In this first podcast episode, Jude and I introduce the concept of Queering IFS.
Below you will find the Youtube Video link and the auto-generated transcript
0:01 - 1:03hi Jude hi alessio nice to see you I'm so excited to be here yeah to do our first podcast together our first one yes yes first of many I hope right yeah absolutely yeah yeah so welcome to our audience to the querquering ifs podcast by Jude and delesio we thought we'd introduce ourselves first to break the eyes right um so should I go first or would you like to go first you go first all good so um my name is alessio I use he as pronouns and I have come to this point and I'm very excited actually to doing
1:01 - 1:52this to be doing this with Jude um because we are both a big part of the ifs community in particular of the queer and neurodiverse uh piece of the ifs community and recently we presented at the 2024 conference on neuro query in ifs um I am a queer therapist I also identify as neurod divergent particularly in particular I'm dyslexic and I have other small forms of neur Divergence including Ehler Danlos hypermobility and bits and pieces of autism although not diagnosed and we don't need the
1:48 - 2:37diagnosis but I already feel parts of me exposed to some forums and places where they kind of say you know you should get a a diagnosis but we'll get that at some point get Jude right absolutely so yeah so I am an ifs therapist but I'm also a trainer for the ifs Institute currently an assistant trainer um I am a an approved clinical consultant for the ifs Institute and I live and practice from the UK only online I practice mainly ifs almost exclusively anyway I think that's as much as my brain allows me to remember right now
2:34 - 3:28for introducing myself so Jude why don't you yeah sure tell us about you yeah hello I'm Jude um I am also an ifs certified ifs therapist and approved clinical consultant um I also live and work in the UK only online as well um I um diagnosed ADHD and self-diagnosed autistic with a sprinkling of Dyslexia and discalculia in the mix as well and as Alesia was saying I think it's really important that I also say now that self- diagnosis as far as we're concerned and in most of the neurodivergent Community is equal to and Val and as
3:26 - 4:15valid if not more and I might get to that when we talk about diagnosis than uh medical diagnosis because it's about your lived experience and you know you um abely that's me I think that's all my brain will allow me to remember as well yeah yeah yeah and then we were going to say why we're here why we're doing this yes yeah so um you know what comes to mind you with be might be nice to give the same intro that we gave at the conference just telling people our slightly different Journeys and how we came into neuro queering yeah together and I totally forgot to say anything
4:13 - 5:02about my queerness didn't I just then so yeah I Al yeah let's this is what happens when we rely on our brains um yeah I also things happen when we beautiful things happen beautiful things happen when we rely on our brains and sometimes I forget things so yeah I also use she they pronouns I would I variously identified under different parts of the queer umbrella but I would say I'm gender queer pansexual um and those feel like the most the the most fitting labels for me at the moment beautiful you know I realized
5:00 - 5:56that they haven't said much about my queer identities either but maybe it's for another episode but yeah I think when we talk about our Journeys it's how we how we I mean I I got to meet you in person right Jude during a a PA assignment who program assistant for a for a training for a level one training for ifs in Bristol yeah and I come mainly from an lgbtq i a now noticed I had to write it down because with all the AI that we've got my brain cannot say lgbtq IIA anymore dyslexia Central but yeah that so I I must
5:54 - 6:48apologize in advance for for the many times I get it wrong but lgbtq i a plus should be the right way to say it so I come mainly from that background my entire training as a psychotherapist I I served the lgbtq IIA Community I've always been open and out as um as an LGBT therapist it's on my website it's I don't hide it from from from anybody professionally nor personally um so that was my entry into queer queering and we'll talk more about that later and then the more I discovered myself and the more I started to work
6:46 - 7:32with neurodivergent people because I as I was training to become a psychotherapist I was still teaching in schools I was a maths teacher for here in the UK and I started to work with ADHD students with autistic students and then started to realize I could actually work with with them it was it was okay it was fine but then you know many many other people had not been able to connect with these students which then made me think okay you know how come it's so so spontaneous to me and the more I researched and learned about uh these
7:30 - 8:15names that we give to to these differences I the more I found myself to be one and you know dyslexia i' had always been my father is dyslexic for example and I thought I go of course that's me again I cannot remember dates or sequences just impossible for my brain so I I slowly embraced neurodiversity I discovered or helped many of my clients discover that they are the verse as well and then I met Jude that kind of comes almost at the same point from a different direction so can you yeah you
