Submodalities

Discover the programming language of subjective experience with this NLP technique. This high-caliber tool allows you to quickly affect emotional life and get rid of annoying behavioral habits or fears.

Introduction

Here is an explanation of submodalities and why it is important to deal with them.

We receive information about the world through our five senses, which we have abbreviated to VAKOG. These senses are sometimes called modalities.

Submodalities are the next smaller building blocks of subjective experience. Within each modality we can distinguish different submodalities, e.g., in the visual range: light-dark, color-black and white, sharp-blurred, etc. In the auditory range: loud-low, low-high, clear-indistinct, etc. Every picture, noise or feeling can be described with the aid of numerous submodalities. So far, we have focused our attention on what someone represents in content, e.g., what he sees and what he hears. Now let's focus on what the inner picture, inner sound, or inner feeling is like.

The fascinating discovery in NLP is that the formal "difference" in the submodalities is often more powerful than the content of the experience. So that means that our body sensations and feelings depend more on the submodalities of the internal representation than on the content. Because of this unusual discovery, Bandler and others have developed effective and extremely fast intervention patterns.

Modalities = representation systems VAKOG
visual	see
auditive	listen
kinesthetic	feel
olfactory	smell
gustatory	taste

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Submodalities = fine distinctions of the senses Sensual coding of language
visual	light-dark	near-far
auditive	loud-quiet	high-low
kinesthetic	warm-cold	solid-soft
olfactory	fragrant	stinking
gustatory	sweet-sour	fruity-harsh

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Meta-Feelings = the experience of evaluating feelings - emotional correspondence of the sensually packaged experience

Destruction of Inner Images

Sometimes you will want to get rid of an existing negative vision. First ask yourself whether you have really learnt everything there is to learn from this negative vision. It can sometimes be a good idea to keep a negative picture, if it reminds you of certain issues which are best not forgotten – it can help prevent you from making the same mistake twice.

So save everything that is important and then start to destroy the image you want to get rid of. Imagine the picture as if it was on a mirror and take a hammer, strike hard and smash the picture. Caution! This is a mental exercise – the smashing only takes place in your mind. Imagine the picture breaking into a thousand pieces. You have destroyed it! You can repeat this step if you want. You might find it's really fun smashing this picture that's been plaguing you. Then mentally collect the pieces and let them be completely squashed by a steam roller so that there's nothing at all left of this picture or its effects. This exercise sounds harmless but is very effective.

Verbal indicators of submodalities

Submodalities can be displayed in language. Here are some examples:

• I have only vague ideas about my future.
• He has a bright future ahead of him.
• His past is in the dark.
• The future is cloudy.
• She is cold to me.
• He’s getting hot under the collar.
• She just gets under my skin.

Checklist of possible sense modalities

This section contains a collection of different submodalities in the different senses.

Visual submodalities

Auditive submodalities

Kinesthetic Submodalities

Exercises & Techniques

• Exercise

  The mode of action of submodalities can be experienced only in exercises. Please do these exercises if you want to learn more about submodalities.

• Destroying images

  Threatening inner visual images can be destroyed, thus losing their scary or frightening effect. Destroying Images.

• Destroying auditory representations

  Everybody carries around inner voices that do not always say nice things. Using the techniques presented here, you can rid yourself of these inner voices in a fun way. Destroying auditory representations.

• The Chocolate Pattern

  A pattern for something that you do not like to do but have to do with more motivation. The Chocolate Pattern.

• Changing a belief

  A strategy for getting rid of limiting beliefs and adopt new beliefs. Changing a belief.

• Worst enemy

  Using this technique, you can shrink your Worst Enemy in size so that he/she is no longer threatening.

• Swish pattern

  The Swish pattern helps to remove annoying habits and build strong, positive motivation.