The Texture of Joy

How Submodalities Shape the Inner Worlds of Neurodivergent Minds—

Reclaiming Brightness, Distance, and Volume as the Language of Inner Experience

Preface: How I Work

In my work as a coach and hypnotherapist, I don’t try to reprogram people into being more positive, more focused, or more “normal.”

I listen.

I listen for the shape of their inner experience—the way they feel memory, the way they hear their own internal voice, the way certain words land in the body like silk, and others like static.

I listen for brightness.

For distance.

For volume.

For rhythm.

These aren’t just metaphors.

They’re the submodalities—the fine sensory distinctions that make up the language of the inner world.

And for many of the neurodivergent, ADHD, or spiritually-sensitive folks I work with, these distinctions are everything.

They’re how the psyche organizes experience.

They’re how the nervous system knows what’s safe and what isn’t.

They’re how joy becomes accessible—not just as an idea, but as a felt reality.

Submodalities: The Differences That Make a Difference

In Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), submodalities refer to the nuanced sensory qualities of how we internally represent experience.

We don’t just remember a moment—we encode it with specific sensory features:

• Visually: Is the image bright or dim? Near or far? Still or moving?

• Auditorily: Is the voice loud or soft? Monotone or melodic? Inside your head or coming from somewhere else?

• Kinesthetically: Does the feeling have weight? Is it pulsing or still? Expanding or contracting? Warm or cool?

These qualities are what give a thought or memory its emotional texture.

Submodalities don’t describe what we experience—they describe how it’s constructed inside the system. When you shift them, you often shift the emotion that goes with them.

But here’s where it gets vital:

For neurodivergent and highly sensitive people, these internal distinctions often show up more intensely, more vividly, more insistently.

Not as a malfunction.

But as precision.

This is what many people haven’t been taught:

When you’re neurodivergent, your mind isn’t just processing more.

It’s processing differently. And that difference can be used—not suppressed.

The Inner Critic Behind You

A client with ADHD once described her inner critic as a fast-talking voice shouting from behind her.

That alone told me something.

It used her own tone of voice—but sharper, more metallic. It spoke in fragments. It echoed.

And because it was coming from behind her and slightly above, I knew it was echoing a parent’s voice.

It wasn’t just what the voice was saying that mattered—it was where it came from, how it sounded, and how it moved through her space.

When we worked together to gently shift the submodalities—slowing it down, softening the tone, moving it to the side or farther back—the emotional charge changed.

Not because she told herself to “stop being negative.”

Not because she tried to fight the critic.

But because she shifted her relationship to it—on a sensory level her body could understand.

This is what I mean when I say submodalities are a doorway.

They offer access to inner change that’s not about compliance, but coherence.

Neurodivergence as Sensory Precision

Neurodivergent people are often told they’re too sensitive, too reactive, too overwhelmed by things that don’t seem to bother anyone else.

But what if the problem isn’t the intensity of their experience, but the lack of a framework to understand it?

What if they’re not hypersensitive, but precisely tuned?

I’ve worked with folks who walk into a space and feel every emotional residue left in the walls. Who hear the emotional subtext under someone’s words before the person even realizes what they’re feeling. Who feel a single sentence land in their body with heat, pressure, or pull.

This isn’t imaginary. It’s embodied information.

And when you start to map how that information shows up—visually, auditorily, kinesthetically—you begin to recover agency.

Reclaiming Inner Imagery

Inner imagery is one of the most neglected forms of intelligence.

Many neurodivergent folks live with vivid, dynamic internal landscapes. Mental pictures don’t just appear—they move, shift, surround. Some experience their inner world as more real than the outside one, and for good reason: it often holds more coherence, more symbolism, more clarity.

A client once described her anxiety as a hallway lined with mirrors. Each mirror reflected a different version of her—all watching her, judging her, expecting something. The more pressure she felt, the closer the mirrors got. By turning the hallway into an open field in her mind, and replacing the mirrors with soft light, her body exhaled for the first time in years.

She didn’t “fix” her anxiety.

She changed the landscape it lived in.

Inner imagery is not just imagination. It’s interface.

The Distance of Safety, The Nearness of Love

Submodalities shape not just memory, but relationship.

Where something lives in your internal world—how close or far, how bright or dim—tells your body how to respond.

One client couldn’t feel her partner’s love, even though she knew it was there. In her inner world, the warmth was across the room behind glass. We worked not on affirmations, but proximity. We invited the warmth closer, gently, until her body could feel it, not just name it.

This is what most people miss. You can’t think your way into closeness. But you can feel your way toward it.

And sometimes, healing means moving something farther.

Adjusting a memory’s volume.

Letting a voice retreat to the background.

Restoring space between you and something that used to live on top of your skin.

Spirituality and Sensory Language

Many people experience spirit not through dogma, but through sensation.

A shimmer in the periphery.

A tone that feels like home.

A stillness that rings.

When you track the form of a sacred experience—the color, weight, proximity, sound—you begin to learn your own spiritual dialect.

One client experienced her mother’s presence as a specific musical chord. Another sensed divine guidance as light in his left periphery. These aren’t metaphors. They’re the real language of inner connection.

Submodalities aren’t just for therapy. They’re for communion.

Conclusion: Coherence Over Compliance

This is not about fixing you.

This is about decoding your brilliance.

Most systems teach compliance. But what if the goal is coherence? What if joy arises not from trying harder—but from understanding your own internal design?

You don’t need to change your nature.

You need to learn its language.

Practice: Mapping the Music of Inner Experience

Choose a current feeling—one that’s been visiting lately. Ask:

• Where is it in your body?

• Is it still or moving?

• Bright or dim?

• Near or far?

• Loud or quiet?

• Does it have rhythm?

• Does it remind you of music?

Let your body answer—not your thoughts.

Then ask:

• Do you want this closer or farther?

• Louder or quieter?

• Do you want to change its rhythm, or let it stay?

This is your sensory truth.

Let it move.