State underpins our conversations. When we refer to state, we mean the thoughts and feelings that are always present in the mind and are interdependent. They cannot be separated. Feelings include sensations from the body, emotions and mood.
We use a Traffic Light Model to describe how your mental, emotional and biological processes affect you. We’ve inverted the traffic lights to indicate deliberate thinking and reasoning happen at the uppermost level (green). No state is ‘better’ than another state, although some states are more helpful to us in the situations we encounter in modern life.
In the red state, your motivations will be to avoid harm (including perceived threats from others), avoid loss, seek safety, and secure the resources that keep you alive (like food and water) and able to reproduce. This is a basic survival instinct in all of us 1.
You will be feeling unsafe (physically or psychologically) or under attack. Emotions like fear, anger, disgust and sadness are heightened and can feel overwhelming.
Your body’s internal monitoring systems might be signalling you need rest, need food, need water, or are in pain. You might feel suddenly hot or cold, your heart beating rapidly, your breathing becoming shallow.
You might want to fight, flee or freeze in response to these feelings. You can think of a red state as your body’s way of alerting you to something that needs your attention and preparing to tackle it. When under extreme threat, you might be hyper-vigilant. It is also possible your conscious brain shuts down and you faint. Where red state recurs repeatedly and you are trapped, this might lead to feeling helpless, numb, disengaged and lacking the will to seek the resources you need.
You are not well resourced for conversation when you know you are in a red state (or heading towards red).
In the amber or yellow state, you are motivated to seek social safeness by forming bonds with others who are helpful and supportive. Lack of social safeness means you are not able to give/receive care and protection, aren’t feeling of value to others, or feel unattractive to others2.
Here you might be feeling a bit disrupted, unsure and have a sense of “not ok-ness” in your system. You might feel uncomfortable in a group or need to demonstrate your social status. Some of your needs are not being met. You may withdraw and not say much, or you may overcompensate and talk a lot! Your competitive streak might show.
Amber state is mainly about your relationship with others, your social status and how you connect and empathise with others. It is very much about your psychological and emotional safety. Here you can still think and ask questions, though your questions may be more self-oriented and cautious.
Conversations happening from amber state can go either way depending on whether you perceive safeness (green state) or perceive a lack of safety, in which case you might find yourself more in the red state.
In green state, you are feeling good and connected with yourself, others and are engaged with the environment you are in. All your needs are being met. In this state you can access the best learning and problem-solving parts of your brain.
Here, you might feel curious and creative, be able to think and communicate clearly and feel engaged. You will be taking responsibility for your own actions, showing compassion towards yourself and others, and collaborating well.
This is a highly resourced state in which to have conversations.
Our emotions (e.g. anger, sadness, joy) are ways we encode physiological data from our body. Each of us feels these emotions differently. We may have different feelings to someone else, even though we are experiencing the same situation. Research shows there are cultural differences in emotional experience and the labels we give emotions.
Our emotions affect where we place our attention. Strong and unpleasant emotions lead to different reactions than pleasant emotions. We are motivated to behave differently, in different states. Learning what happens for us in different emotional states is important in matching our behaviour to the situation.