the
(08:52):
hot tub, and people started calling my name.
Like, how does everyone else know who I
am?
I was so inward and so narcissistically
stuck in my own stuff trying to fix
it. Didn't even realize there were all these
other people here going through the same thing,
yet they knew who I was.
(09:14):
They knew what I was going through. And
they started patting me on the back and
commending me
for how hard I was pushing myself into
this process
and how committed I was.
I think it was Bashing Day. I was
hardcore.
Oh, I was so hardcore, and I didn't
(09:35):
even realize that I had this effect on
other people. And that opened my eyes up
to, oh my gosh, I can have these
connections with other people.
I can have these actually open communications with
other people, and I don't need to be
just inward.
That was a major epiphany for me that
changed then my whole process moving forward because
(09:55):
it wasn't then just about me. It was
also about how I accept other people in
this world and how I accept
and see what they're going through and what
they're dealing with and how they shine their
light and how they
have darkness too.
So it changed the way that I have
conversations
(10:16):
with everyone now.
How does
that experience
of being so
intimately involved in your own work
and then surprisingly
connected to those around you,
how does that
relate to your everyday life post process even
today? Well, it certainly changed my relationship with
(10:39):
my girls.
Because now I'm not just a mom to
them. I'm a mom with them.
And I think that's
really
the strongest, most powerful thing that I can
feel from this.
I mean, it's also changed my romantic relationships.
I'm no longer afraid
to be vulnerable
because I know that the person on the
(11:00):
other side of the table or holding my
hand on the other side or whatever, whether
it's, you know, a work thing or it's
personal,
they're going through some crap too.
Everybody
has their own fears and needs,
so why should I be afraid of showing
mine?
And when you phrase it that way, it's
(11:21):
like, yeah. That makes sense. Why should you
given we all have it? Right?
We all have it. And a pattern of
mine before was to attack or to wall
off.
I would get dismissive
because I'd be afraid of rejection.
It's just like, why?
We all have this.
We're all in this. We're all on this
(11:42):
universe together.
So that in my everyday life has completely
changed how I talk and relate and connect
to people. Can I ask? Because as a
woman in a male dominated
sales world and a tech world and those
two combined,
you're one of, what, maybe 10% of women.
(12:04):
So some might say, well, you do need
to wall off. You do have to protect
yourself.
You don't wanna get hurt. You're like, this
is the culture you're in, so you better
show up that way.
What what do you say to that?
I mean, I I mean, it's hard to
say I need to protect myself.
What do I need to protect myself from
if someone
(12:24):
isn't willing to be vulnerable with me back?
So what?
Something to protect there. Now if they attack
me, someone at work or, you know, says
no, I don't want what you're selling,
okay.
Don't have to want what I'm selling, but
I don't have to take that personally.
(12:46):
I mean, that's the that's the difference with
Hoffman. I would have taken it very personally.
Now I can stop and ask questions
around,
you know, what is it that you're trying
to achieve? It doesn't become an attack on
me.
And I still feel like if I can
just show up and be vulnerable
with the people in my life, whether they're
my customers or my coworkers or my kids,
(13:09):
that I set the stage and set the
tone for everything.
And just because someone else can't show up
in that same way,
kind of have to say, okay, that's on
them. Let them be that way. It's more
about how do I accept what they're bringing
to me.
You know, I went into Hoffman thinking I
needed to get in touch with my feminine
(13:30):
side. There was this whole idea of I
needed to get in touch with my feminine
side because it was too masculine.
Vulnerability, is it feminine or masculine?
Has nothing to do with that.
Like, I thought, oh, I'm too you know,
I'm emasculating to men, and I'm too masculine
in my approach. And so
in whatever context or another,
(13:51):
had nothing to do with that. It had
to do with me just putting up these
walls and then not being necessary.
You know, and a lot of that I
learned in Hoffman came from
my child relationship. I was raised by my
dad. My parents divorced when I was three,
and I was raised by my dad with
two brothers in the house. So guess what?
(14:12):
When Miranda cried,
Miranda got upset.
You know, I was being too emotional.
They didn't know how to deal with it.
It got to the point where my mother,
I only saw her about once a year,
but when my parents divorced, my dad actually
had her deemed as unfit.
She was the crazy one.
(14:34):
So when Miranda cried, Miranda showed emotion, Miranda
got upset.
Miranda,
stop being like your mom.
Now guess who you sound like, Miranda? You
sound like your mom.
That's what I got.
So I learned through the process
that this these walls
and this independence had nothing to do with
(14:56):
that boyfriend,
nothing to do with the abusive marriage that
I was in,
all stem back so much further.
And there's this little girl inside there just
dying to get out, but she can't
because she's been told she's crazy.
What's I'd like to talk about now?
(15:18):
You know, it's not as triggering as it
was.
You know, when I think about what are
resolved, I think that's something that I've resolved
in myself.
Emotion does not equal crazy.
Emotion doesn't equal weakness.
I feel really strongly about that now.
I mean, it kinda makes me wanna cry
(15:39):
talking to you about it because I get
emotional, but it's not because I don't believe
it. You're getting emotional about the importance
of emotions.
Because it makes me tingly to talk about
it because it's so important
that I
show this to my daughters.
It's so important that I live this so
(16:00):
fully.
And so, you know, now when I get
into relationships
and I'm told,
you're intense, Miranda. You're so intense.
Okay?
Yeah.
If it's too much, then don't be here.
If it's too much and I'm too intense,
I can't change that. Because guess what? That's
(16:21):
who I am.
And, Drew, that doesn't mean that I'm hateful
or ultra independent
or strong willed or walling anybody off or
crazy.
Just means I have feelings.
And guess what? I can talk about them.
(16:42):
I can feel them.
And darn it, I'm pretty proud of it.
Because for forty years of my life,
I
just lived
in my head.
You know?
I just lived in my intellect,
took over everything.
And guess what? There is a little girl
(17:03):
inside of me who wants to twirl,
who has a little dress on and puts
her arms out and just twirls
because it feels good.
And sometimes I'm twirling and I'm crying,
and sometimes I'm twirling and I'm angry.
I really, really, really love it when I'm
(17:24):
twirling and I'm happy,
but it's all in there. Like, it's all
in there.
I just can't hide it.
That's what Hoffman gave to me. It found
me that little girl.
I imagine
she really gets a chance to to be
present
when you're parenting your daughters.
