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Trauma Recovery and Building Self-Worth a conversation with Endre Hoffmann
12 Plays11 days ago
What is trauma? How do we recover and build our authentic life?
Endre Hoffmann is a survivor of childhood trauma that resulted in him being trapped by self-doubt. He spent a huge amount of money trying to understand how he might be able to live authentically.
Now Endre runs Doctor of Self-Worth
In this episode of the Abeceder health and well-being podcast Fit For My Age, Endre Hoffman discusses with host Michael Millward
- What trauma is
- The indicators that someone may be suffering from trauma
- How trauma impacts the lives of victims
- How people can start to address the consequences of trauma
- How people can move-on from trauma to living authentically
Find out more about Michael Millward and Endre Hoffmann at Abeceder.co.uk.
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Transcript
Introduction and Podcast Aim
00:00:06
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Fit for My Age, health and well-being podcast from Abbasida. I am your host, Michael Millward, the Managing Director of Abbasida.
Andre Hoffman on Trauma Recovery
00:00:19
Speaker
Today I am talking to Andre Hoffman about recovering from trauma and rebuilding life. Fit for my age is made on Zencastr, the all-in-one podcasting platform that really does make every stage of the podcast creating process from recording to publishing so easy.
00:00:39
Speaker
If you would like to try podcasting using Zencastr, visit zencastr.com forward slash pricing and use my offer code, Abbasida. All the details are in the description.
00:00:52
Speaker
Now that I have told you how wonderful Zencastr is for making podcasts, we should make one. One that will be well worth listening to, liking, downloading and subscribing to.
Podcast's Purpose and Andre's Background
00:01:03
Speaker
Very importantly, on Fit For My Age, we don't tell you what to think, but we do hope to make you think. Today, my guest is Andre Hoffman, a specialist in trauma recovery and self-worth building.
00:01:18
Speaker
Hello, Andre. Hi. Please, could you give us an introduction to your lived experience, your education and the type of work that you do? Yes. I've been looking for my own self-worth and removing or letting go of my trauma for 34 years. And I found out it was to do with my childhood.
00:01:40
Speaker
especially with my dad, where we did not connect well. I felt unloved and at times neglected or disregarded. I didn't feel the love I needed.
00:01:52
Speaker
i I would say my mind decided to compensate. So I became a high achiever and I've been proving myself everywhere. anywhere and I was measuring up people and situations and for three decades I have felt not good enough, unworthy.
00:02:12
Speaker
I had these doubts inside whether I'm living my life for my purpose and was looking for happiness and fu fulfillment and it didn't work and and I did not know i was traumatized. so That part came a lot later when I woke up ah with
Universal Quest for Paternal Approval
00:02:33
Speaker
help. I unfortunately spent over $100,000 on things that did not work to solve my challenges.
00:02:40
Speaker
And I did not know it was trauma. And later on, ah when my life was about to completely collapse in Australia six years ago, my life was about to leave me, and i was about to lose everything that's dear to me.
00:02:56
Speaker
hi being connected with a mindset specialist coach and he helped me to heal and rewrite who i am and how i could be well a yeah useful and contributing part of society and how could help others to make this journey a lot shorter and a lot cheaper.
00:03:21
Speaker
It's interesting listening to you there. I'm thinking that I can talk to lots of my friends. And one of the things that we've always wanted to do is to impress our dads.
00:03:35
Speaker
yeah You can get approval from all sorts of various different people. But the one person that you really want the approval from is your father. What point did your need to be for the approval from your father cause the trauma when I think it's something that most most boys want?
Understanding Trauma and Generational Effects
00:03:57
Speaker
They want to be like their father. They want to impress their father. At what point did it become a problem, a challenge for you? I would say I've been carrying this as this need for approval for a long time.
00:04:13
Speaker
But at age 35, it has become clear it will never come. And I somehow have to solve it for myself. I came back from Australia at that time and I was challenging my father about his problems of aggressive, you know, very stressful, fearful, ah having anxiety, blaming everyone else for his challenges and troubles. and And eventually, unfortunately, he has already died.
