Problems young people have to deal with nowadays are not that different from the problems they had to deal with 20 years ago, even if they have different faces: rejection, frustration, conflicts, challenges, etc… It all goes back to cope with painful thoughts and feelings that show up while they are trying to live their lives the best they can. Funny enough, adults tell children and adolescents what they should do in their lives – to study, to have friends, etc. - but no one tells them what to do when inner experience gets in the way. Or if they do, it is only to tell them to do the impossible – get rid of inner experience: “don’t thing that way”, “don’t be sad”. Then, thoughts and feelings become the enemy to be feared and avoided…  Although it is perfectly understandable why anyone would want to avoid suffering, it is also well know that this will hardly work when applied to our inner world. In helping children and adolescents cope with these old problems, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy can be an innovative quite useful approach. Rather than targeting the content, frequency and form of inner experience, ACT seeks to change the relationship with these phenomenon to decrease their behavioural impact. This represents a counterintuitive alternative including the acceptance of thoughts and feelings as they are (just thoughts and feelings), to take time to attend to them with curiosity, and to carry on with life guided by what is most important, even when these thoughts and feelings are really stormy and try to get in the way. In this applied session these and other issues will be addressed as well as the therapeutic process and some strategies to help children and adolescents’ live their lives according to what matters.

Maria do Céu Salvador is an Auxiliary Professor at Coimbra University in Portugal. She teaches cognitive behavioral models and cognitive behavior therapy with children and adolescents. She also supervises students in their last year of training in CBT. She belongs to the Research Centre for Cognitive Behavioral Studies and Intervention, where her main research fields are assessment instruments, social anxiety in adolescents and adults, its comprehension models, treatment efficacy, and bridging the gap between second and third generation therapies. She is also an accredited CBT psychotherapist and supervisor.