Dr. Chris Hoff

10/14/2026

What comes next—and how might you participate in creating it?

In January 2027, I’m bringing together a new virtual Futuring Sprint, limited to 20 people.

We’ll explore the stories, habits, and expectations that narrow our sense of possibility, look for signals of change, imagine alternative futures, and develop small experiments to begin putting those possibilities into practice.

If you’re navigating a transition, reconsidering your work, or wondering what else might be possible in your life, I invite you to join us.

DM me “FUTURE” to get on the interest list. You’ll receive dates, pricing, and registration details as they become available.

10/13/2026

In 1836, nearly thirty years before the end of the American Civil War, two men gathered in a chapel in Glasgow, Scotland, for five nights of public debate over American slavery.

George Thompson, a British abolitionist, and Reverend Robert J. Breckinridge, an American Presbyterian minister, argued over slavery, abolition, and the moral contradictions of a nation founded on the promise of liberty.

Their debates were published that same year in Boston by Isaac Knapp, a publisher closely associated with William Lloyd Garrison and the American abolitionist movement.

I recently acquired this 190-year-old copy for Dharmabum Books. Inside are two handwritten inscriptions, apparently belonging to someone named A. G. Fenner. Who was this person? What brought this book into their hands? What did they make of the arguments unfolding across its pages?

One of the things I love about collecting old books is the reminder that history was never inevitable. The world we inhabit was shaped by people arguing, organizing, resisting, and imagining futures that had yet to exist.

And here we are, 190 years later, still wrestling with questions of freedom, power, and whose humanity counts.

The past was once an uncertain future, too.

From the Dharmabum Books collection.

BookCollecting HistoryOfSlavery Abolitionism RadicalHistory 1836

10/09/2026

Pascal thought humanity’s troubles began with man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.

But I wonder whether he underestimated how crowded that room already is.

For many men, the room is occupied by generations of expectations, humiliations, comparisons, and cultural demands. Stories about strength, weakness, success, sexuality, power, and what it means to be a “real man.”

Some of these stories have devastating consequences. When vulnerability becomes shameful, aggression can become a way to recover dignity. When masculinity must constantly be proven, other people become competitors, threats, or targets.

I’m interested in what happens when men begin questioning these inherited stories. When we become curious about who authored them, whose interests they serve, and what forms of masculinity they have prevented us from imagining.

Perhaps sitting quietly in a room is a beginning. But we have some serious company to contend with.

10/04/2026

’m excited to share that my essay, “Nobody’s Movement: Anattā and the Practice of Coalition,” is part of The Arrow’s new special issue, Movement Dharma.

The essay brings Buddhist teachings on non-self into conversation with the work of building coalitions. What becomes possible when we loosen our grip on being somebody and attend to what we can make possible together?

And if inspired, there is an forthcoming Movement Dharma chaplaincy program at Union that you should check out.

Grateful to the editors for including my work. I hope you’ll spend some time with the issue.

Explore the new issue:

Greetings, all!

09/28/2026

I knew how social media worked. I understood the algorithms. I knew outrage and fear kept us engaged. I figured my critical sensibilities would somehow protect me.

They didn’t.

Over the last several weeks, I noticed something changing in me: agitation, compulsive checking, outrage, comparison, despair, distraction. Three different people asked if I was okay.

One was a client.

That got my attention.

As a Buddhist practitioner, I took a vow to uphold the Fifth Precept, commonly associated with refraining from intoxicants that lead to heedlessness. I gave up alcohol and drugs a long time ago. Lately I’ve been wondering whether I need to think much more seriously about what else I consume.

Because I’m not just looking at my phone.

I’m consuming it.

And what we consume cultivates something in us.

I still believe visibility matters. I love making videos, podcasts, and writing. Creating isn’t the problem for me.

Consumption is.

Because attention is one of the places where the future gets made. Fill consciousness with outrage, fear, comparison, violence, and crisis all day and eventually it begins affecting what we’re capable of imagining.

I’ve felt my own imagination getting smaller.

So I’m experimenting. Posting without scrolling. Fewer apps. More long-form reading. More books. More conversations.

More silence.

Maybe the Fifth Precept offers two very good questions for life with a smartphone:

What am I about to consume?

And afterward:

What did it cultivate in me?

09/26/2026

What do we mean when we say we can “manifest” the life we want? And who gets left out when desire is treated as a matter of mindset alone?

