Healing Happens Here

Healing Happens Here
The Arlington Youth Counseling Center (AYCC) is a welcoming and inclusive mental health clinic and the leading provider of outpatient and school-based child and adolescent mental health services in Arlington. Located in the historic Whittemore Robbins House, we are committed to delivering outstanding, equitable and accessible mental health services. Our mission is to ensure all youth and families have access to culturally sensitive and high-quality care, regardless of their ability to pay.
Spotlight

Kym Goldsmith's Tip
Kym's Tip: Five things for parents to know about IFS (Internal Family Systems) so they can use this language at home with their child/adolescent:
- We all have parts
We have parts and we react differently depending what part is present, activated or triggered at that moment. This is as true for our children as it is for us. This is why our children can react very differently at one moment than at the next. It’s a different part of their internal system that is reacting.
This is normal.
- Parts take on burdens
An important part of the IFS view is the distinction between our parts and their burdens:
A part holds anger but is not the anger.
A part holds the solution of shutting off, but is not the wall it is creating.
And so on.
This is why we don’t want to get rid of, ignore or fight our parts. Instead we want to get curious about them to help them release their burdened beliefs and thus create felt safety and choice from a flexible and present space.
- Trauma is the cause of burdens
Something traumatic or not is not so much about what happens to us, as much as it is how overwhelming what happens to us is. When we are met, held and witnessed in difficult situations, the pain does not stay stuck inside of us, but is able to move. When we are seen with loving eyes, met, believed and comforted after extreme or difficult events, the pain can move much more easily instead of staying stuck as burdens.
- You make sense
No matter how bad things can seem sometimes — inside of us and in our relationships in the family — there is always a meaning and a positive intention behind behavior, symptoms, feelings and reactions...What is helpful is getting curious about ourselves and/or our children.
- Self; The Inner Parent
Just as our own children need to be able to lean into the secure attachment of us, their caregivers, our inner children, or parts, need to be able to lean into the Self inside of us. Slow down. What do I notice? Bring curiosity. What’s important? Choice through Self-Leadership.