About Dr. Sara Beneit

I'm a Medical doctor expert in Ericksonian Psychotherapy.

I know the multicultural environment. I have been there... and I know how you feel.

Read my story

Dr. Sara Beneit in a humanitarian field environment — A life and practice shaped by medicine, international cooperation, and psychotherapy.

As a doctor by training and a humanitarian by vocation, I declare myself humane and humanitarian, since I cannot conceive of one without the other.

Why this work

From a very young age I was sensitive to human suffering.

From a very young age I was sensitive to human suffering, and very soon I became aware of other existences that were more disadvantaged than mine, developing a natural inclination to help others.

Dr. Sara Beneit in a community health workshop with children

Humanitarian mission airstrip travel from an airplane window

Medicine as a way to care for others

Thinking about what could be the best way to contribute something to humanity, I decided on Medicine as the best way to care for others. Feeling privileged to belong to a part of the world with greater development in material terms, I chose to exercise my knowledge in more disadvantaged countries through International Cooperation programs.

The Ecuadorian Amazon Forest

This decision led me to what would be my first field experience: the Ecuadorian Amazon Forest. Practicing Western medicine in such a precarious place tested my ability to adapt, both physically and emotionally. That was definitely the vocation I wanted to follow, so I continued my training in that direction by studying Infectious and Tropical Diseases at a Peruvian Institute.

Red Cross, families, and mental health

As fate would have it, I was sent back to my hometown in Spain, where I had the opportunity to contact the Red Cross and start working in a Centre for the Care of Drug Addicts. This position of team coordination and therapeutic service to those affected and their families provided experience in group therapy from a mental health perspective, and the opportunity to develop techniques for listening to and communicating with families and their social environment.

International Cooperation and the ICRC

As I continued to be very interested in working in other countries, I moved to the Department of International Cooperation, becoming part of the great family of the International Red Cross Movement. After expanding my academic knowledge with a degree in International Health, I began my humanitarian work with the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Countries, conflict, and emotional intensity

I started as a Medical Delegate of the Department of Protection, ensuring that basic care for security detainees in prisons was respected beyond ideologies and political or territorial conflicts, and later moved to the position of Coordinator of Health Programs. This journey took me through the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Peru; Saharan Refugee Camps in the south of Algeria, Myanmar, Chad, Indonesia, Pakistan, Liberia, the Philippines and Afghanistan.

Field reality

Years of experience living and working as an expatriate.

In conflictive and emotionally intense environments, sharing successes and difficulties with multidisciplinary and multicultural teams.

Humanitarian field reconstruction setting in an international mission context — Field work requires physical, cultural, and emotional adaptation.

Dr. Sara Beneit supporting community health work with children — Humanitarian work means multidisciplinary and multicultural teams.

Airstrip view during humanitarian mission travel — Mission life also means adapting physically, culturally, and emotionally.

Turning point

There must be another way to do this work without so much wear and tear.

Facing the clash between the expectations of the humanitarian ideal and a raw and violent reality, with values that differ from those that brought you there, means learning how to maintain the motivation that what one can contribute counts.

Aware of the importance of digesting and assimilating each lived experience, I decided to space out the time between mission and mission, dedicating those moments to taking care of myself, studying other subjects of interest, or working in the health system of my country of origin so as not to lose perspective of how it was to live in my own culture.

However, as a doctor of reference also for colleagues, I witnessed how the “humanitarian system” was gradually undermining their morale and energy, entering the maelstrom myself. This made me think that there must be another way to do this work without so much wear and tear.

At that point, I decided it was time to change my way of working and start helping people from their capacities. This led me to recycle myself professionally through study and training in Ericksonian Psychotherapy, Clinical Hypnosis and Neurolinguistic Programming, acquiring the necessary tools to provide support also from the psychological side.

After time dedicated to the general population, I decided that my knowledge and experience are much more useful in the humanitarian field. So here I am offering you what I have learned and lived, what I know to help you live your experience better, because it is possible to do it differently.

Why me

Because I know the system from the inside.

I am a psychotherapy doctor

I acquired the necessary tools to provide support also from the psychological side.

I know the multicultural environment

Years of experience living and working with multidisciplinary and multicultural teams.

I have been there

I know how you feel, because I have lived and worked in conflictive and emotionally intense environments.

"Dr. Sara Beneit has counselled me and helped me find peace in that critical situation. Her guidance was invaluable, and I emerged from the difficult conundrum in one piece."

P.K.

UN HABITAT

The whirlwind

If this world has started to wear you down, you do not have to carry it alone.

Independent from the institution. A confidential space with someone who knows the humanitarian and multicultural environment from the inside.

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