Katie and Liz engage in this insightful conversation about the intersection of sobriety and the Hoffman Process. How can the Process support the journey of sobriety? And, how can the journey of sobriety deepen one’s engagement in the Process itself and one’s post-Process experience?

After getting sober in 2014, Katie did the Process in the Spring of 2016. After completing the Process, Katie found a way to integrate her Hoffman work into her program of sobriety.

Katie came to the Process to help heal her relationship with her mother whom Katie was caring for. Her mother was facing end-stage liver failure due to alcoholism. As an alcoholic herself, Katie was deeply compassionate toward others who were working a program of sobriety. But, it was different with her mother. She resented her drinking and other behaviors. Through the Process, Katie was able to heal her relationship with her mother as well as her resentment toward her mother’s drinking by exploring what her mother’s life was like before Katie being born. This helped Katie see her mother as a person whole unto herself and see her mother’s pain separate from her own.  One of the big things Katie gained from the Process is a sense of neutrality – that people aren’t doing things to her and she doesn’t have to assume bad intent.

Katie calls herself a liberal atheist, and as such, she found the ‘God concept’ hard. During the Process, it wasn’t hard for her to tap into her Spiritual Self. She realizes now that her Spiritual Self brought her to that first Twelve Step meeting, guided her to ask for a sponsor, and ultimately brought her to the Process.

On a happy note, Katie’s mother’s health is much better.

Katie is a Jane of all trades who embodies self-awareness and conscientiousness in everything she does. Her background in art led her to a career in the design tech space where she gets to combine her hunger for business and creativity in San Francisco. As an ex-gymnast, the Hoffman Process helped her separate her perfectionism from her innate love for movement. As a result, she now does acrobatics at a local circus gym.

When she’s not working or doing backflips, Katie is working on her latest woodworking project, training her deaf dog Ruby, cooking up her favorite vegetarian dishes, and enjoying the city’s best coffee.

The Twelve Steps and A.A.

The Dark Side: Katie and Liz talk about the Dark Side (the aggregate of one’s negative patterns). Katie had related her alcoholism to something like the Dark Side, but when she learned about the Dark Side at the Process and was no longer drinking, she came to see that the Dark Side wasn’t just her alcoholism. It was also her anxiety and all the ways she tries to soothe herself in moments when life gets difficult.

H.A.L.T.: is an acronym used within the recovery community. Am I hungry, angry, lonely, or tired? As Katie says, it’s like a mini-quad check.