The same person can respond differently as conditions change. TEG-Blue’s Nervous System Organisation Gradient maps changes in physiological activity, perception, emotion and available responses.
A · Connection / Belonging
Safety with others supports connection.
Social cues can remain accessible · Emotions can be shared · Repair can be considered
AA↔BBCD
Drag the handle, or select X or Z to explore TEG-Blue’s proposed reference patterns.
Movement is central: the same person may enter, sustain, revisit and leave different patterns of response. Change can occur within a position and at different rates across capacities. A response may persist while a demand continues.
Fluid organisation remains responsive to changing conditions. Mobilisation, sustained effort and rest can each serve the situation. Select a position to explore TEG-Blue’s proposed reference patterns.
Non-defensive
reached from A
Defensive organisation
reached from D
Non-defensiveDefensive organisation
reached from A
reached from D
Positions describe TEG-Blue’s proposed patterns of organisation. Perception, tempo and emotion may vary within each pattern. Empathy, conduct and relational repair require their own observations; a position cannot establish them. The arrangement and connecting lines are framework proposals whose routes still require testing.
Framework reference description
Connection / Belonging
Related language · social engagement
Conditions · Safe with others
A · safety → reciprocity
Safety with others — social engagement and co-regulation are available.
Autonomic activity
Parasympathetic · ventral vagal in polyvagal theory
The ventral-vagal account links vagal regulation with social engagement. Here it is a theoretical association, not a biological signature of safety, empathy or connection.
Body resources · Accumulation
Safety with others can leave more capacity available for connection and recovery, with less devoted to immediate protection.
These are descriptions of demand and available capacity, not measurements of one energy reserve.
Perception
Widest — the whole field stays readable: people, place, detail, and what carries no urgency.
Time / tempo
Present — time is barely felt and can vanish entirely, because being here is enough.
Emotions
Gratitude, love, appreciation, care — feeling moves freely in both directions.
Empathic concern
Concern for the other’s wellbeing can guide action, including restraint and respect for their agency.
Relational repair
Open — acknowledging, reconnecting.
Return · when the previous response can change
No defensive organisation needs to be relinquished.
Body signals, awareness and understanding others
Body signals · interoception
Body needs stay quiet but available while face, voice, touch and shared timing lead attention.
Emotional awareness
Connection is lived more than examined; feelings remain differentiated and reflection is available if needed.
Situational awareness
The whole situation remains integrated — place, people, relationship, timing and shared meaning.
Understanding another mind · mentalizing
Another person’s perspective can be considered broadly and revised with new information; safety does not guarantee accuracy.
Sharing another’s feeling · affective empathy
Another person’s feeling can resonate while self and other remain distinct.
These descriptions explain the proposed pattern; they do not establish a person’s capacities or history. Related terms are points of comparison, not equivalent diagnoses. Observe concern, impact, accountability and changed behaviour separately.
Relevant research and limits
Attachment, social safety, interpersonal emotion regulation, positive affect, exploratory attention, social perception, mentalizing, and empathy ground the reduced cost and wider information field possible with trusted others. Mentalizing, affect sharing, and concern remain separable capacities rather than one “social-engagement system” (Slavich, 2020; Reeck et al., 2016; Kanske et al., 2016).
The research note is an orientation map of relevant domains and claim boundaries, not the final source trace. These capacities describe characteristic allocation under each condition, not an all-or-nothing switch or a required experience. A capacity may remain intact without being recruited, and a signal may organise action without entering reflective awareness.
Chronic Survival
Why responses persist or recur
The Chronic Survival view asks what sustains a pattern of response and how readily it can change. Persistence can reflect a continuing demand, prior learning, constraints on action or interrupted recovery.
Repeated threat or unpredictable care can shape what a person expects and which responses become familiar. But the danger may also still be present. Understanding a pattern means examining both the current conditions and how the response changes across situations and time.
Conditions that can contribute
Continuing danger, deprivation, illness or coercion.
Unsafe or unpredictable conditions during development.
Repeated threat, neglect, coercion, instability, loss, or overwhelm.
Prolonged stress with too little rest, safety, support, or recovery.
Duration alone does not show that a response is inflexible. Ask what demand remains, what information or action is available, and whether the response changes when conditions change. Different capacities may change at different rates.
Someone may appear calm while responses remain difficult to revise or recovery remains incomplete. Understanding how a pattern formed does not erase its effects: impact, responsibility, repair and whether the pattern changes still matter.
Relevant research and limits
Developmental, learning and stress research inform questions about expectations, recurring responses and recovery. These fields support component processes; they do not establish the seven Chronic Positions as a clinical taxonomy or reveal a person’s history from their behaviour. See what each domain supports →
What the Gradient examines
From state shifts to relationship patterns
Changing organisation can affect what information and responses are available. Behaviour, its effects and relational repair require their own evidence. The Gradient asks how these changes relate while keeping impact, responsibility and boundaries in view.
Open each source note for research context; Scientific grounding explains the evidence limits.
01
Emotion as information
Feelings can signal body state, need, boundary, impact, or repair — without becoming automatic fact.
02
Why care is not always enough
Under threat, empathy and repair can narrow even when care is present.
03
How rupture repeats
A short-term shift can become a familiar pattern of distance, defence, withdrawal, or pressure for certainty.
04
How protection can become control
Repeated protection may organize around managing, testing, pursuing, avoiding, or overriding another person’s options.
05
What repair requires
Repair depends on enough capacity for impact, empathy, accountability, boundary, and changed pattern to become available.
The TEG-Blue Engine is used to develop tools from the framework and source material. It connects each explanation to its sources and helps shape the questions for the people who will use the tool.
Different fields make different parts of the pattern visible. TEG-Blue places those parts in relation, while checking each claim against the research that supports it. No single source is treated as proof of the whole framework.
Gradient & autonomic state
Autonomic neuroscience and stress physiology inform how responses change with demands, how they persist and how recovery unfolds. They do not establish one physiological signature for each position.
Porges · Sapolsky · McEwen
Perception & cognition
Appraisal research, attention, prediction, cognitive load, and state-shaped perception ground the narrowing or widening of the field.
Barrett · Kahneman · Bower
Awareness & body signals
Interoception and body-awareness research ground the way inner signals become available, muted, narrowed, or difficult to name.
A. D. Craig · contemplative research
Emotion & action readiness
Affective neuroscience and emotion science ground emotional salience, body signals, urgency, and action readiness.
Panksepp · Damasio · Barrett · LeDoux
Relationship & repair
Attachment, interpersonal neurobiology, trauma and developmental research ground proximity, rupture, protection, co-regulation, and repair.
Bowlby · Siegel · Levine · van der Kolk
Context & scale
Psychology, social psychology, sociology, and anthropology locate overlapping parts of the map without owning the whole architecture.