What Zone Are You In?
How Your Nervous System State Shapes Your Reactions, Identity, and Freedom
SUMMARY: What if your emotions weren’t problems to solve, but signals to read?
In under 10 minutes, this guide will shift how you see your thoughts, feelings, and habits. You’ll learn to read your nervous system state (Red, Green, or Purple Zone) and turn emotional reactivity into calm clarity and confident action. If you want more freedom in your mind, body, and identity, this is your map.
You don’t need to control your emotions.
You need to read them.
Your emotions are signals.
And your nervous system is the filter they pass through.
If you want to change how you think, feel, and act then you need to know what state you’re in.
That’s where the Red Zone / Green Zone model comes in.
It’s the bridge between reactivity and self-leadership.
Let’s break it down.
Red Zone vs. Green Zone: Your Nervous System State Shapes Your Story
Let’s break down how your nervous system and perception work together to shape your state, and how the Red Zone and Green Zone explain the difference between reactivity and response. This will help you understand the invisible current that is shaping your behavior.
You’re never just “emotional.” You’re in a state, and that state affects how you think, feel, and interpret reality.
🔴 Red Zone: Your Preference System
Your system is in protection mode.
Fight, flight, freeze, fawn. (sympathetic activation)
Perception narrows
Emotions intensify
Reactivity increases
Danger is baked into the moment
It feels like life is happening to you.
Your system is seeking freedom from discomfort, control, or threat so your behavior becomes driven by preference (e.g. likes/dislikes) and protection.
You feel like you are the emotion. There’s minimal to zero space between stimulus and response.
🟢 Green Zone: Your Presence System
Your system is in regulation mode. Calm, connected, creative. (parasympathetic activation)
Perception expands
Emotions become data
You feel more grounded
You can reflect, pause, and choose
It feels like life is happening by you.
Your system moves with freedom for growth, values, and aligned-action.
You feel the emotion, without being fused to it. You can observe, interpret, and respond.
🟣 The Purple Zone: Shift from “doing it” to “being it”
(Note: There’s also a third state I call the “Purple Zone”, which is your integration system that rests in freedom as being, no tension to manage, no threat, no lack, just wholeness and validating behavior. It’s a deeper presence where energy and action flows. At this level, we move beyond regulation into resonance. Life isn't just happening to you, or even by you. The deeper truth emerges, life can happen through you. That’s a topic for another article.)
Reality Check: Most People Live in the Red Zone
(Want to go deeper? This article on The Reality Check breaks down how to discern whether your thoughts and reactions are actually based in truth, or just practiced perception.)
Most people spend the majority of their time in a low-grade Red Zone. It's not necessarily a full-blown panic, but rather a subtle state of tension, urgency, and emotional noise.
We think we’re calm. But really, we’re braced. You’ve just gotten so familiar with it, it feels normal.
The Red Zone state is influenced by our attachments to who we think we are, what we want most in the moment, and our likes and dislikes.
It's fueled by who we believe we have to be, what we think we need, and what we can't stand to lose.
If you believe you’re grounded when you’re not, or worse, grounded but close-minded, you’ll keep making reactive decisions while calling them intentional ones.
Shifting into the Green Zone is about becoming free to choose without being driven by uncomfortable emotional energies.
There are two ways this shows up:
A habitual state—a background hum of stress and emotion that feels normal because it’s familiar.
An activated state—a triggered spike in emotion that hijacks your response in the moment.
One’s chronic. One’s acute. But neither has to own you.
The Green Zone isn’t a personality trait. It’s a practiced skill. The more you return to it, the more it becomes your new baseline.
True Green Zone presence can’t be faked. You feel it in your body. You respond from it.
How to Know What Zone You’re In
Ask yourself:
Does my body feel open or closed right now?
Do I feel spacious or constricted?
Am I reacting or responding?
Can I pause and choose—or am I in a loop?
Your body knows.
Tension, tightness, urgency, irritation = Red.
Breath, clarity, curiosity, compassion = Green.
You can’t change what you don’t see.
You can’t regulate what you don’t feel.
So you must first sense it, name it, meet it, and then guide it.
This is interoception: the skill of reading your body's signals.
Interoception is your internal awareness system. Before you think a thought or name an emotion, your body has already spoken. Learning to listen to that signal is the gateway to self-regulation.
Your Self-Talk Also Reveals Your State
Slow down and listen to your mental chatter.
Red Zone Self-Talk:
Seeks external validation. It wants approval, recognition, or control to feel safe.
The voice in your head sounds like:
Judgment & Comparison: reactive and defensive
Cynicism: close-minded
Fear: insecure
Green Zone Self-Talk:
Aligns with internal validation. It acts from values, clarity, and self-respect. Instead of trying to prove worth, it’s an expression of it.
The voice in your head sounds like:
Compassion: calm
Curiosity: open-minded
Courage: confident
These aren’t just thoughts. They’re signals from your state.
Emotional Energies: The Force Beneath the Feeling
Emotional energy is the raw force you feel before your mind makes meaning of it. It’s not just a feeling, it’s energy in motion. Energy looking for expression, direction, or resolution.
Every behavior is driven by this charge. What changes everything is how you relate to it.
Red Zone Emotional Energy
Compulsive and compelling
Protective, high voltage, low clarity
Fuels habits like impulsive eating, snapping, procrastinating
When we live in the Red Zone, behavior is our pressure release. It’s not a conscious decision. Instead, it’s a discharge of emotional energy looking for relief.