(17:46):
Yeah. We have a lot of dance parties
in the kitchen, so you can imagine, Drew.
We also have a lot of late nights
just sitting up talking
because I wanna hear how they feel.
It used to be nope. Time for bed.
09:00. Lights off. Lights off.
Guess what? I wanna hear it now in
the dark,
(18:07):
and they're comfortable and safe in talking to
me. You can tell me everything.
I wanna know all of it because I
want them to feel okay with feeling it.
I want them to cry if they wanna
cry. I want them to be angry if
they have to be angry.
Miranda,
earlier, you talked about this idea
of this is who I am.
(18:28):
Yeah. I'm intense.
I can't change it. It's who I am.
And so I wanna ask about that because
at Hoffman, we're about naming patterns
and talking about I am not my patterns,
and we're also about claiming
who we are authentically.
How do you discern? How have you
(18:49):
figured out
what are the things of me that I'm
not willing to change because that's authentically who
I am? And what are the things that
I am willing to change because those are
patterns? How do you tell the difference between
the two?
You know, first, I would think about
what impact does this potentially have on someone
else?
(19:10):
What impact is this gonna have on those
people around me starting with my children? But
I think back to that night at the
hot tub.
And that's where my visualization goes is there
are there are people around me who are
affected by what I do.
If I am being in tune
with my fears and my needs and my
(19:30):
emotions, that's one thing.
But
taking that and
walling off
is different. It's what do I do with
that then?
Right road or left road? Am I gonna
wall off or am I gonna sit and
remain open?
Really, it comes down to that. What do
(19:52):
I then do with it? What choice do
I then have to make? And that's right
road, left road.
That's how I discern that.
Because who I am is what I feel
and how I feel.
It doesn't mean that's what I'm gonna do
with it. I
still
to this day, I said that I thought,
you know, my emotion does not equal crazy.
(20:14):
I think that's resolved because I feel very
strongly about that, but I still to this
day, things come up around abandonment
with my mom because she wasn't around.
Still, to this day, I feel
times where
I've put myself out there too far, too
(20:34):
hard,
because that's what the little girl does. She's
intense and she puts herself out there. When
she feels something, she says it, she goes
for it.
And sometimes I feel rejected because of that.
Because I didn't get the response
that I might thought I wanted.
The difference post Hoffman though is now I
(20:56):
see that.
I see that I'm feeling that.
I realize I need to go recycle on
some things when those things come up, obviously.
But I think the abandonment wound for me
with my mother will always equal rejection. And
when I put myself out there
too hard, too intense,
(21:16):
I start to question,
is that why this person
didn't call me back?
Didn't return my text?
Is that why this person
didn't come to whatever?
And I have to just think about
no has nothing to do with any of
that. That person is making choices on their
(21:36):
own.
And as long as I'm putting myself out
there and giving in a positive way.
If I'm ever too much for someone, I'm
I'm too much.
That's fine.
You're talking about another great tension here, and
that is that
what is my responsibility
to own
and work with,
And what is not mine at all? What
(21:58):
has nothing to do with me? I'm no
longer willing to personalize everything like I used
to, and
some things aren't about me. They're about what's
happening in the other person's life and world
and internal
space.
That's one of the hardest lessons
to teach
kids,
to help them realize that
(22:21):
they can only own the way they feel
and the way they present themselves to the
world and the way that they are.
They cannot own how other people respond to
them or feel about them
or take them.
And so
that was the beginning of the week.
So, Miranda, take us now to other parts
(22:44):
of your week. What else do you remember
that was powerful?
I think going back to how
others perceived me
and how I was so worried about rejection
from others and so worried about my place
in this world based on the way others
thought about me,
the day of compassion,
(23:05):
I would say, was
incredibly critical in getting me through that.
Spending time realizing
what my parents
actually went through,
reliving
what they went through
to bring them to their place as my
parents
(23:26):
gave me that compassion for them and gave
me a real appreciation
for their place
and what they've done for me.
Not just to look at it in a
positive light and just say,
Okay, I got all these positive things for
my dad and these other positive traits for
my mom,
but to really have compassion
(23:48):
for them and how they got them and
where they came from and the way that
they were acting.
And then
to go and put that all to bed.
To just
say, Okay, none of that even matters anymore
because that's their stuff. That's my parents'
stuff.
(24:09):
My dad didn't reject me.
He didn't call me crazy because he was
rejecting me. My mom didn't abandon me.
Do I feel abandoned? Did I feel rejected?
Yes. But that's on me
to change.
That process of compassion and really understanding
(24:29):
what they had been through
allowed me to also now see that in
everyone else around me.
You know, people take the process to create
a different future
going forward. They wanna be happier, healthier, more
successful,
you know, navigate relationships
(24:58):
compassion, you
found a deeper understanding
and a rewriting
of the narrative
of your past and your parents' past.
Yes. I most certainly did.
I found
that there is power
in my pain.
I cannot
(25:20):
resent
anything
because
there's so much power
in feeling
bad or bad experiences
or good experiences and really being able to
see how they were good.
Really being able to see
how my parents
(25:40):
were just reacting with everything that they knew
how to react in the best way that
they knew how to react, and they didn't
know how to do any different.
And having that understanding and that appreciation
really brought me to they loved me.
So can I see the actual positive in
this rather than sit in resentment and stewing
of the past?
(26:02):
To a fault now, maybe? I see the
positive in
almost everything.
I have
almost no regrets. In fact, I could say
I don't have regrets. You know, not even
that I all have almost no regrets. I
have no regrets because it all brought me
here today.
It all brought me to this one single
point.
(26:23):
I do see the positive
in relationships
when people don't, in people when people don't.
I see the positive
in the bully at school because you know
what? There's somebody inside there.
And the bully at my work because there's
somebody inside there.
Somebody inside there who came from somewhere.
(26:44):
Bad things happen to me. Don't get me
wrong. All kinds of bad things happen to
me.
No. My daughter hurt her arm last week
at skiing, took us out of skiing. It
wasn't great.
That's negative.
Guess what? There's a positive side of this.
There's always a positive side.
And so that compassion journey
is what brought me to that understanding
(27:07):
and this, like, growth mindset of
it can always be better. We're gonna learn
from this. There's power in our pain.
You know, a lot of people
subscribe to this kind
of
mindset,
mind shift,
and yet
it's not always easy to achieve.
