IEMT

Many therapies rely on the ability of the client to articulate their feelings when it is often the case that those feelings are difficult to describe and/or label.  Integral Eye Movement Therapy uses the conscious identification of those existing feelings to promote and create change.

The brain codes emotional experiences as imprints or patterns containing neurological, emotional and identity information.  Emotional imprints happen when a new feeling (kinaesthetic) response occurs as a result of an event or experience.  This then means that the person knows how to respond in the future to the same/similar events.  Identity imprints generally evolve constantly and update in response to the world around us.  Some aspects of identity however are very robust, such as gender and role identities and dictate how we behave in our environment.

When the patterns that we have coded are working well we have an effective way to behave in and manage our environments.  When they resist updating or are so strongly imprinted that they come to hamper our behaviour then a technique like IEMT can be an effective tool to help the re-coding.

Eye movement therapies can be particularly effective in helping with flashbacks and other intrusive imagery phenomena as the use of the technique often results in the imagery loosing its emotional intensity and therefore becoming less disturbing.

Joanne Adam is a licenced practitioner of Integral Eye Movement Therapy