Polyvagal Theory
What it is:
Developed by Stephen Porges, Polyvagal Theory explains how our nervous system’s “vagal tone”—the regulation between states of social engagement, defense, freeze, and shutdown—drives emotional expression, trauma responses, and sense of safety.
What it adds to TEG-Blue™:
- Nervous system states as the backbone: TEG-Blue™ places the Connect/Protect/Manipulate/Tyranny behavioral modes on a color-coded “gradient”—directly inspired by Polyvagal’s view that safety and threat are biological, not just psychological.
- Makes invisible states visible: The theory’s language helps clarify why emotions shift suddenly, why “logic” disappears in threat, and why many people can’t “choose” to calm down or engage.
- Tools for body-first interventions: Visuals and practical prompts in TEG-Blue™ encourage checking for body signals (not just “thought work”) as a first step to real repair and self-understanding.
Limits & Gaps (How TEG-Blue™ Builds on It):
- Polyvagal alone doesn’t show the full architecture of bias, power, or identity, nor how patterns play out in families or AI.
- TEG-Blue™ fills the gaps by combining this “body map” with models of relationship, social conditioning, and technology—plus, feedback from lived trauma and AI modeling that doesn’t experience nervous system states.
Example in Action:
When a teacher sees a student “shut down” after a conflict, TEG-Blue™ helps them recognize this isn’t defiance—it’s a Polyvagal “freeze state.” The system gives visible tools for repair, rather than punishment, and tracks progress over time.
Trauma-Informed Care
What it is:
Based on work by Bessel van der Kolk, Judith Herman, Peter Levine, and others, this approach insists that many emotional, physical, and behavioral struggles arise from unhealed trauma—not laziness, evil, or personal failure. “Trauma-informed” means creating safety-first settings where people aren’t re-triggered or punished for survival adaptations.
What it adds to TEG-Blue™:
- Harm vs. discomfort: TEG-Blue™ clearly distinguishes between trauma response and manipulation, between harm and discomfort—helping avoid both harmful blame and harmful enabling.
- Tools for regulation and crisis: Practical, body-based checklists and color cues make safety restoration (not “talking it out”) the first step in every workflow.
- Prevention and early intervention: Trauma science guides early warning “gradient” scales, so crises can be spotted—and softened—before they escalate.
Limits & Gaps (How TEG-Blue™ Builds on It):
- “Trauma-informed” is sometimes limited to therapy/healthcare, less applied in organizational or digital design.
- TEG-Blue™ expands these tools for leaders, systems designers, teachers, families, and AI ethics—embedding prevention, accountability, and restoration everywhere.
Example in Action:
A school using TEG-Blue™ applies trauma-informed check-ins and “red/yellow/green” modes to spot and adapt to student overwhelm—preventing punishment for late work when a freeze response is at play.
Attachment Theory
What it is:
Attachment Theory explains how our earliest bonds—with caregivers and family—shape emotional safety, trust, and how we connect with others throughout life. Developed by John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth, its core insight is that secure or insecure patterns of attachment get “wired in” early, influencing relationships, boundaries, and healing capacity.
What it adds to TEG-Blue™:
- Relational safety mapping: TEG-Blue™ embeds attachment logic into how it maps safety, belonging, and threat—not just as internal states but as relational patterns people repeat.
- Repair and accountability: The framework anchors tools for understanding when harm is about broken attachment (not just “bad behavior”) and lays out concrete steps for repair.
- Visual language: Attachment types are translated into color-code gradients and glyphs, helping users recognize “secure” (green), “anxious/avoidant” (yellow/pink), and “disorganized” (red/black) dynamics at a glance.
Limits & Gaps (How TEG-Blue™ Builds on It):
- Original theory doesn’t fully address complex trauma, intergenerational wounds, or cultural oppression.
- TEG-Blue™ braids in tools from trauma models, systems theory, and lived experience—plus offers frameworks for healing where “parents” are unable or unavailable.
Example in Action:
A team leader using TEG-Blue™ spots avoidant “shutdown” patterns in conflict and, rather than escalating, brings in visual check-ins fostering psychological safety—a direct application of attachment repair in a modern workplace.
Internal Family Systems (IFS)
What it is:
IFS, pioneered by Richard Schwartz, conceptualizes the psyche as a collection of “parts” (e.g., protectors, exiles, managers) trying their best to keep us safe after emotional wounds or early trauma. Healing means recognizing, honoring, and integrating these parts instead of forcing change or suppressing symptoms.
