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Playing With Submodalities
Sophie's Choice
“Auntie Kay I have hiccups –hic – and they’re really annoying me, and they won’t go away ...” winced a very disgruntled Sophie aged 9½.
“ohhhh how interesting” I replied, turning my attention towards her and away from the party games in the background.
“Hic” she blurted.
“There’s always time for playing in my book Soph ... so, IF your hiccups had a colour what colour would they be?
“Hic – yellow” she beamed.
“And IF they had a sound, what would you hear?
“Popping noises” she giggled.
“Mmmmmnn, these crisps are delicious, have you had one yet?” I distracted.
“Yuk, they’re too spicy!” came the insistent reply.
“Hey Soph – what’s your favourite colour?”
And quick as a flash she replied “blue.”
“And what’s one of your favourite sounds?” I enquired.
“Swish, swish, like grass swishing”
“Ooohh, how interesting” I mumbled through a second handful of crisps.
“Hey Sophie, if you could point to the yellow colour and popping noise, where would you be pointing?”
TOP TIP FOR CONFIDENCE
And with the pointing finger of her right hand she pointed to a space just in front of her mid torso.
“And if you could point to your favourite blue colour and the nice swishing noise, where would you be pointing to now?”
And with the pointing finger of her left hand she pointed to a space just in front of her upper torso.
“Hey ... what if those two pointing fingers you’ve shown me were to face each other like in a battle” and I made a battle-like trumpet sound as she mirrored my colliding fingers.
And here’s the thing. The hiccups had been gone for probably several minutes at this point of realisation, never to be mentioned again.
Of course this is my reconstruction and no doubt inaccurate, because in NLP we’re constantly calibrating outside responses rather than ‘tracking’ our own performance.
Truth is I played with the Submodalities of Sophie’s hiccups and then they were gone.