8:12 - 9:00say yes so I was yeah I guess coming so I've been a therapist for many years as well and I've always been um I always used to when I work and services get the neurodivergent clients who were s not not dissimilar to what you're saying the ones that other people found difficult um and for the recording that's for the for the audio that's in uh inverted Commerce difficult or or or people couldn't work with or or whatever else and uh I never really saw the issue I was I always like well this is we understand each other this is absolutely
8:58 - 9:51fine without um without a reflection on what that might mean for me and we'll get onto this later as well I think in terms of late diagnosis and who who does and doesn't get diagnosed or recognize their own neurodiversity due to various societal assumptions about um gender for one um and then maybe about four or five years ago was when I did realize my own ADHD nness as a start um through listening to a lecture um a a Psychotherapy lecture and realizing that in fact rather than talking about my client it was talking about me um and that was concurrent with
9:47 - 10:35my ifs journey and my I think um my qu's journey as well have all been kind of at the same time and so we just done that for a few years and then yeah was doing a program being a program assistant on a level one and met alessio and I think in our staff meeting before we even started I had before I'd met anybody I knew that it was really important for me and my parts and my system to when I was introducing myself say something about my identity as neurod divergent and alesio was the other person in the room and oh and I and using my pronouns and Alesia was the other person in the
10:32 - 11:19room who said I really appreciate you speaking for neurodivergence and actually that's something I don't remember exactly what you said but but but that was our moment of that was our first moment of connection and then and now here we are yes yeah beautiful and the importance of of sharing pronouns from the outset as opposed to to I don't know um especially as a staff member someone who represents the organization um but yeah it was a an important moment you know when you say you know moment of
11:18 - 12:03your life I thought oh yeah because it's rare usually I'm the only one who right who holds the I don't want to say the burden but the the responsibility for represent in those communities and it makes such a big difference every time I speak in staff meetings or in in in trainings in front of participants you know just just to say that there's always at least two participants who feel empowered and liberated and of course that sharing is what got us here Jude you know so the importance of sharing a little bit of yeah minority identity absolutely and I always and I find the same you know
12:01 - 12:51whenever I I'm in a big group and I say something about neurodivergence whether other people in that big group then go oh me too um in that moment or otherwise often if it's a training or something then you'll be in the lunch queue or getting a tea and coffee and then someone will come up to you and say you know I think I was wondering about whether I'm Autistic or whether I'm ADHD or whether my partner is so it's yeah it really opens opens doors yeah yeah so so getting back to our loose plan yeah is it why are we here right what brought us here yeah yeah a lot of conversations around these topics a lot
12:49 - 13:41of conversations true also desire for a less structured way of um presenting to the public because when you see a presentation when you have a workshop to do you always get like an edited version of it but there's so much that comes out every time I speak to you Jude that I think part of what we are planning to do is to share our conversations really exactly we might not give many answers but I believe there is a lot of Merit in in listening to you know our curiosity about various
13:36 - 14:26aspects of neurodiversity and ifs absolutely yeah yeah and there isn't a huge amount of information available there's people doing amazing work in in in in this field and really want to celebrate all of the different voices and all of the different people running trainings writing things presenting it's not just us but in terms of the information that's out there and available to maybe therapists and practitioners or maybe um people who are looking for ifs for themselves um who are queer or
14:24 - 15:21 neurodivergent or a mixture of of both or any other marginalized identities um it's not a huge amount available without needing to go on a training or or or or or or or you know without without some kind of pay wall in front of it yeah and I like that you talk about wall and I think one of the latest phrases you gifted me Jude is the what was it called access fatigue right how difficult it is to access good information um and exactly you know this information exists but you know if you Google it you just have to go through quite a lot of other information because
15:18 - 16:06the moment you go into neur diversity queer maybe less so with queerness but you get a lot of medical words difficult to get and even in when it comes to IFS you either need to go to a paid for course maybe even one of our courses right yeah yeah or which are great yeah or you need to buy a book but then the book has been written for um for professionals so we're kind of trying to also provide information that's accessible to the public somewhat yeah um because because the public and people who are neurodivergent who who are queer encounter a
