From the research and experience of Charney and others, there is a growing consensus on what it takes to survive the major and minor insults life throws our way, whether a childhood of racial discrimination or poverty and deprivation, an intimate betrayal, a crippling accident, an earthquake, the death of a comrade in your arms, or a direct assault on your life. All have the capacity to overwhelm the system, to stress it to the breaking point, to shatter the sense of safety that allows mind and body to flourish, to destabilize the neural circuitry powering everyday life—affecting what we notice and pay attention to, the degree of control we have over thoughts and feelings and fears, our sense of self, our ability to maintain inner calm.