00:04:44
Speaker
due, I believe, to his emotional baggage that has caused Rhi incurable diseases and eventually that took him. ah But that scene was back at his home visiting him for a few weeks and and i was asked I was confronting him. I realized that somehow we need to solve this.
00:05:08
Speaker
And I asked him, you know, can you explain and tell me how why did you act without love or how I experienced you? And his answer was, when you grow up, you will understand this son.
00:05:23
Speaker
And I had to confront him one more time. I said, look, I'm 35 years old. So when would you think I will be grown up enough to understand? Yeah, I can see what you mean. It's just because you've passed a certain age doesn't mean that you understand how someone else behaved when they were that age.
00:05:42
Speaker
And that only sort of, I suppose, compounds the trauma of it if you can't get an explanation for the behavior. But then again, the answer that you receive suggests that they didn't really understand now their own behavior, whether it was conscious or unconscious behavior.
00:05:59
Speaker
They didn't understand the reasons for it. And it probably goes back generations as well. Absolutely. And there is one more aspect of the mind that I think has been clear to me at that point.
00:06:12
Speaker
I have to specifically say this subconscious part of the mind that drives behavior has no concept of time. and And that's our discussion today. So things have happened to him in the past. He had a, well, less than optimal relationship with my grandfather. He was wonderful kind too.
00:06:34
Speaker
He's been kicked out of the family, all of those things. there So there was his trauma. and he was locked into these behaviors from the past. And he never realized that, oh, there has been decades since they happened and he could be free of it or he could be actually in the present to have a conversation with his son.
Trauma's Impact on Beliefs and Engagement
00:06:57
Speaker
That was not available for him. That sort of freedom. So it's, well, what is trauma? I'm sort thinking that we're talking about trauma and I've got all sorts of questions, but it's it's worth, first of all, defining what trauma is. it's It's different from other types of issues. So when we talk about trauma, what is it that we're actually talking about? What's the the proper definition of trauma?
00:07:25
Speaker
ah Thanks for asking that question. That that is so logical to... i want to put out that there that might be different... interpretations of trauma there medical doctors or psychologists, psychiatrists. There's a whole lot of things. But the way I interpret it is this.
00:07:47
Speaker
Anything that happened to a person that has been decreasing their chance to be in the present moment or that has taken away his authentic self or his true power to create results that he deserves in life.
00:08:09
Speaker
So my interpretation of what you've you've just said then would be that if you are trauma in a trauma situation, if you are suffering from trauma, then regardless of where you are, regardless of how happy the activity, the occasion that you're engaged in is supposed to be, there would always be the element of the past that is preventing you from actually engaging with that activity, that occasion, in the way that someone who hasn't suffered trauma would be able to do.
00:08:45
Speaker
Certainly. And and i would I would just expand this explanation to two other things. There is always in a aspect of emotion. These are usually negative emotions that are holding someone's attention and thoughts in the past due to what happened.
00:09:06
Speaker
that they're not feeling good enough, that I've been through, or not feeling worthy. And they go together. These become circling thoughts in someone's mind. And there is, i call life force, which is then stuck.
00:09:22
Speaker
in the past. so if I'm looking at, and it could be any event, maybe just losing a dog or some very insignificant event because every mind, every human mind has, let's say, resources at the time of when things happen.
00:09:40
Speaker
And the interpretation is up to the moment or how that mind is wired. So there will be usually I call limiting ideas or decisions that one could indulge in.
00:09:56
Speaker
That becomes a limiting belief later on. I'm unlucky. My wants don't matter. I'm not worth it. Not clever enough. I don't deserve it.
00:10:07
Speaker
or All sorts of things. And usually that event locks up the person's life force back in the past, which... is I believe that's the true challenge and work to liberate this person from those past blocks, I could say, that causes usually a series of events where that initial event is now repeated, where they are finding more and more hundreds of events proving them they are not good enough. And that was my certain in my life.