What it adds to TEG-Blue™:
- Parts language for self-understanding: TEG-Blue™ uses “parts” logic to make internal conflict, sudden mood shifts, and even contradictory behaviors easier to map and work with.
- Non-pathologizing framework: Every defensive or “difficult” behavior is seen as an understandable survival adaptation, not a flaw or weakness.
- Visual diagnostics: Parts and their patterns appear as color gradients, signals, or visual “layers,” giving users real-time feedback on which internal states are active.
Limits & Gaps (How TEG-Blue™ Builds on It):
- IFS focuses on the individual psyche; it’s less explicit about social structure or systems of harm.
- TEG-Blue™ combines IFS with power/bias/social models and lived feedback from survivors, adding methods to discern when parts are reacting to real oppression, not just “triggers.”
Example in Action:
In a family or therapy context, TEG-Blue™ helps someone identify when an internal “protector” is taking over (defensiveness or shutdown), giving both caregiver and client a roadmap for gentle integration rather than argument or judgment.
Somatic Experiencing
What it is:
Developed by Peter Levine, Somatic Experiencing is a trauma-recovery approach that focuses on sensing and releasing stuck survival energy in the body. It’s grounded in the idea that trauma is stored not just as a memory, but as unfinished “fight, flight, freeze” cycles in our nervous system.
What it adds to TEG-Blue™:
- Body-before-cognition: TEG-Blue™ features “body check-in” prompts and visual cues to help users sense where they are on the emotional gradient—before trying to solve things with logic alone.
- Real-time regulation: Practical, simple somatic interventions (breathing/grounding/movement cues) are built into the tools to support users during overwhelm or crisis.
- Subtle signals matter: Tiny physiological shifts are respected as valid emotional data, increasing self-trust and attunement.
Limits & Gaps (How TEG-Blue™ Builds on It):
- Focuses on the individual body and trauma; less explicit about group conflict or systemic harm.
- TEG-Blue™ broadens the scope—integrating “felt sense” with parts work, relationship tools, and social frameworks.
Example in Action:
A team using TEG-Blue™ starts a meeting with a “somatic check-in”—mapping tension or numbness—preventing escalation by responding to the group’s real, embodied state.
Emotional Intelligence (EI)
What it is:
Popularized by Daniel Goleman, EI refers to the ability to perceive, understand, regulate, and use emotions effectively—in oneself and with others. EI frameworks often focus on self-awareness, empathy, motivation, social skills, and self-regulation.
What it adds to TEG-Blue™:
- Emotional skills as teachable: TEG-Blue™ makes core EI abilities concrete and scalable through visual gradients and stepwise tools—no more guesswork about “how to regulate.”
- Feedback for growth: EI is embedded into the heart of every gradient and scale, giving instant, actionable feedback on relational and self-management choices.
- Equality of emotion and logic: Emotions, not just thoughts, are positioned as crucial sources of wisdom for decision-making and repair.
Limits & Gaps (How TEG-Blue™ Builds on It):
- Many EI systems ignore trauma, neurodiversity, or cultural/socioeconomic context.
- TEG-Blue™ adapts EI skills for real-world, crisis, and system-level complexity—making them accessible across backgrounds and processing styles.
Example in Action:
Employees using a TEG-Blue™ dashboard score daily on a “self-awareness” and “repair” scale, building emotional skills over time and reducing team conflict.
Social Justice & Critical Theory
What it is:
Encompassing work by thinkers like Kimberlé Crenshaw, Ignacio Martín-Baró, and many others, social justice and critical theory frameworks illuminate how power, privilege, oppression, and collective trauma shape both individual experience and societal systems. Intersectionality, liberation psychology, and feminist/anti-racist scholarship all fit here.
What it adds to TEG-Blue™:
- Root cause clarity: TEG-Blue™ builds in explicit recognition of how emotional harm is shaped by social structures—racism, sexism, ableism, classism—not just “personal issues.”
- Repair with accountability: Tools go beyond “fixing yourself” to map how justice, power, and repair must involve the systems and contexts in which people live and work.
- Intersectional tools: Visuals and checklists help users navigate layered experiences of harm, privilege, and resilience.
Limits & Gaps (How TEG-Blue™ Builds on It):
- Theory can be abstract or disconnected from real-time emotional work.
