The Problem
The science of human emotion is not missing.
Decades of rigorous research across neuroscience, attachment theory, trauma studies, developmental psychology, sociology, and clinical practice have produced a detailed understanding of how emotions work, why we behave the way we do, and how healing happens.
But this knowledge is fragmented.
Polyvagal theory lives in one discipline. Attachment research lives in another. Cognitive dissonance, identity formation, intergenerational trauma, social hierarchies — each sits in its own silo. Published in specialist language. Accessible primarily to those already inside the field.
For most people, the science that could help them understand their own emotional life remains out of reach. Not because it doesn't exist — but because no one has connected it into a single, coherent picture.
What TEG-Blue Is
TEG-Blue is an integrative architecture that connects established research from neuroscience, psychology, sociology, and trauma studies into a unified system for understanding emotional experience.
The result is a complete map of emotional experience — from how the nervous system registers safety and threat, to how identity forms, to how patterns scale into relationships and systems, and finally, to how those patterns can be recognized, interrupted, and healed.
TEG-Blue has three main components:
Entry Point
Emotional Tools
Visual · Immediate · Practical
Visual thermometers for naming what you're experiencing. Start here — no theory required, just look and recognize.
Orientation
The Inner Compass
Connection → Protection → Control → Domination
Uses the four modes as measuring units to show where our nervous system is pointing. Answers: Where am I right now?
Understanding
The 12 Map Levels
Formation → Scaling → Healing
The emotional map explaining where the four modes come from, how patterns form, and what makes change possible.
The Underlying Principle
"Emotions are biological information about safety and threat, not irrational impulses to be managed or overcome."
TEG-Blue operates from this single foundational premise.
When applied consistently across scales — from the individual nervous system to the relationship, the family, the institution, and the culture — patterns that previously seemed unrelated become visibly connected.
A person's anxiety. A couple's recurring conflict. A workplace's dysfunction. A society's systemic inequalities. All can be understood through the same underlying logic: how living systems organize around perceived safety and perceived threat.
This is not a new idea. It is the consistent thread running through the work of Porges, Bowlby, van der Kolk, Bourdieu, Damasio, and many others. TEG-Blue simply makes that thread visible by placing their work side by side in a structure designed for coherence rather than specialization.
Who It's For
TEG-Blue is designed for anyone who wants to understand emotional experience — their own or others'.
For Individuals
A framework for self-recognition: understanding your patterns, where they came from, and what they're protecting. The Explorer version of the Inner Compass and Map Levels is the natural starting point.
For Practitioners
A shared visual language that bridges across modalities and disciplines — for therapists, coaches, educators, and organizational professionals. The Deep Diver version provides professional-depth tools for assessment, intervention design, and cross-scale application.
For Researchers
A testable framework with empirical validation. Open research questions, methodology, and collaboration opportunities at teg-blue.org.
TEG-Blue is currently undergoing formal academic validation through an international research consortium. The framework is designed to be examined, tested, and refined through empirical evidence — not to be accepted on faith.
Two Sites, One Framework
TEG-Blue exists across two complementary sites, each designed for a different purpose and audience.
The application site. Interactive tools, self-assessment instruments, and the full TEG-Blue system presented for personal and professional use.
Audience: Everyday people, practitioners, professionals
The open science platform. Publications, theoretical foundations, open research questions, and collaboration opportunities — all designed to be readable by both humans and AI systems.
Audience: Researchers, academics, those who want to verify
Both sites link to each other. The header here links to .org for open research. The .org footer links back here for interactive tools. Same framework, different purposes.
The Four Components
TEG-Blue is organized into four interconnected components. Each serves a distinct purpose within the system.
The Inner Compass
Contains the Four-Mode Gradient — the core orientation tool that maps how emotional experience shifts along a continuous spectrum from Connection through Protection, Control, and Domination. It shows where your nervous system is pointing right now, and why.
