Modal Operators
by Steve Andreas

With the multitude of specific patterns and general understandings that have been developed in the field of NLP over the past 25 years, it is useful to recall that the root and foundation of it all is in the Meta–model. I have often heard Richard Bandler say that those who really understand the Meta–model are those who use the NLP methods with a high degree of skill and precision.

Over the years I have often seen the usefulness of returning to an old distinction and reexamining it to see what else can be learned. In the late 1970’s, submodalities were used simply as ways to enrich a description of an experience. In the early 1980’s, submodalities were recharacterized as basic parameters of our internal experiencing, and, like accessing cues, also ways to alter that experiencing directly. This insight resulted in the plethora of powerful submodalities interventions available today.

In the late 1980’s, Connirae Andreas reexamined the three perceptual positions, and found a detailed way to align and organize the chaos of our internal experiencing of ourselves and others in relationships.

Aligning Perceptional Positions is a very gentle, yet powerful, way to directly clarify our relating with others, and to develop understanding and compassion for both ourselves and others. In retrospect, this process uses many small and subtle differences in the submodality of location to achieve this.

There are nine fundamental distinctions in the Meta–model (Can you name them all?), and one of them is called Modal Operator. Recently I have been reexamining them and have gained some useful understandings. Rather than simply present them (and make it very likely that readers would simply accept them, instead of finding ways to question them or improve on them), I thought it would be more interesting to pose some questions to point the reader’s thinking in some of the directions that I have been exploring.

I have often benefitted from asking questions and finding out that other’s answers were considerably better than my own. (On occasion I have even asked questions that seemed likely to produce interesting answers, even though I had no useful answers yet.) I hope that this can be an opportunity for readers to follow these leads into some interesting discoveries.

I invite you to follow the leads in the questions below. The best source for answers will be in your own experience. I further invite you to respond to me by email* or snail mail* with what you find. A follow–up article will appear in a future issue of Anchor Point.

1. What are they anyway? What do they do, and how do they work?

2. How many kinds, or categories of MO are there, and what would you name each kind?

3. How are they linked to, or related to, each other? (I have found two major ways, one inherent, and one that is optional.
4. What kind of motivation is indicated by each MO?

5. How can each kind of MO be understood as indicating a specific kind of incongruence?

6. What kinds of incongruence is indicated by a person when they use one kind of MO verbally and express a different one nonverbally?

7. How it can be useful to change a person's experience by suggesting replacing one modal operator with another, and why is it useful?

8. What MO is operating in an experience of complete and total congruence?

9. What else can you predict about a person’s experience when they use a MO?

Enjoy.
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