Hypnosis in Trauma-Responsive Peacebuilding

How can you use hypnosis in humanitarian work, development cooperation and peace-building?

Association for Humanitarian Hypnosis is a group of hypnotherapists, former war journalists and ex-humanitarians believing hypnosis can support and maintain the mental health and psychosocial well-being of humanitarian workers and civilians in crisis.

The organisation’s target audiences are: Humanitarian institutions; Humanitarian personnel, Refugees and migrants. Its strategic goal is to make hypnosis accepted as a mental health tool in trauma-responsive peace-building and humanitarian organisations.

We worked with international organisations such as the International Red Cross, the UN peacekeeping force, NGOs, and individuals. We tested approaches and now have a wealth of knowledge we can apply in different settings.

Here I will briefly describe the use of mental health techniques in humanitarian contexts, outlining how clinical hypnosis deals with trauma and discuss the effectiveness of hypnosis for trauma.

I will cover:

• What to use and with whom
• Why approaches normal in our practice are rarely applicable in a humanitarian context;
• How to apply a hypno-imaginative approach quasi-globally, cross-culturally and across classes;
• How we work with the results from our Hypnoscience research.

Highlight what you can take away and use in your practice.

Leading coach, consultant, researcher & speaker. More entrepreneurship, more freedom, more innovation and creativity. These were the things I wanted to achieve, when I started my own business as a coach, consultant, therapist and expert in 1998. Prior to that, after studying social sciences and doing field research, I spent 15 years at the Red Cross as a delegate, program officer and department head responsible for staff recruitment and leadership, strategy processes, training and funding. Later, as an expert, I advised several European companies and organizations, such as DaimlerChrysler, DHL, Swisscom, UBS AG or the German and Swiss governments. Since 1991, I have conducted over 15,000 solution-focused sessions as a trainer, coach and therapist. For the past ten years I have been helping people at work to achieve maximum performance with maximum well-being. I am also an active part of the pioneering Hypno-Science Project at the University of Zurich as well as a board member of the Swiss Professional Association for Hypnotherapy. Three years ago I was a co-founder of the Association for Humanitarian Hypnosis, an organisation, which uses hypnosis for support and preservation of the mental health and psychosocial well-being of people responding to humanitarian needs and the civilian population in conflict zones.