Why do we become different people under stress?
The shifts aren’t random — they follow a pattern in the nervous system. Drag across it and watch what changes.
Safe with others. The whole field stays readable.
Empathy full · Emotions open · Repair open
Understand your own shifts
See why the same emotion can feel different as the conditions your body is reading change.
Read what happens between you ↗
Practical tools for reading patterns, boundaries, and repair in real relationships.
Review the science
See which research grounds each part of the map, and where its support ends.
Move through the Gradient. Watch what changes.
Fluid Gradient: state is moving, and capacity shifts with conditions. The label on each position below names what is happening. Click a position to see what becomes available — perception, tempo, emotion, empathy, and repair.
Connection / Belonging
Safety with others — social engagement and co-regulation are available.
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.
From state shifts to relationship patterns
When the body shifts, perception, emotion, behaviour, and the ability to repair can shift with it. The Gradient places those changes in relation without losing sight of impact, responsibility, or boundaries.
Hover a claim’s sources to see exactly which research grounds it.
Emotion as information
Feelings can signal body state, need, boundary, impact, or repair — without becoming automatic fact.
Why care is not always enough
Under threat, empathy and repair can narrow even when care is present.
How rupture repeats
A short-term shift can become a familiar pattern of distance, defence, withdrawal, or pressure for certainty.
How protection can become control
Repeated protection may organize around managing, testing, pursuing, avoiding, or overriding another person’s options.
What repair requires
Repair depends on enough capacity for impact, empathy, accountability, boundary, and changed pattern to become available.
What research supports — and where its limits are
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, neuroception, and stress physiology ground the safety–threat axis, mobilisation, inhibition, chronic load, and return.
Perception & cognition
Appraisal research, attention, prediction, cognitive load, and state-shaped perception ground the narrowing or widening of the field.
Awareness & body signals
Interoception and body-awareness research ground the way inner signals become available, muted, narrowed, or difficult to name.
Emotion & action readiness
Affective neuroscience and emotion science ground emotional salience, body signals, urgency, and action readiness.
Relationship & repair
Attachment, interpersonal neurobiology, trauma and developmental research ground proximity, rupture, protection, co-regulation, and repair.
Context & scale
Psychology, social psychology, sociology, and anthropology locate overlapping parts of the map without owning the whole architecture.