I'm imagining that the cellular journey of Hoffman
(27:31):
was the thing that helped. It's not just
as if you can adopt it. Think about
it this way. Hold this perspective. But, actually,
doing the experiences
really helped you do that.
Yeah. It's crazy. In a week's time
in one week's time,
you can literally rewire
these neurons in your brain
to think differently because it takes into account
(27:54):
writing,
physical
thinking, visualization,
all of
this meditation and the connections with other people.
I thought about this a bunch of times.
Like, how if the process was different, would
I have gotten this much out of it
if I had gone and done this as
a one on one retreat?
No. I needed those connections.
(28:16):
I needed the physical attributes of it.
I needed all of the mental and emotional
stimulation. I can't just need every single bit
of it
after
one week. I'm I'm not telling you I'm
fixed. It wasn't fixed after one week. There's
so much work still to do, but my
eyes are opened.
That's it.
(28:37):
If your eyes are open and your perspective
can change,
everything else can follow along right with it.
You can do anything.
How do you talk about Hoffman
with your kids describing your experience there,
sharing the concepts? What's that look like?
Well, my oldest daughter is just now old
(28:57):
enough to understand.
My younger one is
not quite. They were much younger when I
first went.
So
now when they ask me about Hoffman, because
they see the calendar on my fridge and
they see the magnets on my fridge and
they know that I go to the monthly
meetups
(29:17):
couple times a year.
So they know about it.
So I've explained it to them as this
was a journey for me
to get back to the core of who
I was
by
reevaluating
my relationship with my parents.
That's really all all I've explained to them.
(29:37):
You can't go much deeper than that for
a kid. I mean, there are definitely little
lessons here and there
where I've talked to them
about being in tune
with what they're feeling
and making choices on how it will impact
themselves and people based on that.
And really understanding how they're feeling
in the core of their emotions, in their
(29:59):
brain as they wanna logic through things, through
their physical being. I can talk to them
about that
as little lessons come up through life.
I
just want
my youngest daughter
to take the recycling out.
She piles it
in a pile on the counter.
(30:22):
And it sits in a pile on the
counter, and I, you know, I say, well,
you know, you've got this LaCroix can, and
you have this water bottle, and there's this
box.
If you just take it out, you wouldn't
have to have it sitting on the counter
when you just take it out.
She has a different perspective on that. She's
like, well, if we gather it all up
at once,
(30:43):
it just gets out much easier.
I don't know. The old me probably would
have yelled at her and told her how
ridiculous her ideas were.
My it was my way or the highway.
This is my house.
We're gonna get the recycling out into the
garage
as you use it.
But now,
(31:04):
actually, I told her the other day, I
was like, you know what?
Hoffman taught me this.
Hoffman taught me to realize
that you have feelings and perspective too.
And you know what? If you don't wanna
take the recycling out and you have a
good reason for not doing it,
and I can teach you to calmly tell
me what that is
(31:24):
without you freaking out, yelling at me about
mom's always nagging me to take the recycling
out,
then I won.
Like,
we can all just have a calm conversation
about the recycling.
I feel like I've won.
So that's what I hope I'm teaching my
kids.
We're winding down, but I just have to
ask about
(31:45):
this mom you never saw much growing up
because you thought she was crazy, and these
two brothers and your dad.
How have things
changed
with
these characters that were in your life so
early in such a formative
stage where all this stuff was being wired
(32:06):
in?
Well,
my relationship with my dad,
and I'm back to being daddy's girl and
back to just really just loving him for
who he is. I will tell you that
he didn't know how to express his emotions
or accept mine because he didn't grow up
with that.
So it has definitely made me much closer
to my dad because of my understanding for
(32:29):
that.
He
has dementia,
so
the changes in him
have become
basically his emotions that he felt before,
which was apathy, lack of emotion,
brush it all off. It's gotten even
more so.
So it's amplified.
His apathy has amplified.
(32:51):
But
I still
just feel like
there's a such a deep connection there because
I understand where he's coming from.
Hoffman has really helped me get through
this dementia diagnosis
and like seeing him degrade over the last
couple of years.
So I'm ever grateful for Hoffman in that
(33:12):
because I know I would have approached him
being sick very differently.
I probably would have walled off. I probably
would have
just become even more independent from him.
So I'm very glad for Hoffman so I
could see him for who he really is.
My mom,
I actually haven't
(33:32):
spoken to my mother
in
twelve years.
She's she's very sick. There's bipolar disorder that's
untreated there that
I have tried multiple times before that to
work things out
with her and have a relationship with her,
and
it's It's not safe.
(33:54):
I have to deal with my abandonment issues
without
correcting it with her.
I have to do it
through
my current relationships,
friends, family, otherwise,
boyfriends.
I have to work my abandoned issues out
without resolving things directly.
I think that's why it keeps coming up.
(34:18):
A good friend of mine made this comment.
He's like, Miranda,
the guys you date,
you're literally dating
a book with a picture of your mother
on it.
You're, like, gonna have to work through this.
You need to do this in a different
way.
He's not wrong. That's why these things keep
coming up.
(34:38):
Miranda,
when
abandonment issues with your mom over and over
again personified
in these men,
it just reminds me that so many of
(34:59):
us
in
life
and so many grads post process
hold things in one of two ways, which
is
either,
damn it. I failed the process
because I still haven't dealt with this issue,
and therefore, it didn't work.
I can't do it,
and it's all a fail.
(35:20):
Or this idea that it's never gonna happen
because I'm perfect. I'm cured. I've resolved everything,
and I can
magical thinking kind of escape it, but neither
of those are true. And your example
shows that, yes, you resolved some things and
still some things are
(35:40):
work that still needs to be done.
Oh, yeah. And I think,
like, I talk about the abandonment issue with
my mom, fear of rejection,
giving, and then just assuming that that's going
to equal in rejection sometimes.
But there's also gonna be other things that
are gonna come up.
I mean, I hope I have another forty
(36:02):
five or fifty years on this planet.
I guarantee you, I didn't uncover everything at
Hoffman
nor in the last four or five years.
Right?
There's gonna be so many other things that
have come up.
And I just gotta believe that I have
the tools now to deal with them
and to see them.
So first, you guys see them.
(36:24):
I gotta recognize it in myself.
So
I spend a lot of time in self
reflection.
I spend a lot of time scribbling in
my journal,
just
writing. How do I feel? And sometimes they're
not even complete sentences.
The end of the night, I always do
a check-in.
