Normative stress, for example, is a natural part of life: birth, death, marriage, breakups, job loss—these are all part of the human experience. As an adaptive response, we can develop coping strategies to help return us to our psychological and physiological baseline: seeking supportive resources, learning how to self-soothe, and assisting our often stuck nervous systems to return to homeostasis. This process of leaving and then returning to our baseline of balance is called allostasis. It allows us to develop the biological capacity for resilience.
