IEMT (Integral Eye Movement Therapy)
‘Trauma doesn’t have to stay traumatic’
IEMT is a rapid change therapy model that, when appropriate, can be used to efficiently and effectively resolve trauma and a wide range of other emotional issues such as:
➤ Past negative memories
➤ Present negative emotions
➤ PTS and flashbacks
➤ Panic attacks
➤ Phobias / Fears
➤ Social anxiety
➤ Identity issues
➤ General anxiety, stress, regret, overwhelm, guilt, a lack in confidence
It is important to note that during IEMT you will not be required to speak about your past trauma or current life struggle to have your issue rapidly and effectively resolved.
Many therapies do require you to communicate your issue. This has the potential to heighten anxieties and fear and lead to re-traumatisation. Understandably therefore, many people don’t seek help if they know they will have to speak about their trauma during the therapy.
This in turn, can result in their issue being left unresolved and them being left to live a life that’s dictated by their past trauma and present emotional pain, unable to move forward.
Basic information about your issue is required at the start of the session, mostly to determine whether IEMT is the appropriate approach for you or whether another modality such as NLP would be more suitable.
During the therapy itself, you only need to connect and think about ‘the thing’ (which you will be doing away!) to enable you to experience a rapid resolution of your issue. In fact, even if you can speak about it, I encourage as little conversation about ‘your thing’ as possible, to avoid validating its existence as ‘a problem’.
The IEMT result can be an empowering feeling of disassociation and separation from the issue. During the session, people are often heard saying phrases like: ‘It’s like it doesn’t belong to me anymore’ or ‘I still know what it is but it’s like it now belongs to someone else’.
Find out if IEMT is right for you.
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Or read on to learn more…
The IEMT Experience
IEMT can be hard to explain and even harder to comprehend until you’ve experienced it. Therefore, I like to use the following metaphor to help those who are new to the therapy gain an idea of the ‘before and after’ experience of IEMT:
But you’re resilient so you keep getting up and moving forward.
You’re tough, but it’s REALLY hard work.
Every day is exhausting, and you just can’t wait to crawl into bed. If you’re lucky you can sleep and make it all stop for a while, but you know the next morning that overgrown forest path will be there to greet you and become your day once more
IEMT cuts down those branches, moves the logs off the path and pulls up those pesky brambles. It essentially dismantles all the bad and unhelpful emotions blocking your life.
So now imagine you’re walking along that same forest path, but this time you’re not snagged by branches or tripped up by logs and brambles. Instead, there’s space around you and clarity in your thinking. You have a new and healthy perspective on the world around you.
You still know exactly where you are and recognise the path to be your life but now, you’re freely striding forward and the way ahead is clear.
That’s what it feels like.
I’ve experienced it myself.
And my clients will all concur.
WATCH ME EXPLAIN ⬇
And now imagine what your life would feel and be like if your path ahead was clear……….
As it is for my friend Maisie!
The Origins of IEMT
The fast-developing world of neuroscience has discovered that when we think about something our eyes move. This doesn’t mean we’re ‘looking at’ our thoughts, but that there is a correlation between thinking and eye movement.
In 2004-6 Clinician and Therapist, Andrew T. Austin, discovered that negative emotions could be alleviated when he moved his client’s eyes (by having them follow his finger movements) along specific axis while they thought about and connected with the negative memory or future event that was causing the block in their life.
He discovered he could enable his client to take the stuck negative memory and, with the movement of their eyes, file it away on a shelf in their inner library nice and tidily. The recipient can then access this memory when they choose, as with any other memory, without it becoming an intrusive thought. They still have full awareness of what happened and the scenario surrounding the negative experience, but its power has been removed and replaced with strong sense of disassociation.
In the years since, Austin developed IEMT into the simple yet powerful therapy it is today. He has trained many practitioners around the world to deliver this efficient therapy, enabling their clients to facilitate the fast dissolution of traumas, phobias, anxiety, fears and more.
How It Works
Along with the correlation between thinking and eye movement it is now known that when we experience something that makes us feel good the brain effectively files the story that we create around the experience tidily away in the archives of our mind. We are then able to draw on this good memory whenever we choose and again experience in retrospect, the happy feelings that we felt at that time.
IMAGINE…
a library lined with endless bookshelves, tidily stacked with all the books you’ve written, telling the happy stories of your life.
However, when we experience something that feels like a threat to our physical safety or emotional well-being, we go into what’s known as the ‘fight, flight or freeze’ response. This is essentially the survival part of our prehistoric brain saving us from being eaten by the incoming hungry tiger. In the moment of perceived threat, this is really helpful. The rush of adrenaline and cortisol released by the brain kicks us into high gear, so we can deal with the situation and get ourselves out of danger.
Often, once the threat has passed we can rationalise what happened and walk away having learned the important lesson to avoid that scenario or person again in the future. We can put the book we’ve written about the experience tidily away on the shelf in our inner library. We can move on and leave the experience behind us.
However, for all kinds of reasons that we’ll never understand (because we are complex beings) we sometimes remain stuck in that ‘fight, flight or freeze’ response. The situation was too much for us to rationalise and this can leave us with an on-going and often long-term internal struggle. The experience becomes lodged within us and creates what can feel like an unmovable block.
When an IEMT participant is seeking help to resolve a past trauma, they will often rationally understand it’s not what happened then that’s the problem. Rather it’s the feeling of fear or anxiety triggered when they recall the memory. That this is the unmovable block keeping them frozen in time.
In the moment of the threat, it’s almost as if the brain becomes frozen along with the body and your inner librarian doesn’t know where to file the story that you are rapidly writing about the experience.
IMAGINE…
those books containing the stories of negative experiences scattered all across the floor in a muddled pile of emotional chaos.
Of course, we all have a different definition of trauma, anxiety, stress and fear.
There’s no ‘one way’ of experiencing a negative event or emotion in the body, mind and soul. In fact, there are as many ways to experience them as there are human beings in this world.
IEMT poses the question ‘how did you learn to feel the way you do?’.
The process enables you to discover and explore answers to that question. In doing so you can find and unlock historical places inside that have become linked over the course of your life.
IMAGINE…
a page of blank paper covered in random numbers. When you join them up, dot-to-dot, in numerical order you find the jumble of numbers has transformed into a picture.
Sometimes we find we’ve linked up and drawn a life that looks like beautiful bed of roses.
Other times, we discover we’ve drawn a life that looks and feels like a tangled bed of thorny brambles.
IEMT enables you to connect these dots and untangle the thorny places from your past that are dictating how you currently feel and it’s this result that sets you free to go out and draw a beautiful bed of roses for yourself instead.
‘Just because something once happened doesn’t mean you have to spend the rest of your life being held hostage by it.’