Believe me, I don't always do a full
(36:44):
quad check-in.
Pretty bad about doing those, but I do
it in my journal
in such that I talk about
how am I feeling
emotionally, physically,
mentally,
spiritually.
I just don't go through the whole visualization
of the quad check-in,
but I use the journal as my tool
to see within myself.
(37:07):
I feel like I really have the tools
to see as it comes up. And then
how am I gonna do something with it,
and how am I gonna repair it?
The tool of recycling is still so powerful.
This is idea
of thinking of a common object and converting
the feeling of it.
It actually works.
(37:27):
So the next time that I actually feel
or get triggered in that exact way for
that abandonment issue,
it won't happen again. Like, the trigger just
won't happen again because I'll see something positive
or something different or something bright and beautiful
out of it.
Am I going to know all of the
(37:47):
different triggers? Am I no. Like we can't.
We can't just know, like nobody is has
a crystal ball to know all different ways
that you're gonna get triggered.
But guess what? When you get triggered, you
can now do something with it.
And that gives me this
incredible sense of peace
and positive attitude towards the future.
(38:09):
I don't know how else to say that
other than I just
know that I can get through anything.
It's gonna suck. There's stuff that sucks, Drew.
Honestly, like, I spent a couple of days
this weekend really sad.
But I also knew that
it was okay. It's okay to be sad.
It's okay
(38:30):
to have a loss
because I know it's not the end of
the world.
I know that it's not that spot back
in 2019
where I just didn't wanna be here anymore.
I won't ever be there again.
That much, I know.
Miranda, what's it like to talk about your
life like this, your
process experience,
(38:52):
that
feeling of not wanting to be here
and reflecting on your daughters
and your your dad, your brothers, your mom,
your whole
dating world, what's what's that like for you
to reflect on so openly?
I mean, honestly, there's still some shame there.
(39:14):
I still feel
shameful. Like, how could I have felt that
way?
I don't know if that'll ever completely go
away.
But what I have now is compassion for
myself,
and I have a path forward.
Brene Brown calls that shame resiliency.
Yes. We're gonna feel it again,
but we have the resiliency
(39:34):
within that to not let it be our
full story.
Yeah. That's powerful. Shame resiliency.
So grateful for you, Miranda. Thanks for sharing
so much of who you are. I appreciate
it. Thanks, Drew, for having me on.
I hope we can be an impact
to people who are concerned about going through
the process or coming out of the process.
(39:57):
You know, not everybody comes out of it
with the same power that I felt.
I know that.
I've talked to plenty of people who've been
through the process and immediately after
may not feel this
power
brightness lightness.
Maybe very different experience for you, but what
I can do is assure everyone that
(40:19):
it's within them.
You just have to keep seeing it and
find it. It never ends.
It never ends.
They have to be willing to just
keep seeing it.
Beautiful.
(40:42):
Thank you for listening to our podcast. My
name is Liza Ingrassi.
I'm the CEO and president of Hoffman Institute
Foundation.
And I'm Razz Ingrassi,
Hoffman teacher and founder of the Hoffman Institute
Foundation.
Our mission is to provide people greater access
to the wisdom and power of love. In
themselves,
in each other and in the world.
(41:03):
To find out more, please go to hampmaninstitute.org.
Emotion does not equal crazy.
Emotion doesn't equal weakness.
I feel really strongly about that now. I
mean, it kinda makes me wanna cry talking
to you about it because I get emotional
because it makes me tingly to talk about
it because it's so important
that I show this to my daughters.
Welcome, everybody. My name is Drew Horning, and
(00:24):
this podcast is called Love's Everyday Radius.
It's brought to you by the Hoffman Institute,
and it's stories and anecdotes
and people we interview
about their life post process
and how it lives in the world radiating
love.
(00:48):
Hey, everybody. Welcome.
Miranda,
welcome.
Hi, Drew. Glad to have you. Yeah. I'm
I'm so glad to be here. Well, thank
you for agreeing to be here. Tell us
a little bit about
who you are and,
some of the stuff you do in the
world. Before we sort of drop into Hoffman,
how would you describe yourself?
(01:09):
I'm a mom, two girls.
I work in software sales. It's a very,
male dominated
industry,
just technology in general.
So navigating my way through that for most
of my adult life
definitely helped bring me to Hoffman, I think,
and has Hoffman has helped me after that.
My two girls, I've got a high schooler
(01:32):
and a third grader.
So they're in two very different places in
their life right now, but being a mom
to them, I'm
most proud of. So if you ask me
to identify myself, it's first as a mom.
Beautiful.
I have a high school girl as well.
What
a time period for them in their lives.
(01:52):
Right?
So powerful.
So powerful to watch them
learn so much.
All not from us, but from the life
they're living.
No. No.
No. So there you are, mom. It's 02/2019,
and
something happens acutely
(02:14):
or admin building
up. You sign up for the process and
take it in February.
What happened? What led you there? How'd you
get to this place?
There's so much that led me to it,
but it was really one major impetus that
threw me off a
cliff.
I had been in a relationship
(02:35):
for about two and a half years,
a romantic relationship,
which with who I thought was the love
of my life, who I thought was my
forever,
and he broke up with me.
I literally went off the deep end. I
stopped sleeping. I stopped eating.
I was barely functional
for my kids.
(02:56):
I was showing up to work, getting through
the day, and then crying all night,
blaming myself. I was just blaming myself
for all of it.
I didn't know how to express any of
it. I didn't know how to get through
any of it.
And
I made a phone call to one of
my friends. I basically said I can't I
can't do this anymore. I'm on the precipice
(03:17):
of
not wanting to be here anymore.
I have to do something.
It's interesting, this friend.
Him and I had gotten close over the
years,
and he had talked to me about the
Hoffman process in the past,
about how it helped him
to really just get in tune with who
(03:38):
he was.
And he saw something in me even before
this happened.
So he saw something in me enough to
know that there was more inside of me
than I even realized.
So when this happened, he, you know, said
immediately,
it's time, Miranda. If you can do this,
(03:59):
it's time
for you to go and do the Hoffman
process.
I had no
idea
how deep this all went.
I thought it was a breakup.
So you're going to Hoffman to essentially heal
from the breakup is what you're thinking.
That's what I'm thinking. Yeah. I had no
(04:20):
concept until I started doing the homework,
the pre
work of
holy cow. There are so many more things
that brought me here to this state in
my life
going all the way back.