“Run!” (Fear)
“Fix it now!” (Guilt)
“Fight for control!” (Anger)
“Prove your worth!” (Pride)
Green Zone Emotional Energy
Regulated and clarifying
Steady, coherent, empowering
Validates your experience without fusing identity to it
Emotion energizes intentional behavior:
Courage → Confidence
Curiosity → Exploration
Compassion → Connection
Willingness → Growth
You act with emotion, not because of it.
How This Energy Ties to Behavior
Red Zone
Emotional Energy: Chaotic, urgent, protective
Behavior Pattern: React to relieve discomfort (impulse, avoidance, control)
Green Zone
Emotional Energy: Coherent, clarifying, empowering
Behavior Pattern: Respond with intention (aligned action, reflection)
A Real-World Example
Red Zone: You miss a workout. Guilt kicks in. "I always sabotage myself." The pressure builds. You overeat to cope. Now you feel worse.
Your identity says: “I’m a failure.”
Green Zone: You feel the same guilt, but pause. “What do I need right now?” You take a walk instead of the gym, reset your day.
Your identity says: “I’m someone who adjusts and moves forward.”
The key is awareness. You can’t always change the energy, but you can change how you relate to it.
⚠️ When the Red Zone Pretends to Be the Purple Zone
Let’s say you’re trying to make a better choice…eat healthier, move more, follow through on your goal. Then you suddenly your mind starts to go to work…
Then a voice kicks in:
"No worries. This is my favorite food so that means I’m in joy right now—Purple Zone, baby!"
It feels lighthearted. Present. Free. But slow down.
That first thought?
It’s usually a Red Zone reflex in disguise, a subtle urge to avoid discomfort.
That’s not presence.
If you take a breath and go deeper, the story shifts:
“Actually, I feel like I deserve this…”
Now you're closer to the truth.
That’s moral licensing: justifying your behavior so you don’t have to feel lack, restriction, or the fear of missing out.
That “deserving” isn’t grounded presence, it’s often driven by unmet emotional needs. And it’s a clue:
You’re not choosing from alignment. You’re seeking relief.
The first thought in the Red Zone is often the lie.
The second thought—after awareness—is the truth.
This is where clarity lives.
Real Purple Zone doesn’t have to explain itself.
It doesn’t need to rationalize.
It’s still. It’s free.
It moves when the moment is right, not when emotion demands escape.
From Perception to Identity
Imagine looking through a keyhole versus opening the door. Red Zone perception is narrow and locks you into a single story. Green Zone perception expands, letting you see the whole room and choose your next step with clarity.
When perception is narrow, you are the emotion. It feels like truth. When perception expands, you can see the emotion. It feels like clarity.
Misidentification = Mistaken Identity
At the core of Red Zone reactivity is misidentification.
The further we slide into the Red Zone, the more we mistake:
Preferences for truth
Urges for needs
Stories for identity
It often looks like:
Preference → Attachment → Attraction/Aversion → Reaction → Suffering
But when state and perception expand, the Green Zone, the pattern shifts:
Presence → Observation → Openness → Alignment → Freedom
You’re not broken—you’re just practiced.
What you’re often fused with isn’t your “true self”, it’s your practiced identity.
You feel fear → think “I am afraid” → believe “I am weak.” One sensation becomes a story, then becomes your self-image.
Red Zone = Fusion. Green Zone = Freedom.
When you stop identifying with the emotion, you start choosing from it. And eventually, you simply witness it and let it pass like weather.
The True Sequence of Experience
Most people think: thought → emotion → action.
But it actually unfolds in the body: Energy → Perception → Thought → Emotion → Behavior → Identity
Or simply: Somatic → Cognitive → Behavioral → Identity
Somatic: Your body interprets energy via the nervous system.
Cognitive: You shape that into story/emotion.
Behavioral: You react or respond.
Identity: Your action reinforces a self-image.
If identity is practiced… then transformation is just new practice.
A Real-World Process: The Emotional Energy Map
(If you want a simple tool to help release the charge behind reactive emotional energy, check out The Release Method. It pairs perfectly with this process.)
Here’s how you apply this in real time:
Body Check:
Red Zone or Green Zone?
Feel the sensation. What’s happening in your body right now? Tightness? Heat? Shallow breath? Stillness?Identity Check:
Red Zone or Green Zone?
Who are you being in this moment? “I am this emotion” or “I have this emotion”
Energetic Drive:
Red Zone or Green Zone?
What’s the fuel behind your urge? To protect or avoid or to align and grow?Response Cue:
Red Zone: Regulate before you react. Breathe. Don’t believe the first story.
Green Zone: Reflect and align. What matters now?
Choose from Clarity
What would I do if I felt grounded, and clear?What’s one thing I’m willing to do to move forward? Be specific and move.
Action reinforces identity.
Final Word
You don’t need to fix or suppress your emotions.
You just need to feel them clearly.
Clarity creates choice.
Choice builds leadership.
When you lead yourself, you live in freedom.
Presence is your power.
Self-leadership is your practice.
This is the shift—
From being a passive recipient of life…
To an active participant…
To a conscious vessel, in relationship with life itself.
So, what zone are you in right now?
EXTRAS:
Download your FREE Companion Guide: The Emotional Energy Map
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Related Reads:
→ The Reality Check: Learn how to validate or challenge your internal stories.
→ The Release Method: Use this tool to let go of emotional energy without force or suppression.
References & Influences
This framework draws from neuroscience, psychology, spirituality and real-world coaching, woven together into a practical path for self-leadership.
Stephen Porges – Polyvagal Theory
Dan Siegel – Mindsight and The Window of Tolerance
Kelly McGonigal – The Willpower Instinct
Internal Family Systems (IFS)
Bill Cortright – Stress Mastery