Addiction is a disease that comes with many stigmas. Tony Hoffman is acutely aware and understands being on the receiving end of these stigmas as a man who has gone to prison for crimes related to addiction, drug use, and mental health challenges. However, Tony Hoffman also rebuilt his life and can help you do the same. Addressing stigmas helps you to heal from the inside out, as it provides a way for you to understand the shame that you are experiencing and separate your worth from the challenges that you are facing with addiction and mental health challenges.

How Tony Hoffman Rebuilt His Life

In 2008, Tony Hoffman was paroled after serving a two-year sentence for a drug-related robbery. While serving his sentence, Tony made four primary goals for himself. Since being paroled he has achieved all of his goals. In essence, he rebuilt his life and as a a result has healed from the inside out. These changes in Tony’s life did not just happen. Tony had to work hard to transform his life. He did so through self-improvement and by taking continual steps to heal from the inside out.

Self Improvement

When Tony Hoffman found himself incarcerated, struggling with addiction and poor mental health, he had a choice to make. He could stay in the same pattern in his life, desperately looking for a fix, or he could take steps to improve himself. Tony Hoffman chose the latter. However, while self-improvement may seem simple, it is very difficult.

Tony decided to take responsibility for the things that he could change while incarcerated, working every day to improve himself and give himself the best opportunity to be successful after prison. This included simple tasks like brushing his teeth or making his bed. As a result, of small changes, Tony began to see himself change. He had to make the choice to change every day, but over time, his momentum builds, and to this day, Tony Hoffman continues to take steps in self-improvement and growth.

Healing From the Inside Out

In prison, Tony Hoffman had control over very little in his life. He followed the routine set for him and did not have the freedom to make changes in most aspects of his external world. However, what he did have control of was his internal world. Tony could choose to make different choices for himself, monitor his mood, and be aware of his thinking. Effectively, he had an opportunity to build skills that would help him heal from the inside out.

As Tony began to investigate his internal world, he found a significant amount of challenges to work through. Tony felt frustration, shame, and many other negative thoughts and emotions. However, he began to discover that he could choose what he did with these internal aspects of his life. Through daily actions, focus, and effort, Tony took one step at a time toward healing. He uncovered his unique challenges and the root cause behind his struggles with addiction. Tony took responsibility for his future. He made changes and transformed as a result of internal changes and his determination to build a new and improved life.

Addressing Stigmas: Addiction

Addiction is a disease that often comes with stigmatization or a set of negative beliefs or judgments surrounding it. As a result, if you are struggling with addiction, you are more likely to face discrimination as a result of your challenges with addiction. It is important to recognize that while the stigmas are common, they are not an indication of blame. Substance use disorders (SUDs) are chronic and treatable diseases.

There are many stigmas surrounding addiction; one of the most common is blaming you as an individual for your challenges with addiction. This belief is founded on the idea that addiction is due to a lack of willpower or morality. In concept, this would mean that you have a choice to struggle with addiction and that you can simply choose not to be addicted to drugs, alcohol, or certain behaviors. However, this stigmatization completely missed the mark in understanding addiction as a disease that impacts your brain, how you think, and your impulse control.

Stigmas are present in many areas of life. You may find them in conversation with others who feel anger or resentment at you due to your challenges with addiction. However, you may also find them in terminology that is used, such as junkie, which dehumanizes you and others who struggle with addiction. These words add to stereotypes regarding addiction that name you as a person who is dangerous or a risk instead of someone who is struggling with a disease that impacts how you think, feel, and act.

Addressing Stigmas: Mental Health

Mental health issues are challenges that have long been misunderstood. However, mental health greatly defines how you live your life and the quality of your life. Similar to addiction and substance abuse, there are a significant amount of stigmas that surround mental health. These prejudices impact how you are perceived and treated, as well as how you view yourself.

Stigmas around mental health vary depending on the mental health disorder. However, similar to addiction, it is commonly believed that you have complete control over your mental health, and therefore, if you are struggling with a mental health disorder, you are at fault. This level of blame does not take other factors, such as brain chemistry, into consideration. When in reality, mental health disorders are treatable with the right combination of medication, therapy, and other treatment modalities.

In addition to blame, another stigma around mental health is that individuals with mental health challenges are unpredictable and dangerous. This creates a lack of trust in intimate settings, such as within families, and a general unease. However, the truth is that mental health challenges vary. Having a mental health disorder does not make you dangerous or unpredictable, and with treatment, you can rebuild your mental health and your life.

Addressing Stigmas and Their Impact

How the world sees you and treats you has a significant impact. Addressing stigmas and their impacts requires that you understand how specifically stigmas have affected you. While there are unique challenges, common impacts include increased substance use or lack of self-care, not seeking help, and receiving care that is not helpful for you to heal. These impacts make it difficult to heal and can create an internal environment that leads you to feel that your challenges are your fault. This is far from true, as addiction and mental health challenges are not your fault, and you can do something about them to make changes for yourself in the future.

When you are surrounded by stigmas in language, care, and the overarching social structure, you take these concepts and ideas in. This is normal. However, as a result, you may begin to see yourself as someone with addiction and mental health challenges who is at fault and cannot change. This self-concept impacts your life significantly. One way it can affect you is to feel shame or embarrassment about your challenges. This can lead you to more substance abuse and less self-care as a result of covering up your negative emotions.