I was just living. I was just living
a life. I was almost 40 years old
(04:41):
when I went to the Hoffman process. And
for that many years, I had just been
living my life.
No
concept
of the choices that I could be making
to act differently. I didn't I just didn't
understand.
I also wasn't in tune with any of
my own fears.
I wasn't in tune with any of my
(05:01):
vulnerability.
I was doing things that I had no
idea I was doing them.
And we can go back
before this relationship.
I said I have two daughters. They are
from a marriage. They are not this relationship.
I shouldn't have married this man, but I
can't say that. I can't live with regrets
now because I have two really fabulous girls,
and I'm here today because I was married
(05:24):
to him.
And I'm here today with this
clarity from Hoffman because I was married to
him, so I don't have a regrets to
that. But really, honestly, we shouldn't have gotten
married.
We weren't meant to be married.
It was a very abusive relationship that I
stayed in way too long.
I stayed in it because
(05:45):
I had to think back further,
and that's what Hoffman really opened up for
me. I could blame everything on this boyfriend,
then I could blame everything on this bad
marriage that I was in, but why did
I get into this boyfriend situation? Why did
I get into the bad marriage?
Hoffman taught me that it goes so much
further back,
(06:06):
that I really need to examine my relationship
with everyone else around me, primarily my core
parents,
as we talked about,
and
understand
why I act the way that I act
and why I respond the way that I
respond.
Be able to then make some choices based
on that.
(06:27):
So take us into
your process. You do the paperwork. You begin
to
see the through line
of your present
to the past.
What happens when you first show up and
in those early days?
Typical ultra independent Miranda. I was gonna control
(06:47):
the situation.
I was gonna be all over it. I
knew what was gonna happen. I knew how
it was gonna happen.
And boy, did I get my socks knocked
off when I first showed up to the
process?
This concept of the quadrenity,
I really had no concept of it. I
was living
my entire life through my physical being and
through my intellect.
(07:09):
I was not in touch anything with anything
emotionally or spiritually
at all.
Ultra independent
Miranda
with her brain on,
got told that she wasn't allowed to work
out while she was there, was like,
you want a bet?
So the first morning, I woke up and
(07:29):
I worked out in my room. Well, I
very quickly realized I didn't need to work
out because I was gonna be working
so many other things
that would just exhaust me. That by the
end of the day,
I could barely keep my eyes open. I
could barely
sit, stand without trying to fall asleep.
Also,
I was, like,
(07:50):
so connected and calm with myself at the
end of every day that sleep was very
easy,
which I was surprised at.
So I get to the process and I
learn about these things and I throw myself
in. I
threw myself in
a %
into all of the visualizations,
(08:11):
into all of the writing, into all of
the journaling.
So much so
that it would became difficult for me to
actually even speak to other people around me
because I was so
inward.
So there was one night we were allowed
to go out at the end of the
day and go be in the hot tubs
and the pools. We were in hot Sulphur
(08:31):
Springs
at the time
and I just remember barely being able to
drag myself out of my room, but something
called me to the other people around me.
I was so stuck inside.
Then I went out. I walked into the
hot tub. I didn't get in the hot
tub because I wasn't quite ready for that
yet, but I walked out to towards the
(08:52):
hot tub, and people started calling my name.
Like, how does everyone else know who I
am?
I was so inward and so narcissistically
stuck in my own stuff trying to fix
it. Didn't even realize there were all these
other people here going through the same thing,
yet they knew who I was.
(09:14):
They knew what I was going through. And
they started patting me on the back and
commending me
for how hard I was pushing myself into
this process
and how committed I was.
I think it was Bashing Day. I was
hardcore.
Oh, I was so hardcore, and I didn't
(09:35):
even realize that I had this effect on
other people. And that opened my eyes up
to, oh my gosh, I can have these
connections with other people.
I can have these actually open communications with
other people, and I don't need to be
just inward.
That was a major epiphany for me that
changed then my whole process moving forward because
(09:55):
it wasn't then just about me. It was
also about how I accept other people in
this world and how I accept
and see what they're going through and what
they're dealing with and how they shine their
light and how they
have darkness too.
So it changed the way that I have
conversations
(10:16):
with everyone now.
How does
that experience
of being so
intimately involved in your own work
and then surprisingly
connected to those around you,
how does that
relate to your everyday life post process even
today? Well, it certainly changed my relationship with
(10:39):
my girls.
Because now I'm not just a mom to
them. I'm a mom with them.
And I think that's
really
the strongest, most powerful thing that I can
feel from this.
I mean, it's also changed my romantic relationships.
I'm no longer afraid
to be vulnerable
because I know that the person on the
(11:00):
other side of the table or holding my
hand on the other side or whatever, whether
it's, you know, a work thing or it's
personal,
they're going through some crap too.
Everybody
has their own fears and needs,
so why should I be afraid of showing
mine?
And when you phrase it that way, it's
(11:21):
like, yeah. That makes sense. Why should you
given we all have it? Right?
We all have it. And a pattern of
mine before was to attack or to wall
off.
I would get dismissive
because I'd be afraid of rejection.
It's just like, why?
We all have this.
We're all in this. We're all on this
(11:42):
universe together.
So that in my everyday life has completely
changed how I talk and relate and connect
to people. Can I ask? Because as a
woman in a male dominated
sales world and a tech world and those
two combined,
you're one of, what, maybe 10% of women.
(12:04):
So some might say, well, you do need
to wall off. You do have to protect
yourself.
You don't wanna get hurt. You're like, this
is the culture you're in, so you better
show up that way.
What what do you say to that?
I mean, I I mean, it's hard to
say I need to protect myself.
What do I need to protect myself from
if someone
(12:24):
isn't willing to be vulnerable with me back?
So what?
Something to protect there. Now if they attack
me, someone at work or, you know, says
no, I don't want what you're selling,
okay.
Don't have to want what I'm selling, but
I don't have to take that personally.
(12:46):
I mean, that's the that's the difference with
Hoffman. I would have taken it very personally.
Now I can stop and ask questions
around,
you know, what is it that you're trying
to achieve? It doesn't become an attack on
me.
And I still feel like if I can
just show up and be vulnerable
with the people in my life, whether they're
my customers or my coworkers or my kids,
(13:09):
that I set the stage and set the
tone for everything.
And just because someone else can't show up
in that same way,
kind of have to say, okay, that's on
them. Let them be that way. It's more
about how do I accept what they're bringing
to me.
