Schema Therapy for Children and Adolescents (ST-CA) has become a hot topic within Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) and the world of psychotherapy in general. The approach has quickly gained popularity among clinicians and mental health services for its high success rates for difficult to treat children, adolescents and parents with more severe, chronic, entrenched difficulties who do not respond to first line approaches. This includes the significant proportion of children and adolescents who do not engage in CBT, or don't respond to CBT (or showed an initial response and then relapse).

Within the (young) client’s mode work therapists are frequently challenged by the activation of the client’s Vulnerable Child mode (VCM) that needs to be protected, nurtured, and soothed, usually before solution-oriented, functional coping strategies may be considered, and trained. 

Although in CBT we are often trained to find problem-oriented strategies and solutions as quick as possible to reduce or eliminate the symptoms, the question in ST-CA is: How to treat the VCM? The Clever/Wise mode, that is the Healthy Adult mode in ST-CA, knows what to do: “First Self-compassion, then Self-assertiveness”. 

In this seminar we first focus on psycho-education about the significance of emotions in general, and particularly on the VCM. Afterwards we help the client to identify and integrate the VCM on their inner stage (case conceptualization), followed by considerations of activities in which the VCM may be well integrated, completed by practical training procedures to build a bridge to everyday life.