NLP Techniques: Modalities. . . and Submodalities
by Laura Interval
Submo- what? Submo-whoosit? Submo-mumbo jumbo?? Right. This is the jargon that makes me want to close the book, turn off the computer and put on a good ol’ mindless sitcom. However, the concepts of modalities and submodalities are central in the NLP techniques and their effectiveness. Anthony Robbins says that if we can learn to change them, we can make big changes in our lives, so, if you’re going to give NLP a try, a basic understanding is important. My problem with all this has been that even though I know this technique works, the language used in the past to describe it is too complicated. The overall concept is not complicated, however, so I’m going to try to simplify it so that you can start to use the ideas quickly and reap the benefits. I am one who just wants to know what button to push. I don’t have to know exactly how it works, as long as it works. So, consider submodalities as buttons, buttons we can push to put us into empowering emotions or “states” which, in the end, determine the quality of our lives. So, how do we program these buttons? In a nutshell, we have five basic senses: visual, auditory, kinesthetic, olfactory and gustatory, or what you and I call sight, sound, touch, smell and taste. In NLP, they call these modalities. Within each of these modalities, we have sub-modalities that are finer distinctions by which we give meaning to our experiences. For example, visually, you could describe a picture as being black and white or color, or bright or dim etc. Sight, in this example, is the modality and “black and white” is the sub-modality… And so on for smells (pleasant or offensive), sounds (loud or soft), tastes (sweet or bitter). So the submodalities are really how you perceive your experiences. Adjectives or feelings that come up within you, that make up your experience. Now, how you use your senses on the outside is going to affect your thinking and experience on the inside. You have the power to create this. However, it is usually created for you. Really think about this for a minute. On an average day, things that happen in your external world determine how you feel about yourself and your life, right? For example, you see two people get into an argument at work and it makes you feel stressed out. It puts you into a state of stress. You might take that home and now you’re stressed out with you partner. It’s the external world pushing your buttons, putting you into a state that you don’t want, didn’t ask for and now it affects what you do in a negative way. The promise of NLP’s modalities and submodalities is that we can learn to program and then push our own buttons regardless of your external influences. Of course, there’s more to this. But, the point is to get you relating to it as quick as I can. Here’s a visual example: I want you to think of a time in the last year when you felt really happy. Maybe it was at your birthday party or you were out fishing with your best friend… just a time where you remember feeling content and happy. Close your eyes and picture in your mind that scene. Now, what do you see? Is it a still photo? Does it play like a scene from a film? Is it in color or black and white? Is it bright or dim? The answers to those questions are your submodalities for that experience, in other words, how you represent that experience to yourself. You see something (the modality), the way you see it (the submodality) is the experience for you. Now do the same thing with an opposite time. A time when you remember feeling unhappy, worried or really stressed out. Answer the same questions about the scene. The difference between your answers on these two scenes is the difference of how you represent happy and unhappy to yourself. So, NLP says that by changing these scenes, these representations, you will change the meaning of that event to you. Like a film director, if you change your unhappy scene to be more like your happy scene, you will change your experience. You being able to remember these times, to visualize these scenes really well, and recreate the exact feeling you associate with the time, will be your key to turning your submodalities into effective buttons. Which brings me to the next topic: the technique of ANCHORING.
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