Managing Submodalities
“You should have birds flying around your head, not fish! Got it?”
— From the movie “Who Framed Roger Rabbit”
Good morning, everyone! This is Stalilingus.
Manipulation is one thing, but besides that, you also need to think about your own state, your mood, and how to keep your thoughts organized and positive. Everyone has situations in life that, when remembered, make you feel uneasy or upset.
So, let’s talk about what you can do about it.
1) A Little Theory for Everyone
By now, most people know that we think in words, images, sounds, and feelings. That’s no secret, right? These are called modalities:
- Visual
- Auditory
- Kinesthetic
There’s also a digital modality, but if you’re interested in that, you can look it up online.
Each modality has its own submodalities. Submodalities are the characteristics of a modality.
For example, a picture in your mind (the visual modality) has characteristics like: size, distance, brightness, color, whether it’s framed or not.
Auditory modalities include: volume, tempo, rhythm, duration, mono or stereo, modulation, etc.
Kinesthetic submodalities: temperature, location, movement, pain (pulsing or stabbing), inside/outside.
To put it more scientifically: Submodalities are the qualitative and quantitative differences within modalities.
How to Work with Submodalities
To understand this better, recall a bad memory or one that’s close to being bad—no need to go too deep right away. Got it? Now, pay attention to the image of your memory: Is it big or small? Framed or not? Color or black and white? Is it vivid or dull? Are you in the picture or outside of it? Remember these details.
Now, the auditory part: What sounds are present? Are they loud or quiet, and so on?
Kinesthetic: Where in your body do you feel sensations related to this image? Where do they move? Are they static?
What should you do next? Now, start working with these submodalities and notice what changes in you and how your attitude toward the situation shifts:
- Move the image farther away and notice what changes.
- Make it smaller.
- Put it in a frame.
- Make it dull and black and white.
- Remove the sounds.
- Redirect the sensations in the opposite direction (if they’re still there).
With positive images, do the exact opposite: bring them closer, make them colorful, step inside the image, and work with it in that direction.
It’s best to start with negative images and then move on to positive ones. If you do it the other way around, you might just ruin your mood, that’s all.
I’m sharing this knowledge for the sake of your good mood—make yourself better, and people will naturally do things for you. You don’t always need manipulation to get what you want!
I recommend reading this article, because next I’ll be sharing a mask technique that’s based on this information.
All the best!
Yours, Stalilingus.