Submodality Change for Healing

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’.