TEG-Blue · The Emotional Gradient Blueprint
The Nervous System Gradient
The current public center of TEG-Blue is a research-grounded map of how safety and threat reshape perception, emotion, body activation, behaviour, relationship patterns, and repair.
We do not stay the same in every situation: open and trusting one moment, guarded or controlling the next. These shifts are not random. They are state changes in the nervous system.
Established research appears here as grounding for specific mechanisms: source traces, not a claim that the whole framework has clinical validation. The map helps make pattern movement visible without turning a moment, behaviour, or state into a whole-person verdict.
Gradient Map
Move through the nervous-system Gradient.
Use the map to see how safety, threat, chronic pressure, and shutdown change what becomes available: perception, emotion, empathy, repair, and the capacity to stay connected.
Connection / Belonging
also known as social engagement
Autonomic pathway parasympathetic · ventral vagal
Safety with others — social engagement and co-regulation are available.
Safety through connection
The field is wide enough to include another person as safe and separate. Facial expression, tone, timing, context, and shared meaning can be read without defensive narrowing.
Cognitive science, appraisal research, prediction, and state-shaped perception
What the gradient explains
From state shifts to relationship patterns
The Gradient is useful at the scale where people meet: one nervous system, one interaction, and the patterns that repeat between people. A state shift changes perception, tempo, emotion, empathy, and repair; when the same shifts repeat, they can become familiar relational patterns. That helps explain how distance, harm, protection, or repair form while keeping impact, accountability, and boundaries in view.
Why care is not always enough — under threat, empathy and repair can narrow even when care is present.
How rupture repeats — the same state pattern can return as distance, defensiveness, withdrawal, or pressure for certainty.
How protection turns into control — repeated self-protection can become managing, testing, pursuing, avoiding, or pushing back.
Language for shifts as they happen — recognised as state changes without turning one moment into a whole-person verdict.
A route back to connection — repair begins with the state the system is actually in, and with enough safety for impact and empathy to land.
The map
Gradient states and shutdown fallback
The Gradient runs from physiological baseline through social engagement, protection, strategic management, and power mobilisation. Shutdown is shown as a fallback outside the line: a conservation state that changes perception, cognition, awareness, empathy, action, and repair, but does not extend the gradient itself.
- XBaseline
Safe & at rest · SAFETY · rest-and-digest · parasympathetic
Physiological baseline — regulation and broad capacity are available.
Chronic — Elevated baseline — rest does not fully land
- AConnection / Belonging
Safe with others · SAFETY · social engagement · parasympathetic · ventral vagal
Safety with others — social engagement and co-regulation are available.
Chronic — Connection / Belonging — safety is performed or approximated without settled access
- A↔BSafety Checking
Is it still safe? · UNCERTAINTY · parasympathetic → sympathetic
Relational uncertainty — the system checks whether safety still holds.
Chronic — Safety Checking — the safety question remains unresolved
- BProtection / Defence
Threat · THREAT · fight · flight · fawn · sympathetic
Threat — mobilisation prioritises boundary, distance, or defence.
Chronic — Protection / Defence — mobilisation stays held
- CStrategic Management
Persistent threat · PERSISTENT THREAT · control / management · sympathetic + vagal brake
Persistent threat — cognition organises around strategic management and control of variables.
Chronic — Strategic Management — management becomes the held response to persistent threat
- DPower Mobilisation
Life threat · LIFE THREAT · power mobilisation · sympathetic
Life threat — power mobilisation overrides relational access.
Chronic — Power Mobilisation — force and control stay readily available as substitute protection
- ZShutdownoff-gradient
Capacity exceeded · CAPACITY EXCEEDED · freeze · collapse · parasympathetic · dorsal vagal
Capacity exceeded — active mobilisation drops and conservation becomes primary.
Chronic — Persistent Shutdown / Collapse — capacity stays exceeded
Research
Research grounding and source traces
The architecture leads; established research provides grounding for specific parts of the map. These are source traces and orientation points, not a claim that the whole system has clinical validation.
Gradient and autonomic state
Autonomic neuroscience, neuroception, and stress physiology ground the safety-threat axis, mobilisation, inhibition, chronic load, and return. · Porges · Sapolsky · McEwen
Perception and cognition
Cognitive science, appraisal research, attention, prediction, cognitive load, and state-shaped perception ground the narrowing or widening of the field. · Barrett · Kahneman · Bower
Awareness and 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 and action readiness
Affective neuroscience and emotion science ground emotional salience, body signals, urgency, and action readiness. · Panksepp · Damasio · Barrett · LeDoux
Relationship and repair
Attachment, interpersonal neurobiology, trauma research, and developmental research ground proximity, rupture, protection, co-regulation, and repair. · Bowlby · Siegel · Levine · van der Kolk
Context and scale
Psychology, social psychology, sociology, and anthropology locate overlapping parts of the map without owning the whole architecture. · Contextual grounding
Use and attribution
Authorship and use
TEG-Blue, The Emotional Gradient Blueprint, and The Nervous System Gradient were created by Anna Paretas-Artacho. Original public written framework content is published under CC BY 4.0: attribution is required, and reuse should link back to the source. View license.
Marks, logos, tools, code, Engine logic, product surfaces, and third-party materials are excluded unless otherwise noted. Applied builds, institutional implementation, product integration, and reuse of Engine or tool logic require written permission.
Questions
Common questions
What is TEG-Blue?
TEG-Blue is The Emotional Gradient Blueprint: a research-grounded visual framework for reading how emotional, nervous-system, relational, and repair patterns form and change.
What is the Nervous System Gradient?
The Nervous System Gradient is the current central public map inside TEG-Blue: a visual map of how emotional, bodily, and relational patterns shift across safety, threat, control, shutdown, regulation, and repair.
What does the Gradient help readers notice?
It helps readers notice how a state can shape perception, emotion, body activation, behaviour, empathy, accountability, and repair capacity without turning a visible pattern into diagnosis or motive certainty.
What is the difference between a passing state and a chronic one?
Some protective states move. Other protective patterns become repeated, rigid, or hard to leave. This distinction helps read patterns over time; it is not a public typology or a verdict about a person.
What research is TEG-Blue grounded in?
The architecture leads; established research provides grounding for specific parts of the map. These are source traces and orientation points, not a claim that the whole system has clinical validation.
Can TEG-Blue diagnose people?
No. TEG-Blue is educational and reflective. It can help read observable patterns, effects, boundaries, and repair needs, but it cannot identify someone's true internal state from the outside.