Addiction is a disease that requires treatment and care, and going at it alone is not an effective strategy. However, seeking care requires that you admit you need help and trust that you will not be stigmatized for this choice. When stigmas are present in your life, it is natural to hide from any definition that will receive criticism or shame. As a result, you may shy away from seeking help.

Discovering Your Unique Challenges

While many stigmas commonly surround addiction and mental health challenges, your story is unique. From your family’s view of addiction and mental health to how you are treated as an adult, you have a set of experiences that play a role in your internal stigmas regarding addiction and mental health. These concepts give you a unique set of challenges to face internally.

Additionally, you are faced with external stigmas. While stigmas surrounding addiction are changing slowly with education and understanding, they are persistent. When you seek help, you will find some discrimination. However, you can be prepared for this. In addition, when you come up against stigmas, you have options. Accepting that you are experiencing discrimination helps. Then, you can meet your unique challenges and find a way forward in your recovery.

Tony Hoffman’s Experience With Stigmas

When you look at Tony Hoffman’s story, it might seem like a fairy tale. However, it is not. Tony Hoffman, just like you, has had to heal regardless of the stigmas he experienced. In prison, Tony created goals for himself. These goals were lofty:

• Race BMX bikes professionally

• Go to the Olympics

• Start a non-profit

• Become a motivational speaker

Due to stigmatization, Tony was told not to reach so high. He was discouraged from these goals, and many expected him to cycle right back into prison. However, Tony focused on his goals. He tuned out the outside noise of stigmas. As a result, he was able to build skills and work towards these goals. This was not easy. It required that Tony look inside and address the internal stigmas that he was holding. In addition, Tony had to put the work in to change and believe in himself.

Steps in Addressing Stigmas

Your experience with addressing stigmas and healing is a unique journey. However, Tony Hoffman can help you understand steps that will provide you with a roadmap of how to address the stigmatization that you experience. This roadmap commonly includes understanding your relationship to stigmas, taking responsibility for change, changing from the inside out, and taking it one step at a time.

Understanding Their Impact

Stigmas are common. As a result, there are typical ways that they impact you. However, your journey with addiction, mental health challenges, and the stigmas that go along with them is unique. Part of the healing journey is spending time to explore and understand the impact that stigmatization of addiction and mental health has and does have on you.

The journey to understanding their impact is long. You will likely uncover and understand different aspects of stigmas in your life and their effect as you heal. As you do, you can take steps to address the effects. For example, let’s say that you have been impacted in a manner that has caused you to internalize stigmas. Part of healing from addiction is addressing the beliefs you have about your ability to heal and move forward.

Taking Responsibility For Change

Stigmas commonly begin from the outside. This means that the way that others treat you and the things they say to you is due to judgment about your challenges. However, even though stigmas are external, you cannot control what other people do or so. What you can control is yourself and the choices you make.

When you take responsibility for change, you accept what you can and cannot change. You learn that others’ opinions are not something to focus on. Instead, you take a hard look at how you can impact your life. Tony Hoffman did this while in prison. He chose to focus on what he could work on. Tony learned skills and worked towards his goals in the best way he knew how to at the time. Over time, these skills grew, and eventually, Tony met the goals he set for himself.

Changing From the Inside

When you struggle with addiction, the choices you make are a common topic of thought and conversation. You are likely to explore how your choices impact your challenges with addiction and your mental health. However, it is also important to recognize how your internal world affects your actions.

When addressing stigmas, you need to change from the inside. This means addressing your relationships with stigmas and how they are inhibiting you from reaching your potential. When you do so, you can thrive. However, you also educate others who hold these stigmas and provide them with evidence of what someone who is struggling with addiction and mental health challenges can do.

Taking One Step at a Time

Addressing stigmas is difficult. It is a complicated process that requires that you unwind your beliefs as well as what others have said to you. As a result, you may feel overwhelmed. Taking the process one step at a time is important. It helps you focus on the moment at hand, ensuring that you put your attention and energy into what you need now.

Along the road, these needs will shift. This is normal and a good thing. Addressing stigmas means going through each one and looking in-depth into how it has impacted your life. At some point, you will get through the majority and be able to look back and see how far you’ve traveled and how much you have unwound.

Addressing Stigmas in Rehab

When you are addressing stigmas, support is vital. In rehab, you can get the support and care that you need to heal and truly address these challenges. Clinicians in rehab understand the true nature of addiction. They know that addiction is a result of changes in the brain and is a disease that is treatable. However, rehab staff also knows that this perspective on addiction is not shared and that as an individual who is struggling with addiction, you are likely to have experienced the stigmatization around addiction and mental health challenges.

As a result, rehab is the ideal place to address stigmas. You are supported in your endeavors to heal from addiction by staff who can empathize with the shame and negative emotions that are often found in conjunction with these challenges.

Tony Hoffman faced many stigmas as he set goals for himself and took steps towards self-improvement. However, he addressed these stigmas in a positive way by choosing to heal from the inside out. As a result, he completely rebuilt his life. While this may seem impossible, you, too, can change. Tony Hoffman offers public speaking to share his story and educate the audience on the challenges that surround addiction and mental health. He speaks out against the stigmatization that commonly occurs and helps the audience understand how damaging stigmas are. Ultimately, Tony’s goal is to help you and others to find freedom to break away from stigmas. To learn more, contact Tony Hoffman today at (559) 392-8897.