The Evolutionary Stress Framework: A Field Guide

Abstract

The Evolutionary Stress Framework: A Field Guide provides a plain-language map of the Evolutionary Stress Framework (ESF), a conceptual and research-generating framework developed by Lori Hogenkamp at the Center for Adaptive Stress. ESF examines health, disability, and neurodivergence as emergent patterns in interacting brain-body-environment systems rather than as isolated defects or single-cause outcomes. It brings together allostasis and allostatic load, predictive processing and interoception, neurodiversity, person-environment fit, energy constraints, and complex-systems science. This Version 1.0 record contains the canonical Field Guide and three public companion resources: the ESF Translation Map, the ESF Canonical Terminology and Boundary Map, and The 14 Core Claims of the Evolutionary Stress Framework. Together, the materials explain what the framework is, how its disciplinary languages connect, what its central terms mean, and what propositions the framework commits itself to. The Translation Map is supplied in PDF and PNG formats, and a ZIP archive contains the same five public files as a single downloadable package. The guide distinguishes regulatory architecture, developmental calibration, and expressed profile; defines Regulatory Bandwidth as present coordinated regulatory capacity under perturbation; separates Regulatory Bandwidth from Regulatory Margin; and incorporates the published non-scalar measurement analysis by treating capacity as a conditional perturbation-response profile before scalarization. It distinguishes established foundations, strong convergent support, ESF syntheses, active empirical hypotheses, and methodological implications, while reporting publication status separately. Interactive companion: The ESF Rosetta Map is a living evidence architecture showing how interdisciplinary sources contribute to, support, constrain, refine, or challenge the framework: https://lorihogenkamp-ops.github.io/esf-rosetta-map/ (archived baseline: Zenodo DOI 10.5281/zenodo.23422797) These materials are living public references. Later revisions will be issued as new versions of this Zenodo record rather than silently replacing Version 1.0. Version 1.0 has not been peer-reviewed and is not medical advice, diagnostic guidance, or a validated clinical model. AI language tools supported drafting, editing, figure development, and document preparation under the author's direction and review. The author is responsible for the framing, claims, citations, and conclusions. This document is part of the Evolutionary Stress Framework (ESF) public library of the Center for Adaptive Stress.