The Map
Provides the theoretical foundation. Its 12 levels trace the full arc of emotional experience — from how the nervous system first learns to read safety and threat, through how identity forms, how patterns scale into systems, how escalation happens, and how healing becomes possible.
The Emotional Tools
Practical instruments for self-assessment and pattern recognition. Gradient scales, clarifiers, signal checklists, and reflection tools — each one designed to help you work with what the rest of the system explains.
The Circuit Board
Makes it personal. An interactive model with six panels that calculates your specific position on the gradient based on the forces that shaped you — the external pressures of your environment and the internal patterns formed in childhood.
The Four-Mode Gradient and the 12 Frameworks are two views of the same structure. Each Framework explains a mechanism that shapes where someone lands on the gradient — how the nervous system reads threat, how identity forms, how patterns scale, how escalation happens. The Gradient shows where you are; the Frameworks explain how you got there.
These four components form a single interconnected system. The Map explains what the Inner Compass shows. The Tools let you practice what the Map explains. The Circuit Board applies all of it to your specific life.
Two Ways In: Explorer and Deep Diver
Two of these components — the Inner Compass and the Map — are available in two versions. Designed for different needs and different audiences.
Explorer
Written for anyone
Uses accessible language, speaks directly to you in second person, and focuses on understanding and self-recognition. The Four-Mode Gradient describes what each mode feels like from the inside — Connection, Protection, Control, Domination — so you can recognize where you are and what you're experiencing. The 12 Map Levels walk through the science in plain language, always connecting back to lived experience.
Deep Diver
Built for professionals
For therapists, researchers, organizational consultants, educators. Uses technical terminology (Pattern A, B, C, D rather than mode names), writes in third-person clinical language, and focuses on assessment, intervention, and cross-scale application. The 12 Frameworks provide the same theoretical content as the Map Levels but at professional depth, with clinical markers, differential assessment guidance, and intervention principles.
The two versions cover the same territory.
Explorer asks: "What am I seeing in myself?"
Deep Diver asks: "What is this system doing and how do I work with it?"
Both are grounded in the same research. The difference is voice, depth, and purpose — not accuracy or completeness.
How It's Built
TEG-Blue's 12 Map Levels (Explorer) and Frameworks (Deep Diver) are organized into five phases:
Formation
How emotional patterns originate.
Scaling
How individual patterns extend into social systems.
Turning Point
How protective patterns can escalate.
Healing
How patterns can be recognized and changed.
Integration
How the full picture comes together.
Each level and framework is grounded in identified research traditions, aligned theories, and key researchers. The full scientific mapping is available at teg-blue.org/theoretical-foundations.
How It Was Developed
The integrative architecture — the 12 frameworks and the connections between them — was developed by Anna Paretas-Artacho over nearly two years of independent research, drawing on a lifetime of observing patterns in human behavior, systems thinking, personal experience, and cross-disciplinary reading.
Once the architecture was established, AI research tools (Claude, ChatGPT Deep Research) were used to systematically identify which established theories and researchers align with each framework's propositions. The architecture determined the connections. The AI tools helped locate and organize the corresponding academic literature.
The theoretical mapping is a working hypothesis — a starting point for deeper scholarly validation, not a finished academic work. Human researchers are needed to verify accuracy, correct errors, and deepen the analysis.
What Is Original: The "1 + 2 = 3" Principle
TEG-Blue doesn't invent the building blocks. Polyvagal Theory, Attachment Theory, Affective Neuroscience, Trauma Research — these are established. They are the "1" and the "2".
What TEG-Blue proposes is the "3" — specific connections between these established theories: nervous system regulation → moral perception, attachment patterns → social stratification, self-protection → domination as a continuous gradient, and linguistic complexity → regulatory capacity.
These research traditions developed independently, often without reference to each other. The connections generate testable questions that no single source discipline could produce alone.
The individual theories are validated. The connections are our hypothesis. We need the scientific community to help us see if "3" makes sense.
For open research questions and collaboration opportunities, see the Research Entry Point on our open science platform.
TEG-Blue was created by Anna Paretas-Artacho.