16:04 - 16:56lot of barriers when it comes to to therapy so it's important even for them to to know that there might be they can request certain things of their therapists from language to respecting self diagnosis like we said earlier um so I guess it's important to hear professionals talk about about these things absolutely empower people anybody who's in interested in in learning more yeah yeah so this is for well anyone who has an interest in these areas but it's also not just for therapists and practitioners and we hope it's got a
16:51 - 17:47broader yeah reach absolutely absolutely because you know it's it's a amazing that a lot of people have come to our workshops and our conference uh talk and of given us good feedback that's why we've got quite interested and enthusiastic in doing this but it's also true that if the public is educated and they start asking for their therapists to be knowledgeable to be yeah to be trained to be competent that also encourages professionals to seek um information so I guess it's yeah it's it's for anybody who is interested in accessing therapy that is friendly and
17:43 - 18:40accessible to neurodiverse and queer people yeah yeah yeah so does that cover what brought us here well yeah I guess so but maybe it's also worth saying I think it's important to say that part of that is also because um we are aware that not all therapy is so great for queer and neurodivergent oh yes there are a lot of ways that therapy therapists can let clients down through lack of knowledge through lack of
18:38 - 19:26awareness um and that's a reality a lot of clients will come having not had great experiences so that was the other reason for making this just available for people to say hey look there are there are ways that therapy can work for you with the right in with with with the right with the right therapist with the right with the right everything yeah absolutely and thank you for this making it very explicit Jude I am currently fresh from preparing some material for um for two lectures on
19:23 - 20:19um polyamorous clients and for King clients who are also kind of under represented areas of the LGBTQIA+ community um and there is research that shows how it takes even it takes courage to share that you know you belong to to a minority somehow um like when you and I shared our pronouns and our neurodiversity right now it is the exception right it so we live and we swim in a in a in a world where minorities need to kind of have courage to express
20:16 - 21:07themselves and the therapy room in theory should be that place without judgment yet it takes it could be a look that your therapist gives you it could be the fact that all of a sudden what you're sharing becomes the problem like the problem is not that I'm polyamorous and therefore it should be I should I will feel better if I have less than one less than two or more relationships right the problem isn't that I'm am autistic but easily that becomes the problem or it can go the other way that the therapist just let it let it just go and leaves the client to
21:03 - 21:56bring it up again and again without appreciating how much courage it took maybe to share you know am adhd yeah so there's a lot that might not go as well as one would hope it went in the Professional Service that usually you pay a lot of money for many people I know because then I you know I I meet friends and you know colleagues and I ask them they usually tell me they do therapy and ask them how is going and many of them struggle to bring up some topics to their therapist and they don't know what to do they don't know how to bring it up or so it is in the a it's in the field and I
21:53 - 22:48don't think I haven't had anybody speaking to the public about it to be honest the end users to those ones go to therapy to say not just yeah this this is this is this could be better yeah yes you deserve the space where you can talk about these things in a way that's good for you yeah I think that covers the topic I think I think we've established why we're here yeah I think yeah yeah so what else did you want to talk about for this one for this first episode we've
22:44 - 23:35got well we should probably say what ifs is yeah we talked about being ifs therapists and then and also what is queering what is queering general okay right so what is ifs where do we start great question well let's do a short answer because people can find Long answers in lots of different places yes in terms of the model you can find really good information on the ifs Institute website for example or on my blog or on Alessio's fabulous blog yes yeah you should go there but ultimately and internal family systems ifs
23:31 - 24:14is a model of therapy that we both practice um you could also see it as more than a model of therapy it's just a a a way of seeing humans that we have a system of Parts within us and self and parts I'm not a big fan of subpersonalities how do you feel about that phrase um [Music] neutral I would say I don't mind it but it doesn't speak much to me what would you yeah because go on please it almost somehow
24:11 - 25:01makes them less than right sub personality there is a main personality then a sub personality um yeah I like Parts more yeah and at the same time I know it took me a while to understand fully what parts are and and what the self is which in our first terms is um a different thing from Parts um and something we could definitely deep dive on at some point absolutely um you know it's a very
