Updating The Sub-Modality Model

L. Michael Hall

Ph.D.

In the field of NLP, the term sub-modalities is a special term. Historically, writers have used it to refer to the sub- or small units that are within any picture, sound, or sensation. In doing so, they have assumed that sub-modalities are a lower logical level than the see-hear-feel modalities.  Yet is that true? What explains the fact that sub-modality mapping across and shifting do not always work? Could there be another mechanism that actually explains how what we call submodalities work?

Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) began when the geniuses of Bandler and Grinder constructed the representational systems of the Visual Auditory Kinesthetic (VAK) modalities with their qualities, which they called sub-modalities. This provided a language for describing and modeling human experiences. A great deal of the magic of NLP arose from recognizing the components of “thought” or “mind” as comprised of the sensory modalities. From that, a great many of the magic-like processes in NLP that create transforming change emerged. They then identified the distinctive features of the modalities, which they labeled “sub-modalities,” which I think was a big mistake.

Yet how do sub-modalities really work? What mechanism or mechanisms explain the effects? What skills does a person have to have to effectively work with making sub-modality shifts?

The research that Bob Bodenhamer and I did into the sub-modality model raised many questions about the traditional view of sub-modalities. From that, I conducted workshops at many NLP Conferences, sharing the breakthrough discoveries about sub-modalities. Eventually, that led to the book, Sub-Modalities Going Meta. Knowing and utilizing these secrets of sub-modalities will powerfully enrich your understanding of what drives and governs, and thereby puts a turbo-charge to your selection and use of them.

Here, I want to offer several refinements regarding the sub-modality model. Central to them is the fact that the cinematic qualities of our movies (our VAK modalities) operate at a meta-level, not a sub-level. That’s because you have to go meta to detect these structural elements. You have to go meta to play, shift, alter, and “map them across.” You have to go meta to recognize them as setting frames of reference for our thinking. This creates meta-programs and meta-states. This meta-level framing then governs and organizes the thinking-emoting system as a self-organizing system. 

Experience:

1. Think about a pleasant experience (your home, a grassy meadow, a beach by the ocean, any time when you felt creative, confident, relaxed, or resourceful).

2. Now pick out some of the qualities (i.e., sub-modalities) of your internal pictures, sounds, or sensations and notice them.

Visually:

●       What qualities characterize what you see?

●       Where do you see the experience?

●       How close or far?

●       Color or in black-and-white?

●       Bordered or panoramic? Clear or fuzzy, etc.?

Auditorially:

●       What qualities characterize it?

●       Where do you hear the sounds, noise, music, or voice in the representation?

●       Volume, Tone, Tempo, etc.?

●       Kinesthetically: What qualities characterize it?

●       What do you feel in terms of sensations?

●       Where do you feel these?

●       Pressure, Tension, Movement, Rhythm, etc.?

3. Notice the process of how you become aware of these qualities of the representations. Do you go into the picture, sound, or sensation more and more? Or do you step out of the VAK so that you note the structure or form of it?

Secret #1: You have to Go Meta to detect the modality features.

To detect, identify, and work with sub-modalities, you have to go meta. More typically, people have to learn how to identify, detect, and develop awareness of their modalities and their qualities. Why? We get caught up in content and have not learned how to step aside or go meta to notice the structure of our thoughts. Detecting such necessitates a meta-level perception.

What we call sub-modalities actually are cinematic features of our internal movies detected at a meta-level. We could call them meta-modalities. How could we have submodalities that are also meta-programs if this weren’t so? Compare the following lists:

 Meta-Programs

●       VAK Associated/Dissociated

●       Kines. Associated/ Dissoc. Thinker/ Feeler

●       Global/ Specific

●       Match/ Mismatch

●       Options/ Procedures

 Sub-modalities

●       Associated/ Dissociated

●       Thinker/ Feeler

●       Zoom in/ Zoom out; Close / Far

●       Two similar V/ One Visuals at an angle to the other 

●       Multiple Pictures / One Motion Picture or a series of still pictures

Detection and awareness involve a meta-level and meta-state structure, namely, awareness of the structure of your thinking. Process thinking exists at a higher level than content thinking. By “consciousness of representation,” a meta-level awareness, we detect the qualities and features of the VAK.

Secret #2: When Sub-Modalities work to transform experience, they Generate Meta-Level Shifts. 

We not only detect sub-modalities at meta-levels, but we also run sub-modality patterns at meta-levels. The difference between a thought and a belief:

●       Can you think a thought that you do not believe?

●       What keeps a thought from becoming a belief in that case? Is it sub-modalities?

●       Then turn up and use every sub-modality and see if you can now “believe” it.

●       What keeps a belief a belief and not a mere thought? Is it sub-modalities?

●       Try it. Turn the belief into a mere thought.

Gregory Bateson (1972) identified “the difference that makes a difference” at the Annual Korzybski Memorial Lecture, January 1970. There, he explored Korzybski’s classic formulation, “The map is not the territory.” He asked, “What gets onto a map?” And then answered, “Difference.” “Differences are the things that get onto a map.” (p. 451). We now ask, “What is a difference?” It involves “an abstract matter” because we have “entered into the world of communication, organization.” (p. 452). This new world leaves behind the world of forces, impacts, and energy exchanges. 

