Most people think of memory and imagination as one thing: pictures in the head. Look closer and the pictures have properties. A remembered argument can be big or small, bright or dim, close or far, in colour or black and white, moving or still. The voice in your head can be loud or soft, fast or slow, yours or someone else's. These properties are called submodalities, and in NLP they are where a lot of the practical work happens.
The idea is simple: the way you store an experience determines how it feels. Change the storage, change the feeling. This post covers what submodalities are, how they carry emotional charge, and what the honest evidence says.
What submodalities are
NLP distinguishes modalities, the big channels of experience, from submodalities, the fine structure within each channel.
- Visual submodalities: size, brightness, distance, location, colour or black and white, framed or panoramic, moving or still, associated (seen through your own eyes) or dissociated (seen from outside yourself).
- Auditory submodalities: volume, tempo, pitch, tone, location of the sound, internal voice or external.
- Kinesthetic submodalities: pressure, temperature, texture, weight, movement, location in the body.
- Digital submodalities: the words you say to yourself, and the tone and tempo of that inner voice.
Everyone has them. Almost nobody notices them, which is precisely why they are useful: they run below awareness, so changing them changes experience without a fight.
How they carry emotional charge
The classic demonstration goes back to Richard Bandler's book Using Your Brain for a Change (1985). Think of a cup of coffee. Now imagine it three times bigger, bright, close, in vivid colour. Then shrink it, dim it, push it far away. The second version is obviously less compelling, and nothing about the object changed, only the properties of the picture.
Now apply that to something that matters. An unpleasant memory stored big, bright, close and in colour feels worse than the same memory stored small, dim and distant. A pleasant memory that has faded to grey and shrunk can be restored by turning the colour back on and pulling it closer. A future that feels impossible because it is pictured small and far away can be brought into reach by making the picture bigger and nearer.
These are not parlor claims about everyone. People differ: for some, size dominates; for others, distance or brightness matters more. The method is to test the dimensions on yourself and find which ones carry your emotional charge.
What the research supports
The honest evidence picture, stated plainly:
What has support. The general mechanism has real backing. Cognitive science has repeatedly found that mental imagery evokes emotion: vivid imagery produces stronger emotional responses and engages emotion-related brain systems, which is exactly why imagery-based treatments for anxiety and PTSD work. So the claim that changing how you imagine something can change how you feel is not exotic. It is mainstream psychology with different labels.
What does not have support. The specific submodality "maps" popular in some NLP literature, the idea that particular dimensions mean particular things for everyone, and the old claims that eye movements reveal fixed internal wiring, did not survive testing. Treating submodalities as universal laws overstates the evidence. Treating them as an experiential tool to test on yourself is defensible, and that is how we teach them.
Limits and cautions
Three things to keep in mind before you start moving pictures around:
- Individual differences are real. A submodality change that works for one person can do nothing for another. The skill is finding what moves the charge for this specific person, not applying a formula.
- Context matters. Submodality shifts work best with rapport and with the person's own experience, not as a recipe imposed from outside.
- This is not therapy. Submodalities can shift the charge on a memory, but they are not a treatment for diagnosed conditions. If a memory is overwhelming, or if strong emotion keeps coming up, the right step is professional support, not a DIY imagery session.
Practice
A safe exercise to try today: pick a mildly annoying memory, something like a small embarrassment, not a big wound. Notice how you picture it. Now make the picture smaller, dimmer and further away, and let it shrink to the size of a postage stamp. Notice what happens to the feeling. Then do the reverse with a mildly pleasant memory: bring it closer, brighten it, add colour, and notice the lift.
If the exercise produces strong distress at any point, stop, and talk to a professional rather than pushing through it.
Submodalities sit inside the broader NLP toolkit, so if you are new to the mechanics, our guide to NLP techniques is the right next stop. To learn this work properly, with supervision and a hundred logged practice hours, see the Spirit of NLP programme, or begin with the free webinar.