Spotlight on the ATTUNE Project: A Collective Approach to Healing Collective Trauma

In two years marked by prolonged crisis and profound uncertainty, פרויקט אטון (ATTUNE) has emerged as a framework for collective healing rooted not in quick fixes, but in presence, relational capacity, and long-term learning. Led by Thomas Hübl, one of the leading thinkers and practitioners in the field of collective trauma, ATTUNE brings a trauma-informed architecture to Israeli society, one that recognizes that many of today’s challenges cannot be addressed at the level of the individual alone.

For more than two decades, Hübl has explored how historical, intergenerational, and systemic trauma shapes societies from beneath the surface, often operating as an invisible force that influences behavior, perception, leadership, and decision-making. His work rests on a simple but demanding insight: trauma is not only what happened, but what could not be processed at the time, and therefore continues to live on in bodies, relationships, institutions, and cultures. “Trauma isn’t only about the event,” Hübl explains. “It’s about what remains unsaid and how that unintegrated material continues to shape our collective life.”

From Individual Healing to Collective Capacity

At the heart of ATTUNE is a shift in focus, from trauma as an individual pathology to trauma as a collective field. Hübl’s approach does not replace individual therapeutic work; rather, it complements it by addressing the relational and systemic dimensions of trauma that no amount of one-on-one treatment can resolve on its own. “When collective trauma is not acknowledged,” Hübl notes, “it shows up indirectly-through polarization, breakdowns in trust, and an inability to think or act together.”

Drawing on 25 years of global work including the US, in post-war societies like Germany and Austria or communities affected by genocide and long-standing conflict like Rwanda, Hübl has developed an architecture for collective and community healing with Germany and Rwanda serving as examples of global engagement of this work. A defining feature of ATTUNE is its understanding of trauma not as an abstract concept, but as a lived field-one that affects nervous systems, group dynamics, and leadership decisions in real time.

In practice, ATTUNE focuses on three interrelated foundations when working with organizations and communities.

Individual regulation and awareness. Supporting people (particularly those in positions of responsibility) to recognize stress responses, build nervous-system regulation, and remain present under pressure.

Relational capacity. Strengthening the ability of groups and institutions to listen, stay connected, and co-regulate, especially in moments of fear, conflict, or polarization.

Systemic coherence. Helping organizations and communities identify how unintegrated collective trauma appears as recurring patterns-such as mistrust, fragmentation, or stalled collaboration-and develop shared practices to address these patterns constructively.

Working Inside a Collective Trauma Field

Throughout 2025, a central thread of the work in Israel was the cultivation of leadership capacity under stress. Rather than encouraging leaders to bypass pain or complexity, ATTUNE invites them to remain connected within it-supporting conditions where learning, integration, and ethical action can emerge.

This work is often described through the lens of “I / You / We” capacities:

• I-skills: awareness of stress, triggers, and self-regulation

• You-skills: co-regulation and attuned relational presence

• We-skills: revealing collective trauma symptoms and their roots in community healing spaces

  
  

Together, these capacities allow social systems to metabolize stress rather than reproduce it. “Resilience isn’t about avoiding difficulty,” Hübl emphasizes. “It’s the ability to stay in relationship with challenges without losing agency, learning capacity, or ethical orientation. Language also matters, when societies gain language for what they’re living through, they gain capacity to relate to it differently.”

Fieldwork Across Israeli Society

Throughout 2025, ATTUNE engaged with a wide range of Israeli frameworks, spanning public service, spiritual and community leadership, organizational leadership, and large-scale public learning initiatives. These included professional lectures and trainings for community social workers affiliated with the Ministry of Welfare, educational–spiritual engagement with the Israeli Rabbinical Network, nationwide online programming with Body Mind Israel, and closed sessions with senior leadership and executive teams.

Across these diverse contexts, the shared purpose was to support trauma-informed leadership and community resilience within a sustained collective trauma field. Participants were invited to examine how trauma shapes trust, behavior, and collaboration-and to practice creating safer, more attuned containers for dialogue and action. Sharon Graff, Hübl’s Chief of Staff explains: “One of the most important things we’re doing is helping people recognize that what they’re experiencing is not individual failure, it’s a collective nervous system under prolonged stress.”

Israel in a Global Conversation

Hübl’s first book, Healing Collective Trauma, has been translated into twelve languages and will be published in Hebrew in early 2026 by Prague Publishing House-marking a significant moment in bringing this language and framework into Israeli public discourse.

Subsequent works, including Attuned and Releasing Our Burdens (co-authored with Richard Schwartz, founder of Internal Family Systems), further bridge personal healing with collective and intergenerational responsibility.

Hübl is deeply attached to Israel’s specific realities and lives in Tel Aviv, but he situates this work within a broader global context. Many societies today are grappling with polarization, unresolved historical wounds, and declining trust in institutions. Israel, in this sense, is not treated as an exception, but as a revealing case, highlighting questions that are increasingly faced worldwide.

The work resists simplistic narratives or rapid solutions. Instead, it emphasizes patience, relational maturity, and the courage to stay present with what has not yet found integration.

Looking Ahead

ATTUNE is not an intervention or a prescription. It is an invitation-to long-term processes of collective healing that strengthen the capacity to remain present within pain, conflict, and uncertainty, without losing relationship, responsibility, or hope.

Seen through this lens, the activities of 2025 represent the early foundations of a broader aspiration: to help cultivate an architecture of collective healing that enables communities not only to survive trauma, but to grow wiser, more connected, and more resilient through it.