This psychological world of communication involves “information” or “news of difference. “The elementary unit of information is a difference which makes a difference, and is able to make a difference because the neural pathways are themselves provided with energy…” (p. 453). “The territory never gets in at all. The territory is Ding an sich [Thing in itself], and you can’t do anything with it. Always, the process of representation will filter it out so that the mental world is only maps of maps of maps, ad infinitum. All ‘phenomena’ are literally ‘appearances.’” (pp. 454-455).

“The difference that makes a difference” lies in information coding or “news of difference,” the qualities and properties of representations, the meta-levels that govern or modulate the lower levels.

“All communication has this characteristic–it can be magically modified by accompanying communication.” (p. 230)

This alters the received knowledge about sub-modalities, wherein we have inappropriately applied this phrase to sub-modalities. “The difference that makes a difference” operates at the higher logical levels. Bateson’s “the difference that makes a difference” involves meta-levels and higher frames. Linguistically, these show up as beliefs, values, and presuppositions. Conceptually, we speak about assumptions, domains of understanding, categories of knowledge, and our learning history.

Bateson argued (i.e., the double-bind theory, Levels of learning, etc.) that meta-levels always govern and modulate lower levels. This explains how and why “sub-modality” shifts work when they do –they set a new meta-level Frame.

Secret #3: Frames Govern the Cinematic Features of our Movies.  

Let’s apply sub-modalities frames to trauma or emotional hurt. Suppose a person has established a meta-level frame as an understanding about himself, time, and how to cope in this way: “Whatever has happened, no matter how unpleasant and distressful, no longer exists.”

Invite this man to recall a memory of a very unpleasant situation. Have him “recall it fully and completely. Step in there and be there seeing what you saw, hearing what you heard, and feeling what you heard….” 

Will this reintroduce trauma? Will it re-traumatize? Will he go back into the state? No. That meta-frame will prevent him so he cannot make his pictures close, vivid, three-dimensional, etc., or his sounds life-like and vivid, or his sensations that he would become re-traumatized. The meta-frame protects him from such. “In the back of his mind,” he would have, consciously or unconsciously, a presuppositional “reality” that would not permit it.

Conversely, suppose a person operates from the meta-frame:

“Whatever pain and distress you have experienced in your life will always be with you, will always determine your identity and future.”

Invite this man to step out and away from a memory of pain, to put it up on the theater of his mind, and to “just observe it from a distance.” He will probably find that very difficult, if at all.  He will tend to keep stepping back into the memory. His frame drives that response. Ask him to step out from the movie theater where he watches the old movie and to move back to the projection booth, a double step back. More difficulty, again, it violates his frame. Even if you do, and he begins to watch the movie, he may start having traumatic feelings way back there about the movie. What gives here? The meta-frame. The person can feel bad and traumatized about the trauma!

In such cases, are we now stuck and limited? Of course not! Any proficient practitioner will simply keep interrupting the old program or frame, reinforcing new frames of un-associating, comfort, courage, etc. When the gentleman outframes himself with pity, shame, guilt, being a terrible person, hopelessness, etc., we outframe him by jumping a logical level.

“And as you look at that sad pitiful wreck of a man for the last time in your life knowing that change has begun to occur, and will continue to occur even when you don’t know it consciously, you can begin to wonder, really wonder, about what learnings you can make from this so that you never have to repeat it, but can turn around and face a brighter future than you could have even imaged before … now…”

When you have a person with those rigid, limiting, dis-empowering, insulting, and traumatizing meta-frames, working with him becomes a frames war to the end. Who will get in the final outframe? Our experiences result from our established frames. These meta-level frames identify our more abstract and conceptual maps of reality and our meanings about self, others, and the universe.

Sub-modality Failures

“Mapping over sub-modalities” and “sub-modality shifts” do not always work. In the traumatic experience, the quality of the cinematic features of the movie cues your brain and body about how to respond. When we code a painful memory associated, close in image and sound, bright, three-dimensional, loud, etc., we encode it with a structure that says, “Enter into that experience again and feel distressed, angry, fearful, upset, etc.” Associate with it.

Here, the sub-modalities encode the higher evaluative frame that essentially gives the behavioral equivalent for: “Real, Close, Now, Associated.” In this, the quality of sub-modality distinctions works as if “the switch” to experience. But it does not do so because “the difference that makes a difference” lies in sub-modalities.

If associative processing moves us to think, feel, and act as if in an experience, and un-associating or spectating processing moves us to step out and only think, feel, and act about the experience, then this sub-modality (which is also a meta-program) provides an off/on distinction. Experiencing as if “in” the event; experiencing as if “out” of it. Step in, step out. Step in and go through the trauma again and feel terrible; step out and take another perceptual position and feel more resourceful about it.

Notice that associate and un-associate not only describe a sub-modality, but also a meta-program. Now, how could a sub-modality distinction, something that supposedly exists below and under the level of the modalities, also exist above them, and have a meta relation to them? When we think about and work with sub-modalities, we never actually operate at a sub-level, but we move to a meta-level. Thinking about, detecting, and shifting these qualities works with structure and process, not content.