24:57 - 25:46personal yet iive concept and maybe it's good that it says elusive because it really encourages people to find and get in contact with their own self and definitely with their own Parts you know um yeah part being so if we don't use sub subpersonalities I think we can describe them as um almost little people that almost live inside of our system um little in the that it might not have all the same full development that we might have somehow so that could be younger Parts
25:44 - 26:35there could be parts that share our age generally we parts are more kind of a less less physical in a way they're like energy is also at times and they share this physicality that we have yeah yeah and we and we have parts that have different roles so we have parts that protect us parts that might um and then parts that are we call an ifs Exiles or sometimes we call them little ones ones that carry the burdens of things that have happened to us and through the process of s we help clients
26:31 - 27:28to know what it is for them to find their own self energy to be in and also to meet their part from this place um to create change in the system to allow protectors to maybe relax or change roles with if they want to and for those Exiles to be unburdened it's a beautiful model I think we can both agree absolutely I mean and and I think the queering of the ifs Modo starts already here somehow yeah um and because even as we try to speak to use the names of protectors Exiles I think I think ifs uses this language because it's been
27:25 - 28:12developed mainly as a trauma treatment modality so therefore all the parts that we name are those ones that are encountered when dealing with trauma treatment right so but if we had discovered or if you look at ifs from another perspective with another Focus we might give different names to the parts or we might meet different parts so so yeah parts are you know when there is trauma they organize in Exiles that hold burdens and then protectors that try for that pain not to come to the surface again and when there is no trauma though then Parts just do their own things like28:10 - 28:51our organs do their own things and we don't even notice them but usually when you have a stomach pain is because there is something bad with your stomach sometimes I like to think about Parts this way that if a part is kind of knocking at my Consciousness want some attention is usually because something need healing or there is a yeah issue otherwise they just do their own thing and everything is good and speaking of trauma one thing that quite unifying in neurodiverse and neuro queer
28:49 - 29:34populations is that we probably have had some trauma with being being marginalized identity whether whether it's something we've known about ourselves or not through experience being in a world that is more heteronormative and neurotypical as well yeah a world that is much more heteronormative and neurotypical than maybe we are yeah and I'm sure we'll have an entire episode on on on this one that I'm going to say now it's that NE Divergence and queerness are not part mm
29:31 - 30:15um which is all part of you know an element of neuronormativity or heteronormativity that somehow every difference from the norm can be easily classed as part that can be therefore changed and stuff and and that's a big piece that we're going to get to yeah yeah it is a big piece and if anyone's ears are prick are picking up right now saying what what's this then yeah we will be we will be talking about this but but it is an episode worthy subject yeah and I wanted to go to to the idea of of what is queering and yes um I know by myself that I kind
30:12 - 31:06of do it automatically but J do you mind if I let you provide the official definition so definitely a more academic one than I can okay well yes I I can try so I came across queering um when I was doing my research Masters um which was about 25 years ago um as a from an academic perspective where U this was in social sciences where it where queering was a process of questioning and subverting and asking why about taken for granted cultural norms and assumptions mostly around heteronormativity so heter it being the way we assume that the norm is
31:03 - 31:47heterosexuality that we assume a couple means one man and one woman um and and everything else that that that entails so wearing came up through Academia as a way of questioning this and saying well hang on why why is this how is this and why is this and you know the way that all that that this Norm was embedded in everything embedded in research embedded in literature embedded as this this is the truth this is status quo and of course it isn't it's a lens it's a it's a it's a perspective but it is not there is no universal truth around what is normal
31:46 - 32:41what is right and um so I've I've been in I've been in this kind of queering questioning academic world for long time but then more recently coming to the concept of wow and of course well so that's queering academic queering but then there's also queerness um which is a massive umbrella which maybe you would say more about what that means and yeah sure um for me press is all the umbrella that includes let's say Divergence from heterosexuality it
