Psycho-detox that’s put my life back on track, by Sienna
HER acting career has often been overshadowed by her tumultuous love life.
Now Sienna Miller believes she has put her problems behind her after taking a £3,000 therapy course dubbed ‘psychological detox’.
The 34-year-old is the latest star to have undergone the Hoffman Process, a week-long residential course favoured by the likes of Elle Macpherson, Annie Lennox and Jemima Khan.
The programme is billed as an effective treatment for depression, anger and anxiety and releasing negative emotions by using Freudian analysis.
Miss Miller, who last year split from her fiance and the father of her daughter, has revealed how the course got rid of all the ‘noise’ in her head. She said: ‘It’s terrifying but extraordinary. It’s ten years of therapy in a week.
‘It’s focused on Freudian analysis, which is basically how behaviour patterns are all learned, so what the Hoffman does is analyse who you can trace them all back to, either parents or surrogates, then you kind of let go and examine who you would have been if you hadn’t taken on all these negative traits.
‘There’s an immense amount of space in my head and there is no f ****** noise in it for the first time. All that noise has just gone.’ The Hoffman Process, which has also been used by actresses Thandie Newton and Naomie Harris, was created by American psychic Bob Hoffman in 1967 as a form of psychoanalysis. It has been widely recommended by clinical psychologists, some of whom have branded it ‘a psychological detox’.
In 1995, former university lecturer Tim Laurence set up the Hoffman Institute in Arundel, West Sussex, with his then-wife Serena Gordon, the actress best known for her roles in The Bill and the 1995 Bond film GoldenEye.
Now divorced, they still run the institute together and charge £2,950 for the seven-day course, involving 100 hours of ‘tuition’ from trained ‘Hoffman teachers’, which runs at country retreats.
Teachings include the notion of ‘negative love syndrome’, which is the belief that, as children, people take on the characteristics of their parents, good or bad, and repeat them throughout their lives. Students on the course then examine those ‘patterns of behaviour’ and learn to break them.
Speaking about her state of mind before undergoing the Hoffman Process, Miss Miller told Porter magazine: ‘I just got to a point where I just felt…I couldn’t dig myself out, I couldn’t make decisions, I felt pretty assaulted by life and not in control.’ Last year, Miss Miller split from fiancé Tom Sturridge, 30, having dated the actor since 2011. Next month she is moving to New York with their four-year-old daughter Marlowe.
Previously Miss Miller had a turbulent on-off relationship with actor Jude Law, 43, to whom she was engaged in 2004 before the actor revealed he had cheated on her with his children’s nanny.
The pair briefly rekindled their relationship in 2009 after Miss Miller’s affair with married US actor Balthazar Getty, 41.
‘All that noise has just gone’