— We do not see the world as it is. We see it as we are. — Anais Nin
Have you ever wondered why two people can experience the exact same event and have completely different emotional responses? The answer lies in what NLP calls the Internal Representational System — the way your mind codes, stores, and gives meaning to your experiences.
What Is the Internal Representational System?
Your Internal Representational System (IRS) is the collection of internal images, sounds, feelings, tastes, and smells that your mind uses to represent the world around you. In short, it is how your brain makes sense of reality.
Every experience you have is filtered through your five senses and then stored internally as a representation. These representations shape how you feel, what you believe, and ultimately how you behave.
The VAKOG Model
In NLP, we identify five primary representational systems, known as VAKOG:
- Visual (V): Internal images and pictures. How you see things in your mind.
- Auditory (A): Internal sounds and voices. What you hear or say to yourself internally.
- Kinesthetic (K): Internal feelings and physical sensations. How things feel to you.
- Olfactory (O): Internal smells. How your mind uses scent-based memories.
- Gustatory (G): Internal tastes. The role of taste in your internal experience.
Your Preferred Representational System
Most people have a primary representational system — the one they use most frequently to process experience. Visual people often think in pictures and speak in visual language. Auditory people are tuned into tone and rhythm. Kinesthetic people lead with feeling.
Knowing your preferred system — and that of the people you communicate with — dramatically improves rapport, understanding, and influence.
How Internal Representations Affect Your Reality
The quality of your internal representations directly affects the quality of your emotional state. If you picture a fearful scenario in bright, vivid, close-up detail, you will feel more afraid than if you picture it small, distant, and in black and white.
This is not magic — it is neuroscience. NLP teaches us to adjust the qualities of our internal representations — called submodalities — to change how we feel about any experience.
Redesigning Your Inner World
- Identify Your Representation: Think of a situation that triggers a negative emotion. What do you see, hear, or feel internally?
- Adjust the Submodalities: Make the image smaller, dimmer, or further away. Lower the volume of the internal voice.
- Amplify the Positive: Think of a positive experience. Make it bigger, brighter, and more vivid.
- Anchor the New State: Use a physical gesture or word to lock in the positive state so you can access it at will.
Your mind is not a passive recorder of reality — it is an active designer of it. And with NLP, you hold the design tools in your own hands.