Helping persons to cope with stress and performance anxiety in important social situations like exams, medical treatment, important presentations and athletic competitions are our main focus for research. Both quantitative and qualitative research methods are used. One important research question is to examine if hypnosis can enhance the efficacy of cognitive behavioural therapy programs (CBT). We have prepared a manual for the CBT intervention program and intervention. We are also testing how our CBT-coping-program will influence Norwegian top-athletes performance in important competitions. A semi structured interview after the challenging performance for the participants are taped and represents the phenomenological data for our qualitative analysis.

Qualitative methods are also used analyzing clinical psychotherapeutic work with performance anxiety, competition behaviour and medical interventions. The mindfulness tradition and training in stress reduction techniques are important issues and ingredients in our CBT-intervention and research program.