- TEG-Blue™ grounds justice frameworks in moment-to-moment tools—making accountability and inclusion operational, not just aspirational.
Example in Action:
A nonprofit using TEG-Blue™ can track whether “diversity” initiatives are producing real belonging or papering over subtle exclusions—closing the gap between intention and lived impact.
Systems Thinking
What it is:
An interdisciplinary approach from fields like ecology, engineering, and social science, Systems Thinking is about understanding how elements in a system—people, environments, rules—affect one another in dynamic, often non-linear ways. It emphasizes feedback loops and the “whole picture” over linear cause-effect.
What it adds to TEG-Blue™:
- Interconnected maps: Every TEG-Blue™ framework, from inner parts to cultural harm, is laid out as a system—showing how individual feelings and choices ripple out to affect groups, families, organizations, and even AI.
- Feedback and escalation detection: Tools help pinpoint where tiny problems could snowball, and where fixing a “node” (e.g., safety, repair) can shift entire group outcomes.
- Prevention, not just reaction: Proactive workflows help break cycles before harm spreads systemically.
Limits & Gaps (How TEG-Blue™ Builds on It):
- Systems Thinking alone doesn’t address trauma, bias, or nervous system reality.
- TEG-Blue™ merges this bird’s-eye perspective with deep, embodied and relational wisdom for real change.
Example in Action:
An organizational “TEG-Blue™ audit” surfaces that minor exclusions lead to rising burnout and disengagement—a systems-thinking lens for emotional harm.
Neurodiversity Research
What it is:
This paradigm (championed by advocates like Ari Ne’eman) recognizes neurological differences—autism, ADHD, dyslexia, etc.—as natural variations rather than disorders to “fix.” It centers sensory, social, and processing diversity and the need for systemic accommodation.
What it adds to TEG-Blue™:
- Inclusive by design: All scales, tools, and visual languages are built to respect different ways of sensing, feeling, and expressing emotion.
- Rejecting one-size-fits-all: “Meltdowns,” sensory shutdown, and emotional “masking” are mapped as intelligent (but costly) adaptations, not character problems.
- Innovation potential: TEG-Blue™ positions neurodivergence as an asset for collective wisdom and evolutionary growth.
Limits & Gaps (How TEG-Blue™ Builds on It):
- Research often specializes by diagnosis and often lacks integrated emotional/systems focus.
- TEG-Blue™ weaves neurodivergent needs into every level—healing, culture-building, tech, and family repair.
Example in Action:
A classroom uses TEG-Blue™ color gradients that let neurodivergent and neurotypical students alike signal overwhelm without verbalizing—enabling real accommodation.
Family Systems Theory
What it is:
Developed by Murray Bowen, Salvador Minuchin, Virginia Satir and others, family systems theory holds that individual behavior, trauma, and healing must be understood in the context of (often multi-generational) family dynamics and patterns, including roles, boundaries, and cycles of conflict or care.
What it adds to TEG-Blue™:
- Multi-level mapping: TEG-Blue™ shows how what looks like an “individual problem” (anxiety, anger, avoidance) is often a symptom of long-standing family patterns or hidden emotional contracts.
- Tools for generational repair: Visual tools help break cycles, rebuild trust, and make space for new, healthier family norms (chosen family included).
- Intervention points: By illuminating inherited roles and triggers, TEG-Blue™ empowers conscious change—before problems repeat for another generation.
Limits & Gaps (How TEG-Blue™ Builds on It):
- Classic family systems can overlook trauma, social oppression, or neurodivergence.
- TEG-Blue™ integrates trauma mapping, identity diversity, and broader social analysis, ensuring healing addresses both roots and environment.
Example in Action:
A therapist uses TEG-Blue™ diagrams to help a parent see how their “discipline” approach mirrors the previous generation’s patterns—sparking real conversation about change.
Oppression & Bias Frameworks
What it is:
This includes research on explicit and implicit bias (social psychology), structural racism, microaggressions, gaslighting, stereotype threat, and institutional power as sources of emotional harm. Emerging models blend trauma, bias, and systematic oppression into a unified understanding of how harm is perpetuated and internalized.
What it adds to TEG-Blue™:
- Bias as survival logic: TEG-Blue™ reveals how bias formation is often an unconscious survival strategy—and how it can be unlearned compassionately but accountably.
