What is IEMT - Integral Eye Movement Technique?
The use of Eye Movement to help clients with the impact of trauma, is growing both in the NHS and in private practice. Increasing clients ability to process and progress after a single incident, or prolonged and complex exposure. There are a few different modalities of eye movement, however I chose IEMT because it's the one that requires the least amount of psychological unpicking by the client. This reduces the risk of re-traumatisation.
How does it work?
Although science is yet to pin point the exact neurological pathway with any of the eye movement techniques (we've figured out bits), we do know what happens from a therapy stance. The following is my attempt to describe it in the least 'sciencey' way that I can.
Imagine your brain is a library.
Every second, a customer called Mr Memory runs in and throws a book on the floor next to the 1 member of staff, Mrs Librarian. Each book represents a memory. Mrs Librarian picks up the book and runs to the correct shelf to put it on. All the shelves are organised and labelled by time, date, places etc. Because Mr Memory is the only customer and only bringing one book at a time, Mrs Librarian can keep on top of filing all these books in the correct place.
Then one day, the library (that's you and your brain) experiences something really horrid. Mr Memory suddenly starts running in with multiple books, bigger books, hurling them onto the floor. Mrs Librarian is overwhelmed. She can't cope. She goes into her staff room for a cup of tea. After the really horrid thing has passed, she comes back out once Mr Memory has returned to his former self, delivering one book at a time. The big pile of books (your trauma memories) remains on the floor. Mrs Librarian steps around it, climbs over it, ignores it as best she can but she just can't bring herself to start tackling the enormous job of sorting them all out. The pile of books is always there, even when she isn't consciously thinking about them.
IEMT allows Mrs Librarian to stop space and time (a bit like Dr Who but better) so she can go and sort out that big mountain of books (memories) and finally file them back where they belong, back in history, with very much faded emotions.
The books (memories) still exist. Nothing can take them away. But now they no longer have such raw emotions attached to them, they can sit on their shelf, gather dust, and have much less importance and impact.
Not everyone is suitable for therapies involving Eye Movement and that's something we can discuss on an initial call. But as I use it as a tool within my practice rather than a stand alone option, there is still lots that we can do.