Chapter 10: Sliding the Controls of Your Experience 169
gradually, through some quiet time to yourself; or you may find that working
with an NLP practitioner is beneficial.
When Romilla was working on resolving grief with a client, he didn’t want to
let go of the pain of loss. He believed that if he let go of the pain he would
forget his father. In fact, by releasing the pain he was able to remember his
father even more vividly.
Getting a little practice
Imagine you have a remote control with three sliding buttons labelled V for
visual, A for auditory, and K for kinaesthetic. You can change the qualities of
any pictures you make in your mind, sounds you hear in your head, or any
feelings you experience in your body just by sliding the V, A, and K controls.
(For more information on VAK modalities, head to Chapter 6.)
Why would you want to adjust the qualities of your memories? Supposing,
years ago, you were rehearsing for a school play and your highly stressed
teacher screamed at you, ‘You stupid child, you blew it again!’ Now you’re in
a job where you need to make some strong presentations to colleagues and
clients. Yet every time you get started you begin to sweat and stammer and
the voice in your head goes, ‘You stupid child, you blew it again!’ You may
need to adjust the qualities of your memories because they get in the way
of what you want to achieve. Imagine you slide the brightness control and
the picture of the teacher gets dimmer. Then you slide the size control and
the teacher gets smaller and becomes insignificant. Finally, you adjust the
volume control and the scream drops to a whisper. Now you find that you
can make presentations the way you always wanted.
To see how effective changing submodalities can be, try this exercise, using
the worksheet in the later section ‘Submodalities Worksheet’:
- Think of someone you like.
- Remember the last time you spent real, quality time with that person.
- Record the qualities of the picture you see, any sounds you hear, and
any feelings you get.
- Change the picture you made, one visual submodality at a time;
notice how each change affects the memory of your time together.
- Change the sounds you hear, one auditory submodality at a time;
notice how each change affects the memory.
- Change any feelings that you’re feeling, one kinaesthetic submodal-
ity at a time; notice how each change impacts the whole experience of
your time together.