- Tracking systemic harm: The framework offers tools to distinguish between discomfort and genuine harm, as well as process and break cycles of normalized oppression at personal and group levels.
- Language for inclusion: TEG-Blue™’s visual and color-coded framework helps people navigate difficult conversations about power, privilege, and microaggression with less shame and more real insight.
Limits & Gaps (How TEG-Blue™ Builds on It):
- Bias research can get stuck at “awareness,” not change; trauma and body realities are often missing.
- TEG-Blue™ makes these patterns visible in real-time, while providing restorative, not punitive, pathways for individual and collective learning.
Example in Action:
An online community uses TEG-Blue™ modes to moderate: recognizing when harm is systemic bias vs. simple disagreement, and offering repair or boundary setting accordingly.
Family Systems Theory
What it is:
Developed by Murray Bowen, Salvador Minuchin, Virginia Satir and others, family systems theory holds that individual behavior, trauma, and healing must be understood in the context of (often multi-generational) family dynamics and patterns, including roles, boundaries, and cycles of conflict or care.
What it adds to TEG-Blue™:
- Multi-level mapping: TEG-Blue™ shows how what looks like an “individual problem” (anxiety, anger, avoidance) is often a symptom of long-standing family patterns or hidden emotional contracts.
- Tools for generational repair: Visual tools help break cycles, rebuild trust, and make space for new, healthier family norms (chosen family included).
- Intervention points: By illuminating inherited roles and triggers, TEG-Blue™ empowers conscious change—before problems repeat for another generation.
Limits & Gaps (How TEG-Blue™ Builds on It):
- Classic family systems can overlook trauma, social oppression, or neurodivergence.
- TEG-Blue™ integrates trauma mapping, identity diversity, and broader social analysis, ensuring healing addresses both roots and environment.
Example in Action:
A therapist uses TEG-Blue™ diagrams to help a parent see how their “discipline” approach mirrors the previous generation’s patterns—sparking real conversation about change.
Oppression & Bias Frameworks
What it is:
This includes research on explicit and implicit bias (social psychology), structural racism, microaggressions, gaslighting, stereotype threat, and institutional power as sources of emotional harm. Emerging models blend trauma, bias, and systematic oppression into a unified understanding of how harm is perpetuated and internalized.
What it adds to TEG-Blue™:
- Bias as survival logic: TEG-Blue™ reveals how bias formation is often an unconscious survival strategy—and how it can be unlearned compassionately but accountably.
- Tracking systemic harm: The framework offers tools to distinguish between discomfort and genuine harm, as well as process and break cycles of normalized oppression at personal and group levels.
- Language for inclusion: TEG-Blue™’s visual and color-coded framework helps people navigate difficult conversations about power, privilege, and microaggression with less shame and more real insight.
Limits & Gaps (How TEG-Blue™ Builds on It):
- Bias research can get stuck at “awareness,” not change; trauma and body realities are often missing.
- TEG-Blue™ makes these patterns visible in real-time, while providing restorative, not punitive, pathways for individual and collective learning.
Example in Action:
An online community uses TEG-Blue™ modes to moderate: recognizing when harm is systemic bias vs. simple disagreement, and offering repair or boundary setting accordingly.
Affective Computing & AI
What it is:
A branch of AI (pioneered by Rosalind Picard and others) that aims to teach computers to recognize, interpret, and sometimes simulate human emotions. Includes facial, vocal, and text-based emotion detection, and ongoing research into emotion-safe AI systems.
What it adds to TEG-Blue™:
- Machine-readable emotional logic: TEG-Blue™ translates emotional patterns into color-coded, structured data—enabling responsible AI to identify, track, and respect human emotional states.
- Ethical safety standards: Frameworks for distinguishing manipulation from genuine care, and protecting users from digital emotional exploitation.
- Interdisciplinary bridge: AI models are benchmarked not just on accuracy, but on their alignment with human safety, repair, and dignity as per TEG-Blue™ gradients and modes.
Limits & Gaps (How TEG-Blue™ Builds on It):
- Most affective computing is divorced from trauma, power, bias, or nuanced social dynamics.
- TEG-Blue™ infuses AI alignment with trauma-informed, relational, and systems-aware checks—ensuring emotional data is used for healing, not harm.
Example in Action:
A chatbot powered by TEG-Blue™ gradients flags patterns of user distress—which triggers repair prompts or human intervention instead of manipulating engagement.