32:38 - 33:35includes both two dimensions three dimensions of gender and sexuality and it's beautiful to see so many different names and labels that get created as people Embrace their identities but um you know it's it's the moment you don't feel like you you're attracted to people of the opposite sex and that definition already goes into an undefined not well defined ground um then you're heterosexual and and any deviation from that really is considered to be to be queer there are within the queer Community there are identities that get more media coverage like maybe the gay community or the33:31 - 34:25lesbian then we have got the transgender and that's already bleeding into gender so then we have different gender identities from um agendered to non-binary in terms of sexuality we have asexuality we have demisexual we have pansexual we have bisexual so so yeah that's quite a lot which which shows you know how come we haven't really looked into that earlier and heterosexuality has been kept as this you know best better of all yeah and until oh sorry go on and and just I'm just where of time a bit think yeah
34:23 - 35:14going on longer than we should of course we have of course so I was hoping to move on to the final piece of this one which we queer in ifs but yeah and I just wanted to say um it's that it's important to hear hearing queering and queerness and and how these things come together that both of these where was used to be a slur it used to be an insult um mostly aimed at um gay people um and it was reclaimed as through the political movements of the 70s and 80s um to be this label that that queer that we Embrace now as as as a with with
35:10 - 36:01pride and queer ring was also a political movement to question and subvert these kind of this heteronormative Dogma that that kept everything else out kept everything else down so it's important to say these are not just these are words with energy these are words with char LGE and it's a process and it's really important what would you like to move on to well exactly to this one the que ifs thank you for what you just put your our attention on because the queering of ifs hasn't really got much to do to making I don't know ifs gay or making it LGBT
35:55 - 36:50friendly it's about questioning and yes trying as much as possible to understand how much ifs has been influenced by normativity of any kind in its exactly in its conception and conceptualization because inevitably it's been created in a world that is heteronormative and neuronormative so we're just looking at these two aspects here is neuro queering yet there is a lot there you know we want to ask in this journey together we will question I how much of how much heteronormativity is contained implicitly almost in ifs and how much
36:47 - 37:35neuronormativity exists already there and also how then not only it is embedded in the model but also who uses the model can also perpetrate further neuronormativity and heteronormativity so that's why exactly we want to speak to the users to those ones who use ifs for work for their own growth and also to to the tools themselves in a way exactly yeah and it feels important to say because we've mentioned the term a couple of times now that neuro queering which comes from Nick Walker's work which I'm sure we will come back to again through these
37:30 - 38:17podcasts is the simultaneous queering of neuronormativity and heteronormativity at the same time these things being linked and we will definitely come back to that but I was important to say yes in case anyone's wondering what the hell that term means as well absolutely yeah yes yeah and the Alessio you've talked before about ifs being a model which quers the mind it yes true and we've talked before about that so we there is something about ifs that can be quite liberating from other therapy models in terms of how we approach the individual and what they and their their
38:14 - 39:00subjective experience of themselves and we're also queering ifs yeah yeah you're right yeah probably that's why both you and I and many other people who represent different diverse diversities and minorities are more and more interested in invested in ifs is because in itself it contains a lot of of ideas that have queered the usual way of thinking about Psychotherapy and the person in general we say multiplicity of mind like different parts um to indicate that with ifs we don't believe there is just one thought and one mind doing all the thinking at once
38:59 - 39:44and there is more quering that has happened there like the whole concept of self is quite revolutionary the the the founder Richard Schwarz wrote an entire book called no bad parts to put this point across that you know what we label as bad behavior doesn't mean that inherently we are bad at actually at the core of who we are there is this self presence who exudes compassion curiosity courage and other things starting with SE that I don't remember at the minute um but yeah but so that's in
39:41 - 40:39itself ifs is doing a lot and we want to make it take it further because why not yeah okay does that feel like we've ticked our boxes for number for for our first one so Jude is there anything you want to add before we wrap this first we can wrap yeah shall we say where people can find out more so we've got our website sure I'm I'm at anchored in.co and I'm at therapy with alo.com yeah and we hope you've enjoyed this today yeah I'm thinking if there are other other links but we can put them um
40:36 - 40:58maybe writing somewhere around where we put this podcast um but yeah yeah well thank you for listening yes thank you for listening thank you Jude thank you alio and we'll be back with more absolutely bye bye