Secret #4: Sub-Modalities are the Cinematic Features of our Movies. 

The term sub-modality is mislabeled. This mislabeled term sends our brains unproductively in the wrong direction. Whoever attached the label “sub-modalities” to the qualities that make up the VAK representational systems simply mislabeled it. The features that distinguish our VAK do not exist at a sub-level to the modalities. It is also a misleading metaphor. The term generates some false-to-fact conclusions as it generates a “sub-level. 

“How could the quality of a picture, like having movement like a movie or still like a snapshot, or having color or coded as black-and-white, close or far, fuzzy or clear, etc., exist as a ‘smaller part’ of the whole?”

“How could the quality of a sound like the quality of volume (quiet to loud) exist as a ‘smaller part’ of the sound?”

Instead of sub-modalities, the qualities of the sensory modes are simply how we have edited our inner movies. Actually, the VAK can not have various qualities and properties. How could they? Try to visualize any picture without any quality of distance, clarity, color, etc. These properties of pictures, sounds, and sensations lie within the modalities.

To have logical levels, a higher level has to arise as an abstraction of the lower level. Thus, wheels, doors, and a steering wheel exist below the abstraction “car.” These pieces make up a “car.” They make up the class members of the class of “car.” Likewise, car, plane, train, etc., comprise the members of the class of another even higher abstraction, “transportation,” or “human technology.” 

Dr. Bodenhamer has written:  “A car door can exist apart from a car as a separate entity. Therefore, the car door exists at a lower logical level than a car. Also, transportation exists at a lower logical level than existence, and as such, transportation can exist as a separate conceptual reality, but not so with sub-modalities. Color cannot exist separately from a visual representation. A loud sound cannot exist as a separate entity from sound, for without sound, you could not have loud or soft, high pitch or low pitch, etc. Therefore, sub-modalities exist as part and parcel to the representations. It can do no other.”

Secret #5: Sub-Modalities Require an Appropriate Higher Frame to Work. 

Sub-modality shifts only work with they happen to set the right meta-frame for something. The absolutely marvelous and seemingly magical NLP interventions, which involve sub-modalities (i.e, the Phobia Cure, Reframing, the Swish Pattern, Grief Pattern, Allergy Cure, Re-imprinting, Time-Lines, etc.) actually work due to meta-level frames that get set.

Sub-modality mapping often does not work because the structure of the problem lies in higher-level conceptual states. Meta-states govern and control lower-level states and, therefore, the modalities and sub-modalities within those primary states. This means sub-modalities operate under the governance of meta-levels. So to do effective sub-modality work, we need to understand that higher levels govern lower levels.

Sub-modality chunking down and mapping across can eat up lots of time and trouble, and never get to the structure of an experience. To tear down the structure of a building brick by brick that has a metal structure may, at best, reveal the over-arching structure and, at worst, take up a lot of unnecessary time and trouble without ever touching on the real problem. This can leave people feeling very frustrated and hopeless. Breaking down a structure into small chunks without paying attention to its larger structures uses up precious energy that could better be devoted to the meta-levels.

Making changes at the lower level of sub-modalities, though they may shift a person for a while, will typically shift back. Many people have experienced a shift in belief, understanding, decision, etc., for a while, and then suddenly find themselves back in the same old mess. The intervention worked temporarily, but couldn’t “stick.” Why not? If we do not attend to the higher-level meta-states that solidify a “reality,” set up an attractor for a self-organizing system, and thereby give it coherence, the old structure will bounce back. This explains why you can’t change beliefs by mere sub-modality shifts or mapping across. Try to do so. Nor can we turn confusion into understanding. How many learn to “understand” things by using the sub-modality mapping across procedures? 

Secret #6: Meta-Level Phenomena Need Meta-Level Processes 

Sub-modality magic works when it activates the necessary meta-frames. We use the V-K stepping back pattern to cure phobias, panic attacks, post-traumatic stress disorder, etc., because we get a person to apply calmness, distance, choice, re-editing of old movies, disorientation, new resources, etc., to the old anchored programs of fear or panic. This describes a meta-state process of applying thoughts and feelings to a primary experience. Herein lies “the difference that makes a difference.”

Reference

• Bandler, R., & McDonald, W. (1988). An insider’s guide to sub-modalities. Meta Publications.

  
  

• Bateson, G. (1972). Steps to an ecology of mind. Ballantine Books.

  
  

• Bateson, G. (1979). Mind and nature: A necessary unity. Bantam Books.

  
  

• Bodenhamer, B. (1998, May). The meta-yes-ing pattern. Anchor Point.

  
  

• Hall, L. M. (1995). Meta-states: Self-reflexiveness in states of consciousness. NS Publications.

  
  

• Hall, L. M. (1996). The spirit of NLP. Anglo-American Books.

  
  

• Hall, M. (1997–1998). Belief change pattern series. Anchor Point (November–December 1997; January–February 1998).

  
  

• Weakland, J., Fisch, R., Jackson, D., & Watzlawick, P. (1974). Change: Principles of problem formation and problem resolution. W. W. Norton & Company.