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In a world full of ChatGPT, I want to know what YOU think.
The Simple Questions Behind IEMT
Something I love about Integral Eye Movement Technique (IEMT) is the simplicity of its questions.
Do you have a feeling that you don’t like feeling that you feel a lot?
(Obviously the answer will be yes, or you wouldn’t be in my office.)
When is the very first time you can remember feeling that way?
So good!
This one is trickier for many people. If the challenging feeling is related to a current issue in their life, the client might blurt out, “Yesterday!” For very familiar feelings, though, the first time you experienced them might be a very long time ago.
IEMT invites the participant to be curious about their own life experiences. Searching your memories to land on the first time you felt a particular way can be like watching a highlight reel of your worst moments. It’s not enjoyable, but it is enlightening.
Why Our Reactions Don’t Always Match the Moment
When we have a positive experience, it’s like going to the library with one book and returning it. The librarian stamps it and takes it straight back to shelve it where it belongs. When we have a negative experience (or one we perceive as negative), it’s like going to the library with a hundred books. The librarian of our mind becomes overwhelmed, and those hundred books get set on a cart to be stamped and shelved later.
When we encounter similar events or feelings in the future, our mind has those reference materials at the ready. It’s eager to provide all the source material for how we should react to the situation in front of us.
This is how we end up with disproportionate emotional reactions: crying because our boss wasn’t pleased with our work, getting angry when someone hasn’t returned our call, or feeling guilty when we decline an invitation to a party we don’t want to attend. Our reaction isn’t coming from the real-time experience in front of us. It’s coming from unprocessed feelings from the past.
Why AI Can’t Do This Work for You
Today, people often want a quick solution or a shortcut to their problems. Curiosity, research, and even common sense are increasingly being replaced with “I’ll ask ChatGPT” (or insert the artificial source of your choice).
But artificial intelligence cannot help you with this work. If you ask it about your emotions, it’s taking a wild guess at what might be causing how you feel, based on input from millions of other people and whatever it can find on the internet.
AI hasn’t lived your life. It doesn’t have access to your memories. It can’t even truly relate to feelings, because it’s not human. And as humans, we hardly understand emotions ourselves.
According to the American Psychological Association, an emotion is:
“A complex reaction pattern, involving experiential, behavioral, and physiological elements, by which an individual attempts to deal with a personally significant matter or event. The specific quality of the emotion (e.g., fear, shame) is determined by the specific significance of the event. For example, if the significance involves threat, fear is likely to be generated; if the significance involves disapproval from another, shame is likely to be generated. Emotion typically involves feeling but differs from feeling in having an overt or implicit engagement with the world.”
Now tell me, does that capture how you felt the last time you were deliriously happy, excited, or heartbroken?
Sometimes our feelings are so complex that they’re hard to put into words. Anger isn’t quite right, nor is pissed off, nor furious. But you know how you feel. That’s why, in my sessions, I often just ask, “That feeling: how strong is it?” without asking for a specific name for the feeling.
Get Curious About Your Own Patterns
In this world full of easy shortcuts, I want you to sit for a minute and think about your pain and your life experiences. I want you to become curious about your own patterns. I want you to wonder: when was the very first time I felt this way?
And wait for the answer. It’s closer than you think.