Submodality
Change for Healing
Under the sessions “properties of
mental images” and “videos in mind affect the life” we have already discussed
about modalities and submodalities that influence our life and we have seen
that by changing the submodalities one can change their mental states which
creates moods, emotions, feelings etc. Submodality changing is one of the NLP
techniques to heal phobias, hatred, love affections, negative emotions,
distress etc.
An NLP’er (one who is interested in applying NLP for life change) should always understand that application of any one of
the technique may not be enough to heal or change a person (the client) from
his problems. Note that in NLP we never use the term Patient for a person with
problems or illness but we always use the term ‘Client’. Also the NLP’er should
understand that the scripts of the NLP techniques can be modified and custom
made to suit with the client’s ecology, culture and customs without altering
the fundamentals and basic structure of the procedure. A script prepared for a person
in the western culture will not be suitable for a person in the Asian culture.
The script for a Brit never suit for an Indian.
Please have a look into the above referred
sessions to understand what are modalities and submodalities and you already
understood that we are thinking based on ‘mental representations’ (images, pictures,
sounds etc) we have in our mind. If our mental representation is an
image of a very unpleasant life experience it will never create a pleasant mood
in us. What will be the mental state of a girl, if a very clear picture of the crook
who raped her, always flashes in her mind? Most probably she will be in a trauma
stage unless mentally so healthy due to other reasons. No girls can withstand
such a terrible memory. In NLP one of the effective therapies in such
situations is the removal of such unpleasant and unwanted pictures from the
mind. For this one of the effective method is changing the submodalities of the mental
picture from mind i.e minimize the size, distance, location, brightness,
sound etc and place a pleasant and positive representation (new image) in mind.
The submodality changing checklist
included in this session is very useful to mark submodalities of the present
unpleasant representations and that of new positive representations and to identify
critical submodalities. In column no. 1 you have to mark submodalities of the
present unpleasant representation as it is. You have to ask questions to the
client to know submodalities such as how bright, how far, what colour, any
sound etc. You have to calibrate (carefully observe) the client while asking questions
to make out the submodalities from the mental screen. In the second column you
can mark the critical submodalities, the submodalities that affect the client
most effectively. When you ask the client to make the picture very close and if
the client show intense negative feeling means closeness increases negative
emotions and hence it is a critical submodality in that particular case. Note that
every submodality can make either a negative emotion or a positive emotion.
Once you have noted the critical
submodalities you should change it in the opposite direction, means, if
closeness creates problem you have to ask the client to make the image far
away. For that you may need to help the client to ‘swish’ the image ‘away’ from
his mental screen. For every critical submodalities you have to repeat the
changing exercise as above.
Changing the submodality itself will
change the mental state of your client however there is every chance to return
the submodalities back again. To avoid it the best method is to place a new
picture in the client’s mental screen. Say for example images of the loved one
embraces, a saint blesses with courage, the God as one believe in showers
powerful resources, etc. List out the submodalities of the new representation
in the third column and note the critical submodalities in the fourth column. Adjust
the critical submodalities so that the image will become a part of the mental
screen of the client as the present reality.
The speed of changing submodality is very
important to avoid the possible monkey mind (conscious) interventions! The influence
of conscious mind adversely affects the change process (to practice NLP
techniques you may needs to attend practical sessions of training programs).
What we have seen above is just an
example of how to change the submodalities of a representation systematically
on a therapeutic point of view. I have explained it also to some extent in the session
‘change your mood with the NLP technique’.