You know, I went into Hoffman thinking I
needed to get in touch with my feminine
(13:30):
side. There was this whole idea of I
needed to get in touch with my feminine
side because it was too masculine.
Vulnerability, is it feminine or masculine?
Has nothing to do with that.
Like, I thought, oh, I'm too you know,
I'm emasculating to men, and I'm too masculine
in my approach. And so
in whatever context or another,
(13:51):
had nothing to do with that. It had
to do with me just putting up these
walls and then not being necessary.
You know, and a lot of that I
learned in Hoffman came from
my child relationship. I was raised by my
dad. My parents divorced when I was three,
and I was raised by my dad with
two brothers in the house. So guess what?
(14:12):
When Miranda cried,
Miranda got upset.
You know, I was being too emotional.
They didn't know how to deal with it.
It got to the point where my mother,
I only saw her about once a year,
but when my parents divorced, my dad actually
had her deemed as unfit.
She was the crazy one.
(14:34):
So when Miranda cried, Miranda showed emotion, Miranda
got upset.
Miranda,
stop being like your mom.
Now guess who you sound like, Miranda? You
sound like your mom.
That's what I got.
So I learned through the process
that this these walls
and this independence had nothing to do with
(14:56):
that boyfriend,
nothing to do with the abusive marriage that
I was in,
all stem back so much further.
And there's this little girl inside there just
dying to get out, but she can't
because she's been told she's crazy.
What's I'd like to talk about now?
(15:18):
You know, it's not as triggering as it
was.
You know, when I think about what are
resolved, I think that's something that I've resolved
in myself.
Emotion does not equal crazy.
Emotion doesn't equal weakness.
I feel really strongly about that now.
I mean, it kinda makes me wanna cry
(15:39):
talking to you about it because I get
emotional, but it's not because I don't believe
it. You're getting emotional about the importance
of emotions.
Because it makes me tingly to talk about
it because it's so important
that I
show this to my daughters.
It's so important that I live this so
(16:00):
fully.
And so, you know, now when I get
into relationships
and I'm told,
you're intense, Miranda. You're so intense.
Okay?
Yeah.
If it's too much, then don't be here.
If it's too much and I'm too intense,
I can't change that. Because guess what? That's
(16:21):
who I am.
And, Drew, that doesn't mean that I'm hateful
or ultra independent
or strong willed or walling anybody off or
crazy.
Just means I have feelings.
And guess what? I can talk about them.
(16:42):
I can feel them.
And darn it, I'm pretty proud of it.
Because for forty years of my life,
I
just lived
in my head.
You know?
I just lived in my intellect,
took over everything.
And guess what? There is a little girl
(17:03):
inside of me who wants to twirl,
who has a little dress on and puts
her arms out and just twirls
because it feels good.
And sometimes I'm twirling and I'm crying,
and sometimes I'm twirling and I'm angry.
I really, really, really love it when I'm
(17:24):
twirling and I'm happy,
but it's all in there. Like, it's all
in there.
I just can't hide it.
That's what Hoffman gave to me. It found
me that little girl.
I imagine
she really gets a chance to to be
present
when you're parenting your daughters.
(17:46):
Yeah. We have a lot of dance parties
in the kitchen, so you can imagine, Drew.
We also have a lot of late nights
just sitting up talking
because I wanna hear how they feel.
It used to be nope. Time for bed.
09:00. Lights off. Lights off.
Guess what? I wanna hear it now in
the dark,
(18:07):
and they're comfortable and safe in talking to
me. You can tell me everything.
I wanna know all of it because I
want them to feel okay with feeling it.
I want them to cry if they wanna
cry. I want them to be angry if
they have to be angry.
Miranda,
earlier, you talked about this idea
of this is who I am.
(18:28):
Yeah. I'm intense.
I can't change it. It's who I am.
And so I wanna ask about that because
at Hoffman, we're about naming patterns
and talking about I am not my patterns,
and we're also about claiming
who we are authentically.
How do you discern? How have you
(18:49):
figured out
what are the things of me that I'm
not willing to change because that's authentically who
I am? And what are the things that
I am willing to change because those are
patterns? How do you tell the difference between
the two?
You know, first, I would think about
what impact does this potentially have on someone
else?
(19:10):
What impact is this gonna have on those
people around me starting with my children? But
I think back to that night at the
hot tub.
And that's where my visualization goes is there
are there are people around me who are
affected by what I do.
If I am being in tune
with my fears and my needs and my
(19:30):
emotions, that's one thing.
But
taking that and
walling off
is different. It's what do I do with
that then?
Right road or left road? Am I gonna
wall off or am I gonna sit and
remain open?
Really, it comes down to that. What do
(19:52):
I then do with it? What choice do
I then have to make? And that's right
road, left road.
That's how I discern that.
Because who I am is what I feel
and how I feel.
It doesn't mean that's what I'm gonna do
with it. I
still
to this day, I said that I thought,
you know, my emotion does not equal crazy.
(20:14):
I think that's resolved because I feel very
strongly about that, but I still to this
day, things come up around abandonment
with my mom because she wasn't around.
Still, to this day, I feel
times where
I've put myself out there too far, too
(20:34):
hard,
because that's what the little girl does. She's
intense and she puts herself out there. When
she feels something, she says it, she goes
for it.
And sometimes I feel rejected because of that.
Because I didn't get the response
that I might thought I wanted.
The difference post Hoffman though is now I
(20:56):
see that.
I see that I'm feeling that.
I realize I need to go recycle on
some things when those things come up, obviously.
But I think the abandonment wound for me
with my mother will always equal rejection. And
when I put myself out there
too hard, too intense,
(21:16):
I start to question,
is that why this person
didn't call me back?
Didn't return my text?
Is that why this person
didn't come to whatever?
And I have to just think about
no has nothing to do with any of
that. That person is making choices on their
(21:36):
own.
And as long as I'm putting myself out
there and giving in a positive way.
If I'm ever too much for someone, I'm
I'm too much.
That's fine.
You're talking about another great tension here, and
that is that
what is my responsibility
to own
and work with,
And what is not mine at all? What
(21:58):
has nothing to do with me? I'm no
longer willing to personalize everything like I used
to, and
some things aren't about me. They're about what's
happening in the other person's life and world
and internal
space.
That's one of the hardest lessons
to teach
kids,
to help them realize that
(22:21):
they can only own the way they feel
and the way they present themselves to the
world and the way that they are.
They cannot own how other people respond to
them or feel about them
or take them.
And so
that was the beginning of the week.
So, Miranda, take us now to other parts
(22:44):
of your week. What else do you remember
that was powerful?
I think going back to how
others perceived me
and how I was so worried about rejection
from others and so worried about my place
in this world based on the way others
thought about me,
the day of compassion,
(23:05):
I would say, was
incredibly critical in getting me through that.
Spending time realizing
what my parents
actually went through,
reliving
what they went through
to bring them to their place as my
parents
(23:26):
gave me that compassion for them and gave
me a real appreciation
for their place
and what they've done for me.
Not just to look at it in a
positive light and just say,
Okay, I got all these positive things for
my dad and these other positive traits for
my mom,
but to really have compassion
(23:48):
for them and how they got them and
where they came from and the way that
they were acting.
And then
to go and put that all to bed.
To just
say, Okay, none of that even matters anymore
because that's their stuff. That's my parents'
stuff.
(24:09):
My dad didn't reject me.
He didn't call me crazy because he was
rejecting me. My mom didn't abandon me.
Do I feel abandoned? Did I feel rejected?
Yes. But that's on me
to change.
That process of compassion and really understanding
(24:29):
what they had been through
allowed me to also now see that in
everyone else around me.
You know, people take the process to create
a different future
going forward. They wanna be happier, healthier, more
successful,
you know, navigate relationships
(24:58):
compassion, you
found a deeper understanding
and a rewriting
of the narrative
of your past and your parents' past.
Yes. I most certainly did.
I found
that there is power
in my pain.
I cannot
(25:20):
resent
anything
because
there's so much power
in feeling
bad or bad experiences
or good experiences and really being able to
see how they were good.
Really being able to see
how my parents
(25:40):
were just reacting with everything that they knew
how to react in the best way that
they knew how to react, and they didn't
know how to do any different.
And having that understanding and that appreciation
really brought me to they loved me.
So can I see the actual positive in
this rather than sit in resentment and stewing
of the past?
(26:02):
To a fault now, maybe? I see the
positive in
almost everything.
I have
almost no regrets. In fact, I could say
I don't have regrets. You know, not even
that I all have almost no regrets. I
have no regrets because it all brought me
here today.
It all brought me to this one single
point.
(26:23):
I do see the positive
in relationships
when people don't, in people when people don't.
I see the positive
in the bully at school because you know
what? There's somebody inside there.
And the bully at my work because there's
somebody inside there.
Somebody inside there who came from somewhere.
(26:44):
Bad things happen to me. Don't get me
wrong. All kinds of bad things happen to
me.
No. My daughter hurt her arm last week
at skiing, took us out of skiing. It
wasn't great.
That's negative.
Guess what? There's a positive side of this.
There's always a positive side.
And so that compassion journey
is what brought me to that understanding
(27:07):
and this, like, growth mindset of
it can always be better. We're gonna learn
from this. There's power in our pain.
You know, a lot of people
subscribe to this kind
of
mindset,
mind shift,
and yet
it's not always easy to achieve.
I'm imagining that the cellular journey of Hoffman
(27:31):
was the thing that helped. It's not just
as if you can adopt it. Think about
it this way. Hold this perspective. But, actually,
doing the experiences
really helped you do that.
Yeah. It's crazy. In a week's time
in one week's time,
you can literally rewire
these neurons in your brain
to think differently because it takes into account
(27:54):
writing,
physical
thinking, visualization,
all of
this meditation and the connections with other people.
I thought about this a bunch of times.
Like, how if the process was different, would
I have gotten this much out of it
if I had gone and done this as
a one on one retreat?
No. I needed those connections.
(28:16):
I needed the physical attributes of it.
I needed all of the mental and emotional
stimulation. I can't just need every single bit
of it
after
one week. I'm I'm not telling you I'm
fixed. It wasn't fixed after one week. There's
so much work still to do, but my
eyes are opened.
That's it.
(28:37):
If your eyes are open and your perspective
can change,
everything else can follow along right with it.
You can do anything.
How do you talk about Hoffman
with your kids describing your experience there,
sharing the concepts? What's that look like?
Well, my oldest daughter is just now old
(28:57):
enough to understand.
My younger one is
not quite. They were much younger when I
first went.
So
now when they ask me about Hoffman, because
they see the calendar on my fridge and
they see the magnets on my fridge and
they know that I go to the monthly
meetups
(29:17):
couple times a year.
So they know about it.
So I've explained it to them as this
was a journey for me
to get back to the core of who
I was
by
reevaluating
my relationship with my parents.
That's really all all I've explained to them.
(29:37):
You can't go much deeper than that for
a kid. I mean, there are definitely little
lessons here and there
where I've talked to them
about being in tune
with what they're feeling
and making choices on how it will impact
themselves and people based on that.
And really understanding how they're feeling
in the core of their emotions, in their
(29:59):
brain as they wanna logic through things, through
their physical being. I can talk to them
about that
as little lessons come up through life.
I
just want
my youngest daughter
to take the recycling out.
She piles it
in a pile on the counter.
(30:22):
And it sits in a pile on the
counter, and I, you know, I say, well,
you know, you've got this LaCroix can, and
you have this water bottle, and there's this
box.
If you just take it out, you wouldn't
have to have it sitting on the counter
when you just take it out.
She has a different perspective on that. She's
like, well, if we gather it all up
at once,
(30:43):
it just gets out much easier.
I don't know. The old me probably would
have yelled at her and told her how
ridiculous her ideas were.
My it was my way or the highway.
This is my house.
We're gonna get the recycling out into the
garage
as you use it.
But now,
(31:04):
actually, I told her the other day, I
was like, you know what?
Hoffman taught me this.
Hoffman taught me to realize
that you have feelings and perspective too.
And you know what? If you don't wanna
take the recycling out and you have a
good reason for not doing it,
and I can teach you to calmly tell
me what that is
(31:24):
without you freaking out, yelling at me about
mom's always nagging me to take the recycling
out,
then I won.
Like,
we can all just have a calm conversation
about the recycling.
I feel like I've won.
So that's what I hope I'm teaching my
kids.
We're winding down, but I just have to
ask about
(31:45):
this mom you never saw much growing up
because you thought she was crazy, and these
two brothers and your dad.
