SubModalities Explorer
A free interactive submodalities exercise: compare how your mind codes two contrasting experiences — brightness, distance, sound, feeling — and find the qualities that drive the difference.
Two experiences. Find the difference.
Compare how you picture, hear and feel two contrasting experiences, and discover the few qualities that make the difference between them.
Your mind codes experiences with qualities like brightness, distance and warmth. Comparing two contrasting experiences reveals the few qualities that carry the difference in how they feel — your “drivers”.
What the submodalities explorer does
Submodalities are the qualities of how you represent an experience in your mind: how bright or large an image is, how close, whether there is sound, where a feeling sits and how strong it is. This exercise asks you to choose a contrast, such as something you are keen to do versus something you keep putting off, and then rate sixteen qualities across visual, auditory and kinesthetic for each.
Submodality work was developed mainly by Richard Bandler; the submodalities framework page gives the background.
How to read your drivers
Your drivers are the qualities that differ between the two experiences. The result shows how many there are, which sense they mostly sit in and lists each one. Usually one or two drivers carry most of the difference in how the experiences feel. For example, the task you put off may be small, dim and far away, while the one you are keen on is large, bright and close.
If no drivers appear, the contrast was too mild. Pick two experiences that feel very different and notice smaller shifts.
Using your drivers, and the limits
Bring the second experience to mind and change its strongest driver to match the first: make the image closer, or brighter, or larger. Hold it for a few seconds and notice whether your feeling about it changes. Then try the next driver. Effects vary between people, and research on submodality techniques is limited, so treat this as an experiment rather than a guaranteed result. For how sensory channels relate, see representational systems.
Questions people ask
What are submodalities in NLP?
Submodalities are the finer qualities within each sense: brightness, size, distance and colour for images; volume, pitch and location for sounds; temperature, weight and intensity for feelings. NLP proposes that changing these qualities can change how an experience feels, without changing its content.
What is a driver submodality?
A driver is a quality that, when changed, shifts several others with it and changes how the whole experience feels. In this explorer, drivers are the qualities that differ between your two contrasting experiences, which makes them good candidates to test.
Is it safe to use submodalities on painful memories?
Not on your own. This explorer is designed for everyday contrasts such as motivation or certainty. For traumatic memories, phobias or persistent anxiety, work with a qualified clinician rather than a self-guided exercise. If a memory feels overwhelming while you are using the explorer, stop and return to something neutral.