Category
Working with young people is a unique clinical challenge.
Due to generational divides and the fact that children and adolescents rarely seek out therapy themselves, clinicians must work extra hard to build rapport and earn buy-in.
This is even more true when many therapeutic approaches can feel like trying to teach a class lecture to a single, reluctant student. Very often, young clients sit slouched in their chairs with their hands in their hoodie pockets, giving one-word answers and looking supremely bored.
Acceptance and commitment therapy can be a breath of fresh air in this regard:
It puts the client and the clinician on equal footing from the start, inviting clients to take an active role in deciding what a good life would look like and how they want to pursue it—even if the client is a child, teen, or adolescent. In and of itself, this sense of agency goes a long way in engaging young people.
What’s more, the model focuses on lifelong skills that build resilience and transfer to any new challenge a person faces.
If you learn not to let discomfort interfere with living intentionally as a child or adolescent, it sets you up early to successfully navigate life’s many twists and turns.
All of this makes ACT attractive to clinicians who work with young people—and yet applying it in this context is not without challenges.
Register here - https://www.praxiscet.com/