IPF guided-meditation helps repair attachment wounds: 

The Ideal Parent Figures (IPF) Protocol is one of the 3 pillars of attachment repair, used to heal attachment wounds — as described by Harvard psychologists David S. Elliott and Daniel P. Brown in their 2016 3 Pillars Model.

The 3 Pillars are unique to each person and include (1) cultivating collaborative relational abilities, (2) enhancing metacognitive ability and functioning, and (3) creating new, positive attachment representations with the IPF Protocol.

Along with supporting a move into secure attachment (as measured by the AAI), the model can be used prior to trauma processing to resolve attachment insecurity — a gift because many studies show “trauma processing” can re-traumatize those with attachment insecurity. Additionally, The 3 Pillars Model sometimes resolves trauma without processing it.

The Three Pillars Model is also exciting because therapeutic models are considered effective when they have a treatment effect size of 0.8. The treatment effect size of IPF guided-meditation is 6.23 (Cohen), with an average treatment duration of 35-50 hours. Typical investment is 1-2 hours weekly.  

During an IPF guided meditation, the meditator will relax deeply and imagine themselves as a young child having experiences with parent figures, who are ideal in every way to their nature and needs. The facilitator will reflect, amplify, and guide the experience as the meditator shares it, so that it becomes increasingly natural to be able to feel and draw on the supportive and nourishing resource of internalized secure attachment.

As secure attachment is reinforced, the meditator will increasingly feel amplified internal security within and outside their sessions. They will begin to easily access the felt sense of having emotionally safe, reliable, and physically present parents who are genuinely interested in and delighted by them. And they will begin to feel the possibility of nurturing secure relationships with other people in their life, including their romantic partner(s).

During meditation, the ideal parents reinforce security by consistently offering physical and emotional protection that includes perfect attunement to the meditator-as-child’s behavior, internal state, and developmental stage.

The ideal parents know just the right ways to help the meditator feel soothed and reassured. They help the meditator accept, contain and feel safe with all their feelings. These ideal parents encourage inner and outer exploration by listening carefully and validating the meditator’s feelings, accepting their inner experiences, and supporting and encouraging them to try new things, discover what they like, and explore what inspires them.

Furthermore, these ideal parents provide experiences that are the positive opposite of harmful experiences real caregivers may have unwittingly failed to prevent or even caused the meditator. They repair the wounds that the meditator’s real caregivers would have wanted to protect the child from experiencing, had those real caregivers been more resourced and able to offer attuned care themselves. 

The 9 outcomes of secure attachment, summarized by Dan Siegel are body regulation, attuned communication, emotional balance and equanimity, response flexibility, insight, empathy, fear modulation, intuition, and morality.