00:10:44
Speaker
Right, so no matter how many people tell you that you've done a good job, because the person that you really want approval from hasn't said that to you, you doubt the the genuineness, the authenticity of other people who are telling you that you are good.
Overcoming Past Conditioning
00:11:03
Speaker
It's very insightful, yes. You literally disregard, block out, that as a reality because and this is the tricky part i believe of the human mind we are designed to take on the programming to survive in let's say in the first 10 12 years of our lives and then we hang on to it as if that was the only way to live so someone comes and praises a person who has low self-worth it would
00:11:38
Speaker
be literally erased and disregarded information that is not pertaining to his true reality. and And this is where we have these filters running through the five senses.
00:11:53
Speaker
A good story was when my son was a defender in soccer and And he was fully focused on that he didn't score a goal and he didn't really want, to he wanted to score a goal.
00:12:06
Speaker
And he, the the the coach has been praising the team that defense have won this game. And i I asked him after this small conversation, you know, team, after the game, and he says, well,
00:12:23
Speaker
I don't feel good enough, I didn't score a goal. I said, that's all you got out of that wonderful team meeting, right? And I said to him, I recorded it for you. ah want you to listen to it. He said three times defender, specifically you, has been crucial part of winning that game.
00:12:41
Speaker
And how this happens is through the filtering process where we are designed to deal with a tiny piece of... relevant information to survive.
00:12:53
Speaker
So according to the latest research about two and a half to three million, I hate technical terms, but bit per second information that we are dealing with, literally massive overwhelm.
00:13:06
Speaker
The human mind can only take and process about 137. Now the filters are, they they have been put into place by what happened to each and every person in the past.
00:13:20
Speaker
So there is abundance, there is magic, there is miracles out there. But if one not believing it then they literally blind themselves from what they want.
00:13:34
Speaker
And this is, there's d this this this massive disconnect, and this is what I love to find, where one has conscious goals, I know what I want, I've written down my goals, all those, I've done all of that, yet there's this other part of the mind that has the opposite agenda and has million ways to,
00:13:58
Speaker
sabotage what you want. It sounds to me as if what we're actually talking about is something like you've got a wall that has been painted black and you really want to paint it white.
00:14:14
Speaker
Now, if you were going to paint a white wall black, you might need one coat or two coats to cover up the white paint. But doing it the other way around, where you're wanting to turn up a black wall to a white wall, it's going to take lots of coat of paint to make the black completely disappear and end up with a pure white wall.
00:14:37
Speaker
And if you've got something in your past that has taken over your mind and has become your core belief, and that's the black wall, You're going to need an awful lot of white paint, an awful lot of incidents, opportunities, occasions where you hear a counter-argument before the black wall finally disappears.
00:15:00
Speaker
And even then, you'll still know that underneath all the white paint, there is still a black wall. i might use this wonderful experience of the wall.
00:15:11
Speaker
one One is literally walled up. with these traumatic events from the past. And and and what if life, human life is is a wonderful playground, let's call it a castle, which has thousands and thousands of rooms where you can experience ah the full spectrum of positive emotions and and results in every area of your life. and And you feel yourself caved in more and more into this black or white room.
Rebuilding Life After Trauma
00:15:42
Speaker
no you don't realize that you may have painted over that wall, I don't know how many times, with what happened in the past.
00:15:54
Speaker
And now the fastest way to realize there are other rooms is to to get someone to come with you and scratch the paint so that you can find the handle.
00:16:09
Speaker
Not one, many. that open up to other rooms where there is possibility, more freedom. And that's the work I love the most.
00:16:20
Speaker
It sounds very interesting. What is the process that someone goes through to try and rebuild in practical terms their life after acknowledging that they have trauma?