In this episode of Dangerous Stories, Dr. Chris Hoff talks with Gina Velez, MA, AMFT, about critical manifestation. They explore how our desires are shaped by culture, how structural barriers affect what becomes possible, and what it means to pursue a future with discernment and responsibility toward others.

Their conversation moves through shame, privilege, surrender, and the question at the heart of Gina’s work: What kind of world are we helping to bring into being?

Subscribe to Dangerous Stories Studio for conversations about therapy, culture, and possible futures.

What do we mean when we say we can “manifest” the life we want? And...

09/25/2026

“I’m just not that kind of person.”

Maybe you’re right.

Maybe there’s plenty of evidence. A whole history that explains why you’re cautious, practical, introverted, responsible, independent, bad with money, not creative, or someone who would never do that.

But when does a history become a destiny?

The fourth piece in my Defuturing series is about identity—and the ways our descriptions of who we are can quietly determine who we’re allowed to become.

I’m particularly interested in this in therapy. We have increasingly sophisticated ways of explaining ourselves: attachment styles, trauma responses, personality structures, family roles, nervous-system patterns. These descriptions can bring enormous relief and understanding.

They can also become borders.

We can leave therapy with a much better explanation for why we’ll keep doing exactly what we’ve always done.

And the future hasn’t moved an inch.

Maybe the question isn’t simply, “Who am I?”

Maybe it’s:

What is this story allowing me to become?

Because sometimes you have to enter the practice before the identity catches up.

You write before you feel like a writer. You lead before you feel like a leader. You begin before you recognize the person who is beginning.

The future may require someone you have never been.

Defuturing #4: Identity. New on Substack.

Link in bio.

09/23/2026

If you’ve ever been asked to “bring your whole self” to a conference with a twelve minute lunch break, this one’s for you.

Dangerous Stories: A Therapy Salon brings us together to ask where therapy is headed, who gets to shape it, and what we might do differently.

October 1–3 at the UCI Beckman Center. Come for the conversations. Stay because someone finally finished an uncomfortable thought.

Register at the link in bio.

09/21/2026

“But how do I know?”

I hear this question constantly in therapy and coaching.

How do I know leaving is the right decision? How do I know the business will work? How do I know I’ll be happier if I move? How do I know I won’t regret it?

The difficult answer is: you don’t.

I’ve been writing about Tony Fry’s idea of defuturing—the forces operating in the present that quietly take possible futures away from us. And I think our demand for certainty can become one of those forces.

The present has an enormous advantage over the future: it has evidence.

The job you already have has evidence. The life you’re already living has evidence. The person you’ve already been has evidence.

The business you haven’t started, the book you haven’t written, the place you haven’t moved to, the life you haven’t lived—none of them can prove themselves to you.

They don’t exist yet.

This doesn’t mean abandoning discernment or making reckless decisions. We gather information. We think carefully. We consider consequences. But eventually the information runs out.

And then a different question becomes possible:

What direction do I want to participate in, knowing that I can’t know?

This is the third piece in my Substack series on Defuturing.

The Future Cannot Prove Itself to You.

Link in bio.

09/18/2026

“I can’t afford it.”

Sometimes that’s simply true. Material conditions are real. Rent is real. Debt is real. Families, health insurance, mortgages, and responsibilities are real. But sometimes money enters the story before we’ve even figured out what something would actually cost. The future gets eliminated before we’ve investigated whether it might be possible.

And then there’s the other side of money that I encounter all the time, particularly among therapists, artists, academics, and people in the helping professions: the suspicion that making money from something we care deeply about means we’ve somehow sold out.

It creates a strange double-bind.

I can’t do it because I won’t make enough.

But if I make too much, maybe I’ve become someone I don’t want to be.

Scarcity on one side. Guilt on the other. Both can become defuturing forces.

I’ve started asking a different question about money: What does this make possible?

Maybe money buys time. Maybe it keeps a project alive. Maybe it allows meaningful work to continue. Maybe it gives us enough room to build something that otherwise disappears.

Money isn’t the future. But sometimes it is fuel for continuation.

This is the second piece in my Substack series on Defuturing—the forces in the present that quietly take possible futures away from us, and how we might begin redirecting them.

Maybe the future isn’t asking you to sell out.

Maybe it’s asking you to figure out how to stay in the game.