A persistent young man asked the same question in a couple of sessions at NLP Conference.
“I’m having real difficulty using submodality shifts on myself, to change my own state. Is it just me, or do other people struggle with this?”
You know the kind of thing he’s talking about – it’s in all the NLP textbooks. Here are a couple of examples.
The thing is, that stuff works for some people when they do it one themselves. But it doesn’t work well for others – and, as I told the young man, I’ve never had much joy with it myself.
I’m becoming increasingly curious about the issues that arise when you take an exercise which was designed to be done with a partner, and apply it to yourself. There’s a definite difference!
You don’t think about yourself in the same way as you think about another person. For example, as I mentioned in a previous blog, there are neurological reasons that you will not be as empathetic towards yourself as you would be towards another person. Meanwhile you will also have self-serving biases and blind spots.
As a Clean Language facilitator I know that the motive power of a coaching session comes from the client. But that doesn’t make me redundant: I steer the person’s attention to aspects of their experience that might be useful, but which they aren’t paying attention to.
For example, I’ll often ask The Power Switch question to shift the client’s focus away from problems and onto what they actually want. Of course you can ask this question of yourself, but the key is to remember to ask it at the right time, in the right context, and in the right tone.
I suspect it would make a real difference if the young man asked himself: “I’m having real difficulty using submodality shifts on myself, to change my own state. And when I’m having that difficulty, what would I like to have happen?” But I don’t suppose he will.
Have you tried using submodality shifts or other NLP techniques on yourself? How did it work for you? Please comment below.
Comments from original on judyrees.co.uk
James Tripp
24 November 2011
My simple take on this is that when being facilitated, you can go (‘associate’ ?) 100% into the process that you are being taken through, but when you are facilitating self, you have to split your attention – you are effectively muliti-tasking!
Regarding submodalities, I changing them can often be less than effective because they are NOT arbitrary. They reflect some kind of semantic organisation that lies beneath them.
As Jamie Smart said at the NLP Conference, running a thermometer under the tap to cool it down does nothing to bring down a fever.
J
Jan MacQuarrie
28 January 2021
Yes I agree with the multitasking
especially if the internal dialogue is subtle and assisting with the sorting
this is a lot about using energy and that can be multifiolded splitting ‘ i have found I can use these on me and they work but in what i call a soft manner – a gentle shift.
I so love sub modalities and want to go on using them as i still do both teach NLP and support clients
I am 83yrs was trained by John in 1980 in Montreal and this keeps my brain in an amazing state of clarified confusion
so special !
Joseph Kao
24 November 2011
Hi Judy,
Very interesting article, and I think this is definitely a common pattern. I just wrote this response in a Facebook group where this article was posted, but thought I’d add it as a comment here too.
I’d be interested to know if the chap mentioned in the article only has that problem with submodality processes, or if he finds the self-application of any technique difficult (e.g. anchoring, future pacing, six step reframing, CBT thought questioning etc).
I can certainly remember feeling like I was just kidding myself when I first tried certain NLP processes on myself – swishing around images that I was squinting and struggling to visualise, and feeling only a mild sense of frustration rather than any significant shift in my emotional state.
But years later, I find that especially if I set aside forty minutes or so, and take some time out to… and you’ll love this James… go into a trance state, where I breathe, relax, shift my attention into a “different” state, and begin to fully engage with different ways of looking at things, using various NLP/hypnotic/meditation processes, sometimes stopping to take notes… then I can get very profound results, cathartic releases, lightness, energy, lasting changes in my behaviour, a million miles away from that younger me who was frowning and squinting at a basic NLP manual.
So I might say that self-application becomes easier with practice. And setting time properly aside to do it, when you’re not distracted, and even building a bit of a “trance ritual” around it, can help, at least in my experience.
As for being able to consistently do such things in the heat of the moment, to be able to step into “the observing self” and find a more useful reaction when you know you’re in danger of responding a bit too impulsively, hmm… I’m still working on that one 😉
Undoubtedly making psychological changes is likely to be much easier if you’ve got someone else there working with you, but I’d be wary of concluding that self-application just doesn’t work for some people, or of over-emphasising the neurological reasons for that. Even if there are obstacles, it can still work very, very well with practice.
I’d just suggest – and perhaps this is a bit blunt – that some people simply don’t know how yet. They’re too dissociated and focused on getting the technique right to properly engage with the “felt sense” of resourceful memories, new perspectives, different interpretations etc. So it feels to them like they’re just kidding themselves.
Or so it seems to me 🙂
All the best,
Joe
Stephen Woolston
25 November 2011
Hi Judy,
I’ve never had any problem manipulating sub-modalities of experiences myself, though I absolutely acknowledge what you’re reporting.
I don’t know if there are some people who are “just able” and some who are “just not able”. (Or that “some are more able than others, neurologically,” to do this.)
I do that three tips that might help people:
Some times, I find people ‘go meta’ to the experience they want to manipulate in order to follow the process instructions — and so are not affecting the experience as it is when they experience it directly. Key thing is to manipulate it as it is when you experience it directly.
Second is I find people some times try to move distance and location directly across, and do it slowly or at half speed. I find it works a lot better to push the experience over the horizon so to speak and bring it back, and do it quickly.
Third thing is I think it’s possible that if you convince yourself you can’t, you can’t — as some people convince themselves they can’t visualize even if we can demonstrate they must.
Now, I wouldn’t dream of suggesting that these are the three reasons anyone might have difficulties because I couldn’t possibly know that. They’re just things I find often help people when they’re learning.
All this said, I personally prefer to help people arrive at change more ‘organically’ than forcing sub-modality changes. It depends on the type of change, of course. I still like the Swish very much for modifying strategies, as an example.
Thanks,
Steve.
Alex
11 August 2020
James Tripp’s idea that submodalities are just an end result of some other processes in the mind resonates with me. That’s because I can play with an image or a movie and change the size, color, brightness and so on – and that WILL change my state, but it’s just a temporary shift. As soon as I stop doing that voluntarily, the image / movie goes back to being what it was in the first place.