As a model of psychotherapy, IFS is:
* A therapy It bears stating that the aim of IFS therapy is to make clients feel better by helping them resolve problems and ways of feeling and behaving that have arisen as a result of bad experiences, chiefly trauma and shame.
* A talking therapy. In the narrow sense that the therapeutic approach is by talking, not by medication or physical interventions etc.
* Non-pathologising It’s not your fault! Sees person as fundamentally good. Protectors are protecting the system against trauma (which we all have, ranging from mild to severe). They bring something well-intentioned and positive to the system, with no shame attached (Art Mones IFS podcasts ‘Talk with Arthur Jones on IFS as a Metamodel of Therapy), c. 28-30 mins)
* a meta-model (Art Mones) A model which is an overarching way of looking at clients and working with them, into which other approaches can be brought eg CBT, EMDR (if the goal is to eg get protectors to trust and give room)
* A systems therapy. Like family therapy since the 50s and 60s which recognises that you can’t understand and help one member of the family (eg a troubled child) without understanding/tracking the dynamics of the whole family context in which they exist (eg quarrelling parents, a withdrawn or goodie-two-shoes sibling).
* Parts based (Sometimes referred to as ‘multiplicity of mind’). Means everyone consists of several or many parts or ‘subpersonalities’ rather than one unified identity that is always the same and always transparently knowable to itself. Parts arise as a result of an in response to traumas, small or severe, that we all experience in life, especially when we are young and don’t have the ability to cope with trauma so easily.
These parts are further divided into those who had the bad experience(s) and those that arise to protect and contain them for their own safety and for the safety of the whole system.
* Going back in time. We live in the present but our present ways of feeling and being are strongly influenced by past experiences. Bad things that happened to us can affect us profoundly but are pushed down by our systems (exiled) in an effort to protect both the exile from its persistent trauma and the system from the disturbances that that trauma can bring to the smooth functioning of the system as a whole.
* Transgenerational (see definition of transgenerational trauma in Wikipedia)It’s not your fault! (part 2) Many of the issues we struggle with in our lifetime were handed down to us by our parents/caregivers or their parents etc, who in turn struggled with these issues and couldn’t resolve them.
* Constraint/release IFS brings relief to the client’s system by unburdening them of problems they have carried around sometimes for along time. Burdens are the residue of the bad experiences of the parts.
* Surface/depth ?? There are things on the surface that may not be the same as the things underneath or that may be caused by the things underneath but in a way that is not immediately evident. Eg a problem that appears a certain way at first is found to be on further enquiry not what is actually going on.
* Psycho-spiritual Self is the psycho-spiritual element though you don’t have to see it this way if you don’t want to. IFS stands on its own as an empirical, evidence-based therapy. Self can be seen as the mature adult self (with a small ‘s’) who has the wisdom, compassion, experience and know-how to be with and help the younger traumatised self. Can however be seen as psycho-spiritual because individual Self taps into a greater, transcendent energy in the world, one that is greater than (and contains) linear time and space.