Moving on Together
An interview with Brenda Wade, Ph.D.
by Raz Ingrasci, President (Edited
by Shawn McAndrew)
 Brenda
Wade, Ph.D., (HQP 2003) is a clinical psychologist and author.
She practices in San Francisco, and recently joined the Professional
Advisory Council of the Hoffman Institute.
Dr. Wade hosted the nationally syndicated program "Can
This Marriage be Saved?" and has appeared
regularly as an expert on national television programs including
Oprah and Good Morning America. She was a featured expert with Peter
Jennings in the 1995 ABC News Special "Children First,"
contributes frequently to ABC World
News Now, and is a contributing editor at
Essence magazine.
Dr. Wade’s next book, The
Five Truths of Transformation: Tools for Turning Trouble Into Triumph,
is due out later this year.
Raz Ingrasci: Your last book, "What
Mama Couldn’t Tell Us About Love: Healing the Emotional Legacy
of Slavery, Celebrating Our Light" reads almost like a primer
to the HQP for African-Americans. You speak of limiting beliefs,
depression as a legacy of slavery, and the history and results of
discrimination. You also discuss the importance of forgiveness and
finding your own light within. How do you see these issues vis-a-vis
the Hoffman Process?
Brenda Wade: The Process definitely addresses
those same concerns, specifically when we talk about our emotional
legacy, which is really what Hoffman calls the Negative Love Syndrome.
For many African-Americans, emotional patterning comes from those
intergenerational cycles that most of us have not had the opportunity
to explore. Few African-Americans can get beyond the stigma of any
type of personal growth process, where people are saying, "There
are things about myself I want to change." Historically, it
can be a dangerous thing for people of color to admit weakness in
front of white people. One of the things that we want to do is to
de-stigmatize the idea of working on yourself. People who work on
themselves are more likely to have stronger relationships, marriages
that last (the divorce rate for African-Americans is 69%), feel
less depressed, less hostile, and experience greater confidence
about themselves and life in general. But we have huge patterns
around being "sick." Because those people who couldn’t
work or even do menial tasks that were usually reserved for sick
or old slaves, literally were left out in the woods to starve. So,
historically, there’s a lot of complication and a lot of conflict
that many African-Americans feel about looking at pain. On one hand,
not looking at the pain was how people survived and on the other
hand, not looking at the pain is how people run into many of the
problems that we still see in various parts of the African-American
community.
In the past there was so much humiliation and shaming done to African-American
people that for them to feel a sense of pride, dignity, and a sense
of worth there had to be insulation against the slights, insults,
and racist treatment. Sometimes the insulation itself is an overcompensation
that is unhealthy. For example, like overeating or overspending.
RI: Right. That mindset can lead to unhealthy,
self-soothing mechanisms.
BW: Self-soothing is exactly what we
are talking about. People need to identify the self-soothing patterns
that have been passed down and to identify the ones that aren’t
working. The deepest insight for me around family patterns from
the Hoffman Process was that my parents lived out their parent’s
patterns almost to the letter. I had inculcated a lot of that into
my own life but in a very different guise. I wouldn’t dream
of abusing my children the way I was abused. My parents thought
of it as discipline and thought it was good. I knew it wasn’t
good and I wouldn’t dream of doing it to my kids. But I did
it to myself. I did it by driving myself, overworking, and being
overextended.
RI: You internalized the voices that
were hard on you and you became hard on yourself.
BW: Just like a slave overseer I drove
myself. The thing that I saw for the first time in the Process was
the whip that I used on myself. I know better than to use it outside
of myself, but not enough to put it down and be more loving and
compassionate towards myself.
RI: "False consciousness" is
the process whereby oppressed people take on the consciousness of
the oppressor group, adjust to it, and become participants in their
own oppression, all the while remaining unaware that they’re
doing it. The Negative Love Syndrome explains the ways in which
we take on false consciousness by adopting the moods, attitudes,
beliefs, and behaviors of our parents. The Process liberates us
from that. All of us take on the emotional consciousness that has
been passed down from generation to generation through their parents.
BW: And there is also the projection
of the larger culture. One of the things that we discuss in our
book is the systematic demonizing of the African people. It was
well planned and well thought out, even after slavery ended.
For example, at the beginning of the 20th century, there was a
strong black community developing with an economic base and people
were getting educated at black institutions. That’s when a
systematic assault on the black community started. It was called
"urban renewal" and entire communities were bulldozed.
People were bused to other areas so the economic and community bases
were broken down. There’s a documentary on PBS about what
happened to the black communities of major urban areas. That attempt
of African-Americans to pull together was successful for a while
but was ultimately destroyed.
RI: Even though laws have been changed
we see how the emotional burden of this legacy still exists, and
it weighs heavily on African-Americans as a group. African-Americans
have higher divorce, death, depression, and suicide rates. More
African-American children are born into single-parent households.
While there have been changes in the system, the complementary piece
to that is personal work to address the emotional legacy that has
been handed down.
BW: The Hoffman Process is exactly the
kind of antidote that is needed. When we can understand and free
ourselves of the emotional legacy, we can choose a different path.
As more and more of us choose that different path then there is
more energy available to put into different areas of our community
that still need work, like education, medicine, criminal justice,
politics, and social justice. They’re all areas of work that
people who are oppressed need to address.
RI: Research on the Process confirms
that the feelings of powerlessness and rage that result in depression,
and the hatred toward self and others that result in anger and hostility,
can be significantly lifted so people can make the positive contribution
to themselves, their families, and society that they really want
to make.
BW: Harry Belafonte says that people
who have been oppressed, whether Jewish or African-American, have
a greater obligation to be conscious; to work to become more conscious
and to help others. One of the gifts of oppression is that you can
develop compassion. Hoffman awakens compassion and engenders more
open-heartedness to our fellow human beings.
RI: Oppression can also breed a certain
hard-heartedness. I think of one’s heart as being covered
in armor to protect from more pain. When we take that armor off
we realize that our heart is also the entry point to spirit. When
our heart is covered over and hardened by pain we have a hard time
accessing spirit.
BW: There’s a hard-heartedness
mostly towards self, but it also plays into the phenomenon of black-on-black
crime. There are an awful lot of people just internalizing the hardened
heart.
RI: Even African-Americans who have been
successful in a predominantly white culture at some point have to
come to terms with their African-American identity as a matter of
personal freedom and authenticity. Could you speak to how the Hoffman
Process might play a part in that?
BW: For me this authenticity is at core
a spiritual experience. When I’m connected with my spiritual
self that’s when I know I am being my authentic self. The
Hoffman Process clears the way for that. One of the things I mention
in an article in the current issue of Essence magazine is that there’s
so much emotional baggage in the way of us experiencing our spiritual
essence. Ironically, at the same time that baggage gets in the way,
the spiritual self has the power to dissolve a lot of it. When that
happens you can really hear yourself, hear your true voice, and
respond to it. But when we’re caught up in negative patterns,
we can’t hear anything except the voice of those patterns.
RI: Can you comment on the potential
of the Process to contribute to African-Americans. What is the next
step?
BW: I see more and more people who are
awakening to the need for growth and who are interested in growing.
One of the things ø
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