IEMT and EMDR: The 2026 Comparative Study
In 2026, Dalena van Heugten–van der Kloet and colleagues published an exploratory comparison of IEMT-directed eye movements, EMDR-directed eye movements and a control condition. The study concerns changes in distress during recall of negative memories in a general-population sample. It is not a clinical comparison of complete courses of IEMT and EMDR. 1)
Design
Thirty-three adults aged 20–60 took part. Each selected three negative autobiographical memories, which were randomly allocated to the three conditions. Participants experienced all conditions in randomised order, with each condition limited to 20 minutes and separated by a short break. Ratings were collected before, after and one week following the intervention session.
The IEMT and EMDR conditions used different eye-movement procedures and accompanying instructions. EMDR was an abbreviated protocol. In the control condition, participants sat quietly with a researcher and periodically recalled and rated the memory. It was therefore neither a full alternative therapy nor a matched working-memory task. Participants were not told the condition labels. This does not mean that therapists were blind to the procedures they delivered.
Findings
Both active conditions produced lower reported distress than the control condition immediately afterwards and at one-week follow-up. The reported active-versus-control comparisons were p=.001 and p<.001 after the intervention, and p=.014 and p=.002 at follow-up, for IEMT and EMDR respectively. The study did not detect a statistically significant difference between the two active conditions.
A majority, 60.6%, preferred the IEMT condition. Preference is a useful acceptability finding, but is separate from clinical effectiveness and comparative safety. The control condition also showed improvement over time, illustrating why an uncontrolled before-and-after change should not automatically be attributed to a treatment's distinctive component.
What can be concluded?
The results support further investigation of IEMT-directed eye movements for reducing the distress associated with recalled negative memories. They also raise questions about which features of an eye-movement task matter. A working-memory explanation is plausible, but the experiment did not directly establish that mechanism.
A non-significant difference is not proof of equivalence. The study was small, had only a one-week follow-up and excluded people receiving treatment for a DSM-5 diagnosis. Both active interventions were abbreviated. Different accompanying instructions, possible carry-over between conditions and the absence of an active working-memory comparator limit conclusions about eye-movement direction itself. Some fidelity recordings were also partly or wholly lost.
Relevance to the wider IEMT model
The experiment does not establish effectiveness for PTSD or validate IEMT concepts such as identity imprints, patterns of chronicity or its wider adaptive formulation. These require their own operational definitions and research. The wiki's earlier pilot-study page describes a different investigation and should not be counted as another report of this experiment.
Future studies could compare complete interventions in clinical samples, include independently assessed outcomes and adverse events, specify equivalence margins where relevant, and follow participants for longer periods.