00:16:32
Speaker
I believe if it's not treated at the root, and then it's a,
00:16:41
Speaker
It's a temporary fix. But what way you can really tell whether you are you have some traumatic events or the past controlling you, I mean, look at mom and dad, what their challenges were, but also look at what are the recurring less than optimal results that are hitting you in the face like a boomerang. And that was certainly me.
00:17:05
Speaker
So what you want to find out is what beliefs in the world or what belief in myself is creating these results. But obviously a prerequisite to this is to take full, 100% responsibility for what happens to you.
00:17:26
Speaker
Because then you could, and and I say the best investment in my life was... exactly that work to to find a pro and and i have a short uh six step process that I'm happy to give away to to to simplify how you could get over these humps where you're not running in circles anymore is find someone who has gone through the same challenge that you have right now and the person who is able to help others to do the same, make sure that they have consistent results and don't worry about anything else, just commit to that process.
00:18:08
Speaker
So it's useful to work with someone who's got lived experience of the thing that you are trying to resolve. And who has the tools. Imagine having the tires changed without the tools. like How would you get them the wheel nuts off?
00:18:26
Speaker
That's true. You do need the tools to change a tire. Otherwise, you're just sitting there looking at it and talking about it. It's interesting. And a lot of people using sticks and pieces of stones to get it off.
00:18:42
Speaker
and yeah And they are not wasting their time. And I did waste three decades of my life. so So my belief is that if one is ready and commitment is key, that really sends...
00:18:56
Speaker
a message to that mind that it's time to change. How do you know that you're ready? Well, know you're not going to like this, but I believe there's two ways to change, especially this trauma type of scenario. One is when one's life is about to collapse fully.
00:19:16
Speaker
Several areas of life, health, wealth, relationships, or combination of them. Unfortunately, that was my case. But I see um a lot more intelligent approach in the latest year when one can see, all right, where I'm going, it is that literally brick wall it and it's gonna hit me hard.
00:19:37
Speaker
and And they show up when they don't want to have that conversation. And we'll figure out with the specialist to someone who's good at this. and I'm certainly giving away free sessions for those who are serious.
00:19:53
Speaker
to work out, to map out the true root of their challenge. So from what you're saying, it sounds as if before you can root out the real cause, you have to hit rock bottom.
Continuous Self-Discovery and Growth
00:20:06
Speaker
That is a very common experience, I have to say. So that's when I usually get the calls. When they say, all right, tried everything, i invested in this, I've done my affirmations, my meditation, my past life regressions, and I'm still there.
00:20:23
Speaker
then which is how you end up spending a hundred thousand dollars on trying to resolve the issues it's almost and that was more i traveled 70 countries and i was looking for spiritual gurus to tell me what's wrong with me on five continents so it's probably an awful lot more than a hundred thousand but it's it's still a very uh well it may stops and makes you think I suppose rock bottom can be something that happens to you, or it can be something that actually you can generate for yourself, I suppose, by simply just getting everything out, you know, all of the various different issues, the different experiences, just getting them all out on the table and sharing them with the right people.
00:21:10
Speaker
I know someone who who did that, and then they were on on a weekend away to the coast, And their partner ah got a stick on the beach and said, know, have you told me everything?
00:21:21
Speaker
And he said, yes, I think so. Think so isn't good enough, she says. I need to know that you've told me absolutely 100% everything. of everything And then she got, this with the sticks, she drew a line in the sand and said, we have a choice.
00:21:37
Speaker
We can either jump across this line knowing that everything is out there on the table and we rebuild, or we stay here until we've got everything out.
00:21:48
Speaker
And he you they spent some time having a conversation, recounting various different things, and then jumped across the line and everything is a lot better for them. So when you say...
00:22:01
Speaker
you know reach you know rock bottom it's not necessarily something that is forced upon you happens to you without any influence or control and think simply getting everything out on the table sharing it with the people who care with the experts can actually help you like draw that line in the sand and start again I love how you have put it.
00:22:28
Speaker
I would just give another perspective if you look at human life. what if What if you are here to find your true power or authenticity? and And if that's the case, then What if your whole life is an expanded coaching session to learn about yourself?
