Integral Eye Movement Therapy (IEMT) is a brief therapy technique that aims to create emotional change by addressing the experiences by which the person learned to feel the way they feel. Sessions can be very brief, lasting around 20 minutes, but for more complex problems 1-3 longer session of around 1-2 hours may be needed.
| Eye Movement Therapy |
IEMT is also used to address aspect of a person's identity that may be troublesome to them. For example in cases where a person of low self esteem “hates themselves.” In a situation like this, the “I” that hates, the feeling of hate, the feeling of being hated and the “self” that is the subject of this emotion hate are all addressed.
Practitioners are carefully trained to listen for identity statements within the client's reporting of their experiences, and will pay particular attention to pronouns (I, me, self, you) in order to discover deeper and more complex emotional experiences that may be underlying the client's distress.
Integral Eye Movement Therapy has an inbuilt advantage over many therapies in that the client is not expected to be able to article their suffering and distress for the benefit of the therapist. The treatment algorithms are designed that the client only need feel the feelings associated with the presenting problem and this is sufficient for the therapist to be able to go to work resolving the presenting problems. As a result, IEMT is an ideal therapy for working with communities where discussion of emotional problems is taboo or inhibited, such as military environments, prisons and working with young people.
The practice of IEMT is overseen by the Association for IEMT Practitioners which provides ongoing support and education for licensed practitioners and a referral network for client's seeking an approved practitioner.
IEMT creator, Andrew T. Austin is ever keen to emphasis that IEMT is a specific technique that can be amazingly effective when applied correctly to problems assessed to be responsive to such a program. It is not the grand unified theory of therapy, will not cure everything and other support or therapeutic work may be required that is outside of the practice of Integral Eye Movement Therapy. IEMT is particular effective when working with issues of self esteem, traumatic memories and stressful experiences, PTSD and phobia as well as the consequences of living with such problems such as guilt, depression, insomnia and anxiety states.
Integral Eye Movement Therapy has its roots in Steve and Conniver Andrea's' “Eye Movement Integration” technique, David Grove's “Clean Language” work with pronouns and Robert Dilts' work in NLP Imprinting.