How have things
changed
with
these characters that were in your life so
early in such a formative
stage where all this stuff was being wired
(32:06):
in?
Well,
my relationship with my dad,
and I'm back to being daddy's girl and
back to just really just loving him for
who he is. I will tell you that
he didn't know how to express his emotions
or accept mine because he didn't grow up
with that.
So it has definitely made me much closer
to my dad because of my understanding for
(32:29):
that.
He
has dementia,
so
the changes in him
have become
basically his emotions that he felt before,
which was apathy, lack of emotion,
brush it all off. It's gotten even
more so.
So it's amplified.
His apathy has amplified.
(32:51):
But
I still
just feel like
there's a such a deep connection there because
I understand where he's coming from.
Hoffman has really helped me get through
this dementia diagnosis
and like seeing him degrade over the last
couple of years.
So I'm ever grateful for Hoffman in that
(33:12):
because I know I would have approached him
being sick very differently.
I probably would have walled off. I probably
would have
just become even more independent from him.
So I'm very glad for Hoffman so I
could see him for who he really is.
My mom,
I actually haven't
(33:32):
spoken to my mother
in
twelve years.
She's she's very sick. There's bipolar disorder that's
untreated there that
I have tried multiple times before that to
work things out
with her and have a relationship with her,
and
it's It's not safe.
(33:54):
I have to deal with my abandonment issues
without
correcting it with her.
I have to do it
through
my current relationships,
friends, family, otherwise,
boyfriends.
I have to work my abandoned issues out
without resolving things directly.
I think that's why it keeps coming up.
(34:18):
A good friend of mine made this comment.
He's like, Miranda,
the guys you date,
you're literally dating
a book with a picture of your mother
on it.
You're, like, gonna have to work through this.
You need to do this in a different
way.
He's not wrong. That's why these things keep
coming up.
(34:38):
Miranda,
when
abandonment issues with your mom over and over
again personified
in these men,
it just reminds me that so many of
(34:59):
us
in
life
and so many grads post process
hold things in one of two ways, which
is
either,
damn it. I failed the process
because I still haven't dealt with this issue,
and therefore, it didn't work.
I can't do it,
and it's all a fail.
(35:20):
Or this idea that it's never gonna happen
because I'm perfect. I'm cured. I've resolved everything,
and I can
magical thinking kind of escape it, but neither
of those are true. And your example
shows that, yes, you resolved some things and
still some things are
(35:40):
work that still needs to be done.
Oh, yeah. And I think,
like, I talk about the abandonment issue with
my mom, fear of rejection,
giving, and then just assuming that that's going
to equal in rejection sometimes.
But there's also gonna be other things that
are gonna come up.
I mean, I hope I have another forty
(36:02):
five or fifty years on this planet.
I guarantee you, I didn't uncover everything at
Hoffman
nor in the last four or five years.
Right?
There's gonna be so many other things that
have come up.
And I just gotta believe that I have
the tools now to deal with them
and to see them.
So first, you guys see them.
(36:24):
I gotta recognize it in myself.
So
I spend a lot of time in self
reflection.
I spend a lot of time scribbling in
my journal,
just
writing. How do I feel? And sometimes they're
not even complete sentences.
The end of the night, I always do
a check-in.
Believe me, I don't always do a full
(36:44):
quad check-in.
Pretty bad about doing those, but I do
it in my journal
in such that I talk about
how am I feeling
emotionally, physically,
mentally,
spiritually.
I just don't go through the whole visualization
of the quad check-in,
but I use the journal as my tool
to see within myself.
(37:07):
I feel like I really have the tools
to see as it comes up. And then
how am I gonna do something with it,
and how am I gonna repair it?
The tool of recycling is still so powerful.
This is idea
of thinking of a common object and converting
the feeling of it.
It actually works.
(37:27):
So the next time that I actually feel
or get triggered in that exact way for
that abandonment issue,
it won't happen again. Like, the trigger just
won't happen again because I'll see something positive
or something different or something bright and beautiful
out of it.
Am I going to know all of the
(37:47):
different triggers? Am I no. Like we can't.
We can't just know, like nobody is has
a crystal ball to know all different ways
that you're gonna get triggered.
But guess what? When you get triggered, you
can now do something with it.
And that gives me this
incredible sense of peace
and positive attitude towards the future.
(38:09):
I don't know how else to say that
other than I just
know that I can get through anything.
It's gonna suck. There's stuff that sucks, Drew.
Honestly, like, I spent a couple of days
this weekend really sad.
But I also knew that
it was okay. It's okay to be sad.
It's okay
(38:30):
to have a loss
because I know it's not the end of
the world.
I know that it's not that spot back
in 2019
where I just didn't wanna be here anymore.
I won't ever be there again.
That much, I know.
Miranda, what's it like to talk about your
life like this, your
process experience,
(38:52):
that
feeling of not wanting to be here
and reflecting on your daughters
and your your dad, your brothers, your mom,
your whole
dating world, what's what's that like for you
to reflect on so openly?
I mean, honestly, there's still some shame there.
(39:14):
I still feel
shameful. Like, how could I have felt that
way?
I don't know if that'll ever completely go
away.
But what I have now is compassion for
myself,
and I have a path forward.
Brene Brown calls that shame resiliency.
Yes. We're gonna feel it again,
but we have the resiliency
(39:34):
within that to not let it be our
full story.
Yeah. That's powerful. Shame resiliency.
So grateful for you, Miranda. Thanks for sharing
so much of who you are. I appreciate
it. Thanks, Drew, for having me on.
I hope we can be an impact
to people who are concerned about going through
the process or coming out of the process.
(39:57):
You know, not everybody comes out of it
with the same power that I felt.
I know that.
I've talked to plenty of people who've been
through the process and immediately after
may not feel this
power
brightness lightness.
Maybe very different experience for you, but what
I can do is assure everyone that
(40:19):
it's within them.
You just have to keep seeing it and
find it. It never ends.
It never ends.
They have to be willing to just
keep seeing it.
Beautiful.
(40:42):
Thank you for listening to our podcast. My
name is Liza Ingrassi.
I'm the CEO and president of Hoffman Institute
Foundation.
And I'm Razz Ingrassi,
Hoffman teacher and founder of the Hoffman Institute
Foundation.
Our mission is to provide people greater access
to the wisdom and power of love. In
themselves,
in each other and in the world.
(41:03):
To find out more, please go to hampmaninstitute.org.
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