00:22:58
Speaker
Now, you can do it slowly and there will be small signals and bigger and bigger wax in the head, which as we talked about it will eventually we' bring you down.
00:23:13
Speaker
So you have to face it. Or you could shorten the learnings and the breakthroughs by, let's say, hiring using the right tools.
00:23:27
Speaker
That I believe is he' the name of the game. And you can opt out, certainly, but there will be bigger and bigger reminders where the pressure is increases because you're here to grow, you're here to learn, and the learning is really about yourself.
00:23:48
Speaker
and who you really are. How do you know when you've reached that point where you've you've got to the point where you can say, I have identified who the authentic me is? My approach is this. I call this after the unconscious stage.
00:24:05
Speaker
I believe it's a stage for most people. ah Best version is the next one, or you could call it emotional freedom. When one has let go of those those limitations there's more mental resilience there's more optimism then you you're happy to try two things you don't take it too personally if things don't work out you're excited you're taking challenges it's harder and harder to fit into a role or ah or a job and and you're stepping away from these external structures and when you start your own projects you find out what you love to do and and the third stage i believe is is true authenticity when
00:24:47
Speaker
When, and it's automatic, I say, when you're emotionally free, you're not controlled by the past anymore, then then peace is your normal state and you will find your, and and and I'm still saying coaches and mentors are and essential here, but then you find this mission, you find your playground and you will build a life that you that that's on your terms.
Conclusion and Acknowledgments
00:25:17
Speaker
that's That's what I believe each and every person deserves. I totally agree with you. ah totally agree with you. It's a journey worth taking, but it's not a walk in the park.
00:25:29
Speaker
It's not. and And the reason why I decided to give free sessions and guaranteed results, because I said I don't want anyone else to go through...
00:25:41
Speaker
my 35 years and spending this money and traveling around the world and have basically no results running in circles. I totally get what you mean. It's sometimes you need some help to get you to understand or so you can understand where you are and where you need to get to.
00:26:02
Speaker
And then you need other types of help to actually get you there as well. But you know, You certainly made me think, Andre. You certainly made me think.
00:26:13
Speaker
do appreciate your time to today. It's been great. Thank you very much. My pleasure. Thanks very much. I am Michael Millward, the Managing Director of Abbasida. And in this episode of Fit for My Age, I have been having a conversation with Andre Hoffman.
00:26:29
Speaker
You can find out more about both of us at abbasida.co.uk. There is a link in the description. I must remember to thank the team at matchmaker.fm for introducing me to Andre.
00:26:41
Speaker
If you're a podcaster looking for interesting guests, or if you like Andre have something very interesting to say matchmaker.fm is where matches of great hosts and great guests are made.
00:26:54
Speaker
There is link to matchmaker.fm and an offer code in the description. At Fit For My Age, our aim is proactive positive aging. Knowing the risks early is an important part of maintaining good health.
00:27:07
Speaker
That is why we recommend the annual health tests from York Test. York Test provides an assessment of 39 different health markers, including cholesterol, diabetes, vitamin D, vitamin B12, liver function, iron deficiency, inflammation, the list goes on, including a full blood count.
00:27:28
Speaker
The annual health test is conducted by an experienced phlebotomist who will complete full blood draw at your home or workplace. Hospital standard tests are carried out in a UKAS accredited and CQC compliant laboratory.
00:27:44
Speaker
You can access your easy to understand results and guidance help you make effective lifestyle changes anytime by your secure personal wellness hub account. There's a link and a discount code in the description.
00:27:56
Speaker
The description is well worth reading. If you have liked this episode of Fit For My Age, please give it a like and download it so that you can listen anytime, anywhere. To make sure you don't miss out on future episodes, please subscribe.
00:28:10
Speaker
Remember the aim of all the podcasts produced by Abbasida is not to tell you what to think, but we do hope to have made you think. Until the next episode of Fit For My Age, thank you for listening and goodbye.