Whenever someone uses the word “enough” (or its negation, “not enough”) that indicates a threshold in their experience, a digital divide between “not enough” and “too much.” Richard Bandler used to joke that, “Too much pleasure is not enough,” a contradiction, in order to encourage people to think about having a lot more fun than they are used to having.

For instance, an internal image may not be clear enough, or large enough, or colorful enough, (or an internal voice may not be loud enough or close enough) for me to be sure that I know something, or that I’m able to make a decision, or have some other response. “If I’m annoyed enough, I’ll speak up.”

What is your threshold for emptying a wastebasket? Half full? Full? Overflowing? If your threshold is overflowing, and your partner’s threshold is half full, guess who will always empty it!

Sometimes a threshold is in response to the “number” of events. (which is also a submodality, though this is not always recognized). When someone says, “If you do that one more time, that’s it!” they are telling you that they have already stored a number of images, and they are warning you that one more image will “tip the scales” and go over their threshold.

Thresholds are often indicated by a nonverbal digital cutting or slicing hand gesture. If you think of a time when someone you know said, “I’ve had it!” or “That’s too much!” and visualize them as they said this, you can usually notice some kind of definitive gesture of one (or both) of their hands, or sometimes a definitive head gesture or movement of some other part of their body.

Thresholds are useful because they determine what is important enough to respond to; if we didn’t have thresholds, we would tend to respond to everything (or nothing) without regard to their importance. On the other hand, if a threshold triggers a response that is troublesome or unpleasant, it can be useful to adjust it, or sometimes eliminate it.

Here is a short piece on You Tube in which I demonstrate a simple exercise in noticing how a fear response changes in response to the size of a visual image of what is feared: