Take a moment to imagine your ideal romantic partner. What is it, exactly, that you find so attractive about him or her? If you’re like a lot of people, you probably envisioned someone caring, warm, reliable, confident, and open—All personality characteristics that make for a secure partner. Now, think of one of your actual romantic partners, past or present. Again, if you’re like a lot of people, you probably can think of at least one partner who was insecure; perhaps they came across as emotionally needy and clingy (i.e., anxiously attached) or perhaps they acted emotionally distant and non-communicative (i.e., avoidantly attached). This raises a paradox when it comes to dating choices: If most people say they want secure partners, how and why do they end up with insecure partners? Could it be that insecure individuals use certain strategies to help them attract potential dates?

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There are really only two human emotions: love and fear.

All other emotions stem from those two basic emotions. Love is unconditional acceptance and the willingness to go beyond oneself for our own benefit (self-love) or the benefit of another. Fear is the absence of love, just as judgment is the withholding of love.

Couples, families, peers in the workplace, community members in neighborhoods … they all express both the dynamic of fear and love in their relationships with one another.

Love comes in two forms, either conditional or unconditional. Either it’s offered and received freely and openly, or it’s possessive and demanding. Unconditional love is one of the most powerful and healing gifts we give to others (and it fosters inner peace and happiness, as well).

To choose love is to choose from your heart, not just your brain and ego. The heart is one of the most powerful muscles in the body; its electromagnetic field is sixty times more powerful than that of the brain.

There is a concept called “heart coherence”, which means being heart focused and centered, being in the thoughts and emotions of acceptance, appreciation, and compassion toward ourselves and others — the body and mind are in alignment and cooperation.

Research by the Institute of HeartMath shows that when an individual is in “heart coherence” toward themselves and others, their brain wave patterns and biorhythm are affected in positive ways. And other people near the subjects were also positively affected by the person’s “heart coherence.”

In other words … choosing love boosts your physical health and your mental well-being. Here are five specific ways how:

1. Unconditional love helps create a more peaceful world.

Numerous studies show the healing and peaceful power of love. In August 2013, during the height of Syrian conflict over chemical weapons and possible US military involvement, James Twyman, a peace troubadour, went to Syria and Egypt to perform a concert and pray for love and peace. During his time in Syria, he had over 100,000 people from all over the world sending love and prayers for peace. Less than two months after this event, the United Nations averted US military involvement on the issue by signing the Syrian disarmament plan.

James again went into Syria on February 1, 2016 near Isis territory to perform another peace concert, and again invited people from around the globe to send love and pray for peace, through the energetic highway. Several million people from around the world, myself included, participated in a synchronized prayer and meditation with James for peace in that region. We’ll see if another miracle “in the name of love” occurs.

2. Love helps boost your spirit.

Choosing unconditional love, acceptance, gratitude, and compassion generates a higher energy within us.

When someone is being judgmental, conditional, and demanding with you, it doesn’t feel good. The person’s energy is draining and toxic, like they’re a vampire sucking the positive energy right out of you.

But when you surrounded yourself with people who are unconditional, accepting, compassionate and positive toward you, your spirit lifts and you usually feel warm and fuzzy inside. You want people like that (and their upbeat energy) around you.

Unconditional love promotes trust and connection with others. It allows more openness and vulnerability in life experiences, so you don’t need to hide from yourself or others.

In the words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., “I have decided to stick with love … Hate is too great a burden to bear.”

3. Love is our natural instinct.

To love and be loved is a basic human desire. Hearing someone say “I love you,”  is powerful to the human heart and brain. It puts us in a blissful state. Telling family members and friends that you love them can change your mood and behavior quickly.

The process of falling in love releases the chemical dopamine in the brain to create feelings of pleasure, ecstasy, jealousy or obsession. The brain wiring and chemicals involved with love are also intended to create the healthy bonding attachment needed for both for mating and raising children.

4. Love challenges you to grow into your best self.

Love will push every button, test your values, try every ounce of your patience, challenge every strength, and trigger every wound and weakness. Above all, love is an invitation to freedom and inner peace by freeing your mind from unhealthy attachments and misperceptions.

Choosing love, especially in intimate relationships, offers a pathway to develop a high level of understanding. It elicits the willingness to accept each other as you are and to have compassion towards yourself and others. It helps you find the strength to forgive or reconcile mistakes and differences.

5. Love is the only choice that leads to real happiness.

Love is what makes up the universe, it’s what ties all things together, making two parts into one. Love includes, while fear excludes. Unconditional love is the ultimate healer and restorer. To choose love is to say “Yes” to ourselves and to life.

Love is living with an open heart and an expanded mind, which seeks to become the best version of itself, being of service to others, and treat others and our planet with respect and reverence.

Love of self and toward others is what makes the world a more peaceful place. Yes, let’s just be love and choose love, because love is truly all there is.

More at YourTango:

50 Love Quotes We Simply Adore (And You Will Too)

6 Things Truly Confident Women See When They Look in the Mirror

7 Ways to Lose Weight While Loving Your Body Now

Article originally posted at YourTango

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Kim Kardashian, Anne Hathaway, and now rumors of a possible Royal Baby #3: looking at the news, it might seem as if the whole world were pregnant.

Pregnancy is happy news for sure, but for women who are struggling with infertility or have suffered a miscarriage, the magazine covers featuring glowing women with healthy bumps can be a sharply painful reminder of what they don’t have.

The inability to bear a child or the frustration of trying again and again to conceive to no avail is one of the most trying experiences imaginable. The sensitivities involved are deeply connected to an individual’s identity and self-esteem. Understandably, when conception is elusive or cannot be sustained, as is the case with miscarriage, those affected wonder about the adequacy of their body, their identity as a woman (or man), and even their worth as a person. They feel somehow damaged and defective — as well as utterly lacking control over the present and the future. The results can be profound anxiety, despair and grief.  These can lead to depression, which is often severe.

It’s not surprising then, that at times unhealthy psychological defense mechanisms to shield people from this unbearable pain kick in. Which brings me to one that is at the same time serious, little known, and intriguing. Some women crushed by struggles with infertility and miscarriage actually develop the symptoms of pregnancy despite not having conceived: missed periods, distended abdomen, the sensations of fetal movement, and even breast secretions. These “false pregnancies” — a phenomenon known as pseudocyesis — allow women and their partners to once again be able to feel hopeful, albeit only temporarily until the truth is revealed.

Some of us may have had times we thought we were pregnant, but those thoughts were dispelled with a pregnancy test that came out negative. False pregnancy is different: these women remain firmly convinced they are pregnant, even long after a negative pregnancy test (if a test is even done). In my decades as a psychiatrist specialized in mind-body interactions, I have encountered women presenting with pseudocyesis, and their plight is truly heartbreaking.

Pseudocyesis is not a common condition, but it is a serious one and deserves public awareness. It is a condition that has been recognized throughout the ages. Hippocrates, the father of medicine, reported a dozen cases of women who imagined themselves pregnant. Mary Tudor, Queen of England and daughter of Henry the Eighth, had symptoms of pregnancy lasting nine months on two occasions, each terminating in an episode of false labor. But today, even in our modern world with ready access to online information, it remains relatively unheard of. The woman who suffers from false pregnancy has never heard of it, and those who might be supportive are taken aback by something they consider totally “weird” and unique.

My own interest and concern was sparked by several patients referred to me for treatment as they were about to experience the challenge of an ultrasound doctors had prescribed in order to convince them their strongly-held belief that they were pregnant was unfounded. I am hopeful that my novel, The End of Miracles, whose central character suffers a tragic late miscarriage after finally conceiving on the heels of many difficult years of infertility — and who then unravels psychologically after her second, miraculous “pregnancy” is proven false — will help bring this condition into the public eye.

Here is some of what we now know about this challenging, yet fascinating condition:

How It Begins

Pseudocyesis develops in the context of loss, primarily the absence of fertility or loss of a pregnancy. Strong feelings are triggered, such as deprivation, anger and envy, and depression can ensue. During the false pregnancy, these feelings become substantially weakened and joy overlays them.

The Symptoms

Women experiencing a false pregnancy may present nearly all of the physical signs of pregnancy without actually being pregnant. This includes the ceasing of the menstrual cycle, abdominal enlargement and breast enlargement. Patients experience typical pregnancy symptoms such as nausea, vomiting and weight gain, and even report feeling fetal movements.

However, if a pregnancy test comes back negative and the woman affected insists that the test or even a series of tests is flawed, there is good reason to suspect pseudocyesis — especially if it occurs on the heels of grief.

The Confrontation

When denial continues in the face of negative pregnancy tests, the next step is to carry out procedures that physically demonstrate the woman is not pregnant.  The most definitive of these is an ultrasound, which shows that the uterus is small and empty; there’s no fetus to be seen.

The Aftermath

Once the woman concerned is confronted with irrefutable evidence, it will be very difficult for her to digest the news that she is not, in fact, pregnant. Upon accepting reality, she will abruptly lose the hopeful narrative that was protecting her.

The situation can be extremely complex, however. I have seen cases where the partner is so eager for the woman he’s with to be pregnant — perhaps a contributing factor to the development of the condition in the first place — that he insists to the doctor that the tests must be wrong.

When she does accept the truth, support is critical. In the best of circumstances, brief psychotherapy will be recommended by her physician, or sought out by the woman herself. In more extreme cases, unexamined and unresolved issues may result in a future re-awakening of the fantasy that she is again pregnant.

How to Help

Recognize that the woman involved has experienced a trauma and is mourning.

If she confides the truth, your prior awareness about pseudocyesis will be helpful. You can offer her support by saying you know that this sometimes happens, and you are sorry for the pain she must be experiencing.

In many cases, she won’t mention the cause of the loss of a pregnancy she has proudly displayed and spoken of. If the cause is not revealed, then you will be relating and responding to her exactly as you would to any woman who has suffered the loss of a pregnancy. Acknowledge the loss by saying you’re sorry for it, and show compassion. You can start by telling her how sorry you are for her loss, giving her a hug and then leaving space for her to respond. This speaks volumes in emotional support.

Pregnancy test photo available from Shutterstock

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1. It’s March—Happy New Year, ancient Romans!

Welcome to the third month of the year—or, if you were born before 150 B.C., the first! According to the oldest Roman calendars, one year was ten months long, beginning in March and ending in December. It may sound crazy, but you can still see traces of this old system in our modern calendar: because December was the tenth month, it was named for the number ten in Latin (decem), just like September was named for seven (septem). So, what about January and February? They were just two nameless months called “winter,” proving that winter is literally so awful it doesn’t even deserve a spot on the calendar.

2. It’s the best month for basketball (but worst for productivity)

For civilians, on the other hand, March is known for one thing above all others: brackets. March Madness, as the NBA calls it, runs from March 15 to April 4th this year, and the safest bet you can make is that lots and lots of people will be distracted. One number-crunching firm predicted last year that American companies would lose $1.9 billion in wages paid to unproductive workers spending company time on betting pool priorities. How to recoup these costs? Go into gambling. According to the American Gaming Association, fans wagered more than $2 billion on March Madness brackets for the 2015 tournament. Each one of those 70-million-or-so brackets has a one in 9.2 quintillion (that’s 9 followed by 18 zeroes) chance of predicting the correct winners of every game. Good luck!

3. It’s also the best month for vasectomies

March Madness is a cherished time to reacquaint oneself with the couch, especially during the early tournament days when dozens of games unfold consecutively. In other words, it’s the perfect week to recover from a vasectomy!

According to doctors at the Cleveland Clinic, the number of vasectomies surge by 50 percent during the first week of March Madness. Why? Patients typically need “at least a day with ice” to keep swelling down, says urologist Stephen Jones, MD, “So if they’re going to spend a whole day doing nothing, it’s not hard to figure out that they’d want to do it on a day they’d like to be sitting in front of the television.”

Smart clinics even offer incentives, like the Cape Cod urologists who offered a free pizza with every vasectomy in March 2012. That deal is certainly a cut above the rest!

4. March was named for war—and lives up to its title

So, if so many months were named for their Latin numbers, why wasn’t March called… unumber? Firstly, because that sounds ridiculous, and secondly, because the Gods had dibs on it. March was actually named for the Latin Martius—aka Mars, the Roman God of war and a mythical ancestor of the Roman people via his wolf-suckling sons, Romulus and Remus. With the winter frosts melting and the ground becoming fertile for harvest again in the Northern hemisphere, March was historically the perfect month for both farmers to resume farming, and warriors to resume warring.

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Incidentally, the Pentagon still seems to agree with this Roman tradition: with the exception of the recent War on Afghanistan, almost all major US-NATO led military operations since the invasion of Vietnam have begun in the month of March. You can see a full list here, but to name a few: Vietnam (initiated March 8, 1965), Iraq (March 20, 2003), and Libya (March 19, 2011) all follow the trend.

5. Beware The Ides of March unless you’re a cat

We’ve all heard it uttered, but what does “beware the Ides of March” actually mean? On the Roman calendar, the midpoint of every month was know as the Ides. The Ides of March fell on March 15th. This day was supposed to correlate with the first full moon of the year (remember, winter didn’t count then) and marked by religious ceremonies, but thanks to Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar we know it for another reason. Supposedly, in 44 BC, a seer told Julius Caesar that his downfall would come no later than the Ides of March. Caesar ignored him, and when the fated day rolled around he joked with the seer, “The Ides of March have come.” The seer replied, “aye, Caesar; but not gone.” Caesar continued on to a senate meeting at the Theatre of Pompey, and was summarily murdered by as many as 60 conspirators. Ironically, the spot where Caesar was assassinated is protected in today’s Rome as a no-kill cat sanctuary.

So, if someone tells you “beware the Ides of March,” they are probably just being a jerk, or letting you know they’ve read Shakespeare.

Need more reasons to love March? Here are a dozen.

6. March 1: As the saying goes, March comes “In like a lion, out like a lamb.” That was certainly true on March 1st, 2007, when a detachment of 170 Swiss infantrymen accidentally invaded neighboring Liechtenstein when they got lost on a training mission.

7. March 2: NASA astronaut Scott Kelly will return from space after one full year, setting a new record for the longest uninterrupted trip to space.

8. March 5: Thirsty bros observe Cinco De Marcho, initiating a 12-day drinking regimen for anyone who wishes to “train one’s liver for the closing ceremonies on St. Patrick’s Day.”

9. March 6: The Day of The Dude encourages participants to honor The Big Lebowski by takin’er easy all day, man.

10. March 13: Daylight saving time begins, freeing American city-dwellers from the constant refrain of “it’s dark before I even leave work.”

11. March 14: Pi Day celebrates the annual occurrence of 3/14 with math jokes, pi-reciting competitions, and (of course) fresh baked pie.

12. March 17: St. Patrick’s Day turns the Chicago River green, and too many livers cirrhosis-damage-brown. And on this day in 1973, Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of The Moon” first hits the Billboard Top 200 chart at number 95. A mere 14 years later (736 chart weeks, to be exact), it finally leaves the top 200 for the first time, setting a still-unbroken world record. (You’ve got a long way to go, Adele.)

13. March 20: The sun shines on the equator for the Vernal Equinox, giving us a near 50-50 split of day and night.

14. March 21: The 10th anniversary Twitter founder Jack Dorsey inaugurating the social media site with its profound first tweet: “just setting up my twttr”

15. March 27: Easter Sunday

16. March 28: Gorge Yourself on Discount Easter Candy Monday

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Just over five years ago we flipped the switch on an idea. We believed that people intuitively recognize the importance of relationships and want to learn what science has to say about what makes relationships work. From these beliefs our slogan was born: “the important things in life deserve data.”   

In the five years (!) following our launching Science of Relationships in 2011, it’s been very clear that millions of people agree with us. The site has been more successful than we ever thought, and without a marketing budget our articles have been read nearly 6.5 million times to date. That type of reach would not be possible without our expert contributors’ generosity. Each of them selflessly gives their time and scientific knowledge to help our mission of sharing relationship science with the world. 

Essentially, for 5 years we’ve proudly run a website that makes no money, but does a whole lot of good (in our humble opinion) for relationships and the world. And that’s what counts.

Science of Relationships has opened some doors and given us an opportunity to do something we sketched out years before the website was born. A longstanding idea we’ve had on the backburner (since we all have day jobs as professors) was to create a way for people to evaluate their relationships in a scientifically-informed way. After years of not having time to bring the concept to fruition, the phone rang.

On the other end was a television producer from Hollywood who had a similar vision. With the increasing popularity of online dating, there were plenty of apps dedicated to trying to help people find love, but none of these technological tools helped users make sense of their relationships. How do you know if you’re in a good relationship? How do you avoid settling? Are you wasting your time, or should you spend more time to make a good thing better? Ultimately, how do you decide if you should you stay or you should go?

After nearly 2 years of conference calls, focus groups, meetings in Los Angeles, concept development, writing and rewriting questions, data collection, data analysis, deciding on a name, and conversations with our uber-team of programmers, last week it all became a reality.

StayGo™ is the first app for evaluating your relationship across several science-based dimensions. Best of all, StayGo™ is completely free.

Want to learn more about relationships? You can download it here.

Love doesn’t have to be blind.

Research has well-established the link between good self-esteem and relationship satisfaction. Self-esteem not only affects how we think about ourselves, but also how much love we’re able to receive and how we treat others, especially in intimate relationships.

A person’s initial level of self-esteem prior to the relationship predicts partners’ common relationship satisfaction. More specifically, although happiness generally declines slightly over time, this isn’t true for people who enter a relationship with higher levels of self-esteem. The steepest decline is for people whose self-esteem was lower to begin with.[1] Frequently, those relationships don’t last. Even though communication skills, emotionality, and stress all influence a relationship, a person’s past experience and personality traits affect how these issues are managed and therefore have the greatest bearing on its outcome.[2]

How Self-Esteem Affects Relationships

Self-esteem suffers when you grow up in a dysfunctional family. Often you don’t have a voice. Your opinions and desires aren’t taken seriously. Parents usually have low self-esteem and are unhappy with each other. They themselves neither have nor model good relationship skills, including cooperation, healthy boundaries, assertiveness, and conflict resolution. They may be abusive, or just indifferent, preoccupied, controlling, interfering, manipulative, or inconsistent. Their children’s feelings and personal traits and needs tend to be shamed. As a result, a child feels emotionally abandoned and concludes that he or she is at fault–not good enough to be acceptable to both parents. This is how toxic shame becomes internalized. Children feel insecure, anxious, and/or angry. They don’t feel safe to be, to trust, and to like themselves. They grow up codependent with low self-esteem and learn to hide their feelings, walk on eggshells, withdraw, and try to please or become aggressive.

Attachment Style Reflects Self-Esteem

As a result of their insecurity, shame, and impaired self-esteem, children develop an attachment style that, to varying degrees, is anxious or avoidant. They develop anxious and avoidant attachment styles and behave like pursuers and distancers described in “The Dance of Intimacy.” At the extreme ends, some individuals cannot tolerate either being alone or too close; either one creates intolerable pain.
Anxiety can lead you to sacrifice your needs and please and accommodate your partner. Due to basic insecurity, you’re preoccupied with the relationship and highly attuned to your partner, worrying that he or she wants less closeness. But because you don’t get your needs met, you become unhappy. Adding to this, you take things personally with a negative twist, projecting negative outcomes. Low self-esteem makes you hide your truth so as not to “make waves,” which compromises real intimacy. You may also be jealous of your partner’s attention to others and call or text frequently, even when asked not to. By repeated attempts to seek reassurance, you unintentionally push your partner away even further. Both of you end up unhappy.
Avoiders, as the term implies, avoid closeness and intimacy through distancing behaviors, such as flirting, making unilateral decisions, addiction, ignoring their partner, or dismissing his or her feelings and needs. This creates tension in the relationship, usually voiced by the anxious partner. Because avoiders are hypervigilant about their partner’s attempts to control or limit their autonomy in any way, they then distance themselves even more. Neither style contributes to satisfying relationships.

Communication Reveals Self-Esteem

Dysfunctional families lack good communication skills that intimate relationships require. Not only are they important to any relationship, they also reflect self-esteem. They involve speaking clearly, honestly, concisely, and assertively, and the ability to listen, as well. They require that you know and are able to clearly communicate your needs, wants, and feelings, including the ability to set boundaries. The more intimate the relationship, the more important and more difficult practicing these skills becomes.

Codependents generally have problems with assertiveness. At the same time, they deny their feelings and needs, due to the fact that they were shamed or ignored in their childhood. They also consciously suppress what they think and feel so as not to anger or alienate their partner and risk criticism or emotional abandonment. Instead, they rely on mindreading, asking questions, caretaking, blaming, lying, criticizing, avoiding problems or ignoring or controlling their partner. They learn these strategies from the dysfunctional communication witnessed in their families growing up. But these behaviors are problematic in themselves and can lead to escalating conflict, characterized by attacks, blame, and withdrawal. Walls get erected that block openness, closeness, and happiness.  Sometimes, a partner seeks closeness with a third person, threatening the stability of the relationship.

Boundaries Protect Self-Esteem

Dysfunctional families have dysfunctional boundaries, which get handed down through parents’ behavior and example. They may be controlling, invasive, disrespectful, use their children for their own needs, or project their feelings onto them. This undermines children’s self-esteem. As adults, they too, have dysfunctional boundaries. They have trouble accepting other people’s differences or allowing others’ space, particularly in intimate relationships. Without boundaries, they can’t say no or protect themselves when necessary and take personally what others say. They tend to feel responsible for others’ stated or imagined feelings, needs, and actions, to which they react, contributing to escalating conflict. Their partner feels that he or she can’t express themselves without triggering a defensive reaction.

Intimacy Requires Self-Esteem

We all have needs for both separateness and individuality as well as for being close and connected. Autonomy requires self-esteem — both necessary in relationships. It’s an ability to stand on your own and trust and motivate yourself. But when you don’t like yourself, you’re in miserable company spending time alone. It takes courage to communicate assertively in an intimate relationship — courage that comes with self-acceptance, which enables you to value and honor your feelings and needs and risk criticism or rejection in voicing them. This also means you feel deserving of love and are comfortable receiving it. You wouldn’t waste your time pursuing someone unavailable or push away someone who loved you and met your needs.

Solutions

Healing toxic shame from childhood takes working with a skilled therapist; however, shame can be diminished, self-esteem raised, and attachment style changed by altering the way you interact with yourself and others. In fact, self-esteem is learned, which is why I wrote 10 Steps to Self-Esteem and Conquering Shame and Codependency. Both books contain lots of self-help exercises. Sharing at 12-Step meetings is also very beneficial. Because assertiveness can be learned and also raises self-esteem, I wrote How to Speak Your Mind — Become Assertive and Set Limits, which guides you in learning those skills.

Couples therapy is an ideal way to achieve greater relationship satisfaction. When one partner refuses to participate, it’s nonetheless helpful if one willing partner does. Research confirms that the improved self-esteem of one partner increases relationship satisfaction for both.[3] Often, when only one person enters therapy, the relationship changes for the better and happiness increases for the couple. If not, the client’s mood improves and he or she is more able to accept the status quo or leave the relationship.

©Darlene Lancer 2016

[1] Lavner, J. A., Bradbury, T. N., & Karney, B. R. (2012).  “Incremental change or initial differences? Testing two models of marital deterioration.” Journal of Family Psychology, 26, 606–616.

[2] Bradbury, T. N., & Lavner, J. A. (2012). “How can we improve preventive and educational interventions for intimate relationships?” Behavior Therapy, 43, 113–122.

[3] Erol, Ruth Yasemin; Orth, Ulrich, “Development of self-esteem and relationship satisfaction in couples: Two longitudinal studies.” Developmental Psychology,” 2014, Vol. 50, No. 9, 2291–2303

Happy guy photo available from Shutterstock

Obsessive-compulsive disorder can be tricky. So tricky, in fact, that it is not always easy to figure out if you or someone you care about even has the disorder. Some symptoms of OCD might not seem like symptoms of anything at all. For example, at least a year before I knew my son Dan had OCD, he stopped choosing which clothes to wear in the morning. “Just pick out anything for me; I don’t care what,” he’d say.

While I thought this behavior was a little odd for a teenager, it never once crossed my mind that Dan was consciously avoiding making decisions. I now know that this is not an uncommon symptom of OCD. If Dan didn’t have to decide what to wear, or what movie to go to with friends, or give his opinion on anything, then he would not be responsible for anything bad that might happen as a result of his decision. While intellectually Dan knew his thinking made no sense, there was always that doubt, another mainstay of OCD. “What if I wear my blue shirt and then someone I love dies?”

Reassurance seeking, such as asking “Are you sure everything is okay?” is a common compulsion in OCD. As a matter of fact, when Dan entered a residential treatment program, cell phone use was discouraged because so many clients would continually call home for reassurance.

I told Dan’s social worker that he never asked for reassurance, and that was true. But what he did do was routinely apologize for things most people would never apologize for. For example, he’d say, “I’m sorry I spent so much money at the supermarket,” (when he actually hadn’t). I’d response with “You didn’t spend that much; you have to eat.”

Now it is easy for me to see that Dan’s apologies were forms of reassurance seeking, compulsions done to make sure everything would be okay. My responses to him were classic enabling. As was often the case, I thought this odd compulsion was unique to Dan’s OCD only to hear from many others with the disorder who had the same symptoms: excessive, unreasonable apologizing.

But those with OCD are not the only ones who have issues with apologizing. In this post the author talks about six kinds of apologizing and what he feels they mean. The gist of what he says is that people apologize for all sorts of reasons, such as to alleviate their own guilt, to appease others, or to just be polite. Still others apologize because they are forced to do so. For example, a parent might say, “Apologize to your sister” to one of their children, but it is easy to recognize this doesn’t necessarily mean the child is actually sorry. The only apology that is a real apology, according to the author, is what he calls “apologizing from love.” He describes this type of apologizing in detail, but to summarize, it is a genuine apology.

So why all this talk about apologizing? Well, I think it’s important to try to understand what is actually going on when we apologize, and then we can hopefully figure out if we are dealing with an OCD compulsion, a genuine expression of remorse, or something completely different.

What makes something like apologizing so complicated in terms of OCD is that it is something we all typically do, so it might be harder to recognize it as a compulsion. For example, if a person with OCD turns his car around multiple times to make sure he hasn’t hit anyone, it is obvious to many that this is a compulsion. It is not typical behavior. If a young girl has to turn her light switch on and off fifty times at night or else “something bad will happen,” this too is an obvious compulsion. But apologizing? Most of us do it, and even if we apologize excessively, it doesn’t necessarily mean we have OCD.

When I finally realized Dan’s apologizing was a compulsion, I was able to stop enabling him by not reassuring him; there was a little less fuel for OCD’s fire. Once again it comes back to the fact that the more we understand about all aspects of OCD, the better equipped we will be to fight it.

Apology image available from Shutterstock

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Agoraphobia is a stressful phobic disorder that can take years to overcome. There are varying degrees of the illness. Some agoraphobics are so severe, they can’t leave their beds, while others only have a few days here and there where leaving the house seems too daunting a task.

Agoraphobics can be scared of traveling or being in open spaces. They can be scared of going out alone or of being made fun of. They may fear failure and embarrassment in the outside world, including the workforce. They can have strained relationships with loved ones and struggle to form new relationships. They can have monetary problems, as most are unable to maintain a job or a career.

Having had the disorder myself, I know it is not easy. Being stuck in fear can be just as debilitating as being physically paralyzed. It can feel like your room is a prison and the outside world is a place of torment and hell.

For me, every time I got close to the front door or the door to my bedroom, the overwhelming panic set in. I felt as if I was dying, and that if I went anywhere, it would lead to mine or someone else’s destruction. I feared someone might hurt me, as people have done in the past. If I stayed in my room, I thought I could avoid the pain. But, that was SO not true. By staying in my room, I avoided happiness, success and freedom, too.

If I can overcome my agoraphobia for the most part and be in recover, you can, too. I now live a full life, unafraid to go out of my house most of the time. I held down a job for two years as a peer specialist and am now a successful writer. But I don’t get my stories from staying indoors. I get it from going out of the house every day and enjoying the world around me. Finally, the world outside does not feel like a scary place.

Below are twenty suggestions that helped me overcome agoraphobia, and they can help you, too.

1. Open up to those who understand. Knowing that some people have the same disorder you have and learning how they’ve dealt with it can be a big key to helping maintain your own recovery.
2. Bring a book or magazine. Getting lost in another world can make this one not seem so harsh and hard to deal with. If you are focused on something else, you won’t be looking at people and imagining them staring at you or a disaster striking wherever you may be.
3. Music. Carry headphones or devices with you to surround yourself with the calming presence of music and release tension and stress.
4. Remember. You had a life before being an agoraphobic, and you can have a life while in recovery. Think back to all the times you had in the past when you weren’t sick or struggling with anxiety. If you were happy then, you can be happy again.
5. It takes time and patience. Small acts of bravery every day can make a huge difference in getting to a happier place. A simple act of taking a shower can make a person feel more like facing the day.
6. Exercise. Start with five minutes a day and work your way up. Even thirty minutes, three times a week should act as an anti-depressant and can make you see the world in a happier, less stressful way.
7. Laugh. Set time every day to laugh. Whenever you find something that makes you laugh, do it for as long as you can. You can never laugh too much.
8. Make a schedule. Write a list of eight or nine things to do today, such as cleaning, reading, starting a new hobby or continuing an old one. Stick to it.
9. See a therapist and doctor regularly. Even if you need to get someone else to drive you. Or see if they will come to you.
10. Forgive and forget. Let the guilt go, whether it is directed at yourself or others. Keep the past in the past.
11. Take your medicine. When directed by a doctor, anti-anxiety and other medication can really take the edge off and help you live a normal life.
12. Don’t compare yourself to others. We often compare our greatest weaknesses with others’ greatest strengths. Be fair to yourself. Only focus on how you’ve improved from one day to the next.
13. Give your life meaning. Whether it is religion, a strong sense of spirituality, or a particular talent, if it makes you realize you have a purpose and a reason to exist, it should be a part of your life. Prayer or meditation can also be powerful tools to achieving peace and calm.
14. Don’t isolate. Give someone a call or text. Have whatever interaction with others that you can.
15. Learn to say no. The world’s not such a scary place if you know how to say no to drugs, food, sex or whatever may be pulling you down. Don’t let others make decisions for you. Practice and repeat the word, “No.” What you want is just as important as what another person wants. But what you need has to come first over what others need. You’re the one who has to live with your decisions.
16. You belong in this world just as much as anyone else. You are more valuable out in the world. You can help someone in a similar situation or you can go out and learn that things are not nearly as bad as you made them out to be.
17. Let your room and house become a safe place. It’s okay to have a safe place to lash out at the world and cry. But allow yourself only an hour a day to do this. The rest of the time is better spent trying to experience the world or learn that it’s not such a scary place.
18. Judge less, love more. Judging yourself or others keeps you from seeing the good in yourself and everyone around you. Judging is just an opinion, and doesn’t make it fact or truth. To understand someone, you have to get to know them.
19. Take time every day to increase your self-esteem. There are workbooks you can order online or books you can read. You can also join a focus group on self-esteem, even if it’s an online group. You have your own unique personality to offer this world that is different from anyone else’s. We need you.
20. Get a pet. The one thing that helped the most in my recovery was to get a dog. She helped me face the world, especially as a service dog, and I was able to bring her wherever I went. Most of the time, I couldn’t leave the house without her.

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Most people approach dating with a strong mix of excitement and apprehension. One big reason for the latter is the awareness that so many marriages don’t make it (almost half, according to numerous studies). Chances are that you have been impacted by divorce, either your own, your parents’, or another family member’s. You know the pain caused when a marriage ends—and you don’t want to experience it.

Thankfully, there are many clear, practical steps you can take to give yourself the very best odds of enjoying love for a lifetime. Start with these:

1. Be aware of the top predictors. The top four reasons for divorce include: communication problems; infidelity or betrayal; financial problems; and psychological, emotional, and physical abuse. Obviously, if any of these issues exist before marriage, you should work diligently to improve them to your full satisfaction—or strongly consider not getting married.

2. Burn bridges that need to be burned. For partners to move forward together, they must be untethered from the past. If there’s anything from your pre-relationships days that might jeopardize the health of your union (former lovers, bad habits, outdated patterns), make a clean break.

3. Learn the art of productive problem solving. Every dating relationship and every marriage faces problems, both big and small. You’ll reduce the risk of divorce if you know how to navigate choppy seas effectively and efficiently.

4. Mix in the key ingredient: unwavering commitment. This might be the number-one factor determining the longevity of romantic relationships. Often, it’s plain old grit and determination that staves off divorce.

5. Focus on friendship as well as romance. When romantic feelings wane, it’s nice to have a partner you enjoy as a friend and companion. That’s why so many long-time married partners say, “My spouse is my love and best friend.”

6. Continue attending to your emotional health. You may have worked through issues from the past, but life has a way of bringing new challenges to us. Stay current in your quest for emotional wellness.

7. Discuss temptations before they appear. Chances are that sooner or later, you will be presented with the opportunity to cheat. And the best time to deal with temptation is before it happens. Talk together about how you will handle these dicey situations.

8. Change yourself, not your partner. No one really changes unless they want to anyway, so focus on your own self-improvement. By significantly changing some part of yourself, you might inspire your partner to follow suit—and significantly improve your relationship in the process.

9. Strive for interdependence, avoid dependence. The first means that both partners possess a solid self-esteem and are capable of standing on their own—but they choose to be interconnected for mutual support and synergy. Dependence, meanwhile, means being clingy and overly needy.

10. Practice transparency. Partners’ lives should be an open book, without secrets. If you or the other person is tempted to keep anything hidden, ask yourself why. Transparency fosters trust; lack of transparency foils it.

11. Accept accountability with each other. This doesn’t mean getting nosy and in your partner’s business all the time. It means you hold each other to high standards.

12. Affirm each other as often as you can. Kind gestures and comments go far in a marriage, and they will help insulate your marriage from being harmed by the inevitable bad days.

13. Make trust your top priority. Simply put, when trust is broken, love is diminished and damaged. But when trust is diligently maintained, love grows stronger and stronger.

14. Understand that your partner can add to your happiness—but isn’t responsible for it. If you’re looking for someone else to bring you fulfillment, you’re setting yourself up for even more struggle and discontent. It is up to you—not a partner—to bring about your contentment.

15. Develop a strong “couple identity.” Although there’s plenty of room in your relationship for individuality, you ought to have the strong sense that “We are in this together” and sometimes “It’s us against the world.”

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When you’re in the midst of infertility, you are searching for ways to get through it. Years later, you look back on the experience and understand it in a whole new way. It’s one of the biggest challenges a person can face in life, and you have no idea what it’s really like until it happens to you. Infertility can be a drawn out process, and it takes a toll on you and your partner. It’s devastating, and to be frank, it really sucks.

When you’ve faced other difficult times in life, you’ve probably reached out to friends and family for support and help. Most people are able to help after the loss of a loved one or during a cancer scare because most of us have direct experience with those issues. Infertility is quite different than many other situations because 1) it’s viewed as uncommon and not often talked about, especially in social situations; 2) people don’t know what to say; 3) you probably feel a sense of shame, guilt, or embarrassment; and 4) the grief is ongoing and resurfaces in various ways.

Although there are uncomfortable and even insensitive conversations that take place when you’re going through infertility, you likely do have people in your life who are trying their best to find ways to support you. I encourage you to be honest with yourself. Are you allowing that support in? Are you letting your own feelings of failure or shame cloud your views of the support you’re receiving? Are you pushing people out because it’s just too hard to talk about?

When I was going through infertility myself, I really only talked to a few close friends about it, and it took a while to share all my feelings with them. It was difficult to open up and be vulnerable.

When I look back on that time, infertility seemed to take over my life. It’s all I thought about, and at times it felt like all I talked about. I didn’t want to be that burden on my friends and I didn’t want something so sucky to monopolize every conversation. But that’s kind of how infertility works. It’s prolonged and goes in cycles. I learned from one of my good friends later that he felt helpless in the situation. He wanted me to know that he was there for me no matter what, that he wasn’t sick of hearing about what was going on in my life, and that he didn’t always know what to say, but he was trying his best. I regret that I was not able to accept all the support that I was being offered.

Learn from my mistakes. Take down those walls, even if it’s just a little bit, and allow those who love you to show you meaningful support. Here are my tips for how to do that:

1. Trust that you’re friends are telling you the truth.

When you start apologizing for talking about your struggles, or things are getting a little TMI and your friend tells you it’s okay, believe that it’s okay. Part of being a good friend is being there during the hardest times of your life. Your friend is genuinely interested in the latest updates and your feelings about the process. Ask yourself, would you be there for them if they were going through something really tough? Of course, you would. So why doubt that they’re committed to supporting you? Put your trust in them and they’ll come through for you.

2. Be really honest about your feelings.

I’ve heard time and again people say that no one understands, so there’s no point in talking about it. After I ask more about how they communicate with friends, I learn that it is talked about in vague terms and people often cover up the pain they’re really feeling because of embarrassment or fear of judgment. If you aren’t honest about what’s happening with you or you want to appear strong, how can your friend really help you?

Allow yourself some vulnerability and share with your friend. It’s a risk to be really honest with someone, but the payoff is worth it because it helps build your connection with that person. Give your friend a chance to hear you out, understand you, and provide you with the support that is so, so needed.

3. Forgive your friend for saying insensitive or awkward things.

Let’s face it, no one knows what to say about infertility. It’s kind of taboo because people don’t know that much about it. It also revolves around your sex life and medical details, both of which are topics people shy away from.

Your friend may struggle with knowing the right thing to say, and at times they’ll mess up. They will say something like, “it’s just not the right time,” “if you just relax it will happen,” “at least you have a good marriage/life/house/job,” etc. They may jump into trying to fix things or offer advice. They may ask uneducated questions. If this happens, take a breath and slow down. Remember they are trying their best to support you, let them know that what they said hurt your feelings, attempt to explain why, and express appreciation that they are trying.

4. Take it easy on yourself.

You’re going through something devastating. Infertility is accompanied by unpredictable emotions and behaviors, as well as the desire to isolate from others (especially if they are pregnant or have children) and retreat inward. You feel like you should be able to handle this on your own, that you don’t need help, and that you don’t want to burden others with your problems. Be gentle with yourself and recognize that you do need support. Just as your friend may make a mistake when talking to you, you might mess up, too. It’s easy to become overwhelmed and lash out at someone with the best intentions. It’s okay, it happens. Apologize for what happened, and use it as an opportunity to have be real and have an honest conversation with your supportive friend.

We aren’t meant to go through life all on our own; we are wired for human connection. I know you want to keep things private and you have a desire to appear strong. Exploring your feelings isn’t weak. It actually takes a lot more guts to be vulnerable than to pretend everything is okay when it’s not. There are plenty of people who love you. Give them a chance to support you. It helps more than you realize.

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The Guest House

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice.
meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.

Be grateful for whatever comes.
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

— Jellaludin Rumi, translation by Coleman Barks

Echoing forward from the 13^th century, the words of the Sufi poet whose works are considered in some circles to be “love poems to God,” this one in particular speaks to the paradox of the human condition. When a day dawns, we may have no clue what awaits us. For some, it may bring injury and disease, personal or national violence, internal or external warfare, the descent into addiction or ascent from it, the blessing of birth, and yes, for some, the blessed welcome of death.

While listening to an NPR report of what is occurring in the lives of Syrian refugees, I wondered how people could exist day after day in a state of crisis, not knowing where their next meal or shelter would come from, nor whether they or their children would fall prey to the bloody mayhem that is occurring in their country. My mind then turned to those who face devastating disease, daily abuse or PTSD symptoms as a result of previous trauma. I sent prayers for the healing of each one impacted as I was safely ensconced in my car on the way home from a chiropractor’s appointment.

Do I face challenges? Absolutely. In 1992, while living in Homestead, Florida, I experienced an ectopic pregnancy, my husband was diagnosed with Hepatitis C and we lost our home to Hurricane Andrew. In 1998, I was widowed at age 40 and raised my then 11-year-old son as a single parent. My father died in 2008. In 2010, I became an “adult orphan,” when my mother died. Personal health crises that arose in 2013, including shingles, heart attack, kidney stones and adrenal fatigue, initiated necessary lifestyle changes. And I have faced unexpected job changes that called on me to pull together my resources and regroup.

What keeps some people on their feet and moving forward, while others crumble under the pressure of life events?

Resilience is the Key

According to the American Psychological Association, “Resilience is the process of adapting well in the face of adversity, trauma, tragedy, threats or significant sources of stress — such as family and relationship problems, serious health problems or workplace and financial stressors. It means “bouncing back” from “difficult experiences.”

Helen grew up in a family in which her parents modeled resilience. Both had lost their fathers at early ages. Her maternal grandfather died when her mother was 18 and her paternal grandfather passed when her father was 32.

Her father had blue collar jobs that had him up before dawn and returning at dinner time. She witnessed him going to work even when ill. She had a memory of him hitchhiking to work in a blizzard, since he couldn’t get his car out of their street. He walked the few miles to the main highway and stuck out his thumb. As a result, she learned that “you do what it takes.” It has served her well in many ways, but also has had her adopting her father’s workaholic tendencies, which impacted her health.

James learned that life is fraught with pain and tragedy. His mother died when he was five years old. His father plunged into depression and immersed himself in the bottle. He was often left alone to care for his younger sister. When his father was physically present, he wasn’t available emotionally.

James developed survival skills that had him taking on the pain of others. He chose a career as a doctor and did so despite the odds that he wouldn’t rise above his circumstances. Although he still struggles at times with the ghosts from his pasts, he has developed a tool kit of coping strategies that is as important to him as a stethoscope and blood pressure cuff are to his medical practice.

Sara didn’t fare as well. When she turned 12, her older sister was killed by a drunk driver. Her parents were so devastated at the loss of their daughter, they couldn’t see that Sara was also in anguish. She felt that her needs weren’t tended to, so she began engaging in self harming behaviors, such as cutting and burning. This behavior served a dual purpose: the first was to attempt to quell her overwhelming emotional pain, while the second was an aching plea for her parents to notice her sorrow. It took a suicide attempt for them to realize that if they didn’t want to lose a second child, they needed to gather their resources and work together as a family to heal the deep wounds that remained.

How to Develop Your Resiliency Muscles

• Like anything we want to strengthen, practice is essential. The more we exercise our bodies, the stronger and more flexible they become. Make it a priority to do something daily to bolster your resilience.
• Surround yourself with supportive people who encourage you. These could take the form of family, friends, mentor, sponsor or clergy. Those who have been through challenges themselves are especially powerful resources, since they have rebounded. One piece of wisdom says that we are the average of the five people we spend the most time with. AA touts the benefits of “hanging with the winners.”
• Recognize that you have survived everything that has ever happened to you, since you are here to talk about it. Your record for making it through to this moment is 100%.
• Tell your story in the written or spoken word. Sharing your experiences helps you purge emotions and can serve as an example for others.
• Know that you are not your story. These are descriptions of events that occurred. When people identify too closely with what happened, they label themselves as victims. Remember that your history is not your destiny.
• Re-write the tale as you want it be. You can use the words, “In the past, this was so. From now on, this is how it will be.” Since our minds are powerful, we can reframe our percepts and positively affect the outcome.
• Be with people who support your strengths and can hold the vision with you for your recovery.
• Read about and get to know those who are resilient thrivers. One powerful telling is Viktor Frankl’s book, Man’s Search for Meaning. In it, he shares his experience as a concentration camp survivor during the Holocaust. Through his experiences, he made the determination, “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

Since nature abhors a vacuum, make a conscious choice about the kind of life you desire and what it is you want to replace in your newly swept house.

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Reader’s Digest is proud to partner with the Moth on storytelling “Grand Slam” events in 19 cities across the country, with the best stories appearing in the July/August issue of Reader’s Digest. Click here to score free tickets to a Moth event near you.

My dad’s name was George Bullard. He was born in a rural area, right up in the northeast corner of Mississippi that most folks call British County and the locals just call paradise. My dad was about 50 when I was born, but I was very fortunate to have had him.

He raised and trained bird dogs his whole life. If the bird dog business got a little slow, he’d paint a house or two, but after he got up in his 60s, someone persuaded him to get into politics. He ran for the board of aldermen, and he was elected by a landslide. Everybody loved him.

His assignment was fire commissioner. Now, the only things the previous fire commissioners had done were go to meetings and make political decisions. My father liked to get involved, though, so he went to the telephone company and said, “Can’t y’all hook my telephone up with the one at the fire department?”

So they did, and every time the fire department telephone rang, our phone rang—one long, continuous ring until you picked it up—and then you didn’t talk; you just listened to see where the fire was so he could go. And he went to all the fires, day or night. He knew almost nothing about firefighting, but he knew how to encourage young men, so he’d go and encourage ’em.

I got involved because my father had almost stopped driving at night because of his age, and as a teenager with a driver’s license, I’d drive him at three o’clock in the morning.

After his few turns as board alderman, several people, myself included, persuaded him not to do that anymore. But when he left, he found that he missed the camaraderie he had formed with the firemen, and because the firemen and the police department were in the same building, he missed the policemen too. So he would just go down there to visit every now and again. And this being a small town, they worked out something which might not have been real legal, but they taught him how to operate the police radio, and anytime anybody wanted a day off or was sick, he’d go in and work an eight-hour shift.

But one day, he got to his job down at the police department, and he discovered, to his amazement, they had a prisoner!

I did say it was a small town. It was most unusual.

And that morning, he really didn’t have much to do. He’d wander back and talk to this young man, and when he went out for lunch, he brought a couple hamburgers back for him. Well, by one or two o’clock, he had made a decision about this young man, and he always trusted his instincts about people. He had decided that in spite of being long-haired—way down to here, which my father hated—he was a decent young man, so he’d see if he could help him.

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He started to inquire of him, “Why are you still here? You seem like such a nice young man. Won’t anybody come get you out of jail?”

And the young man told him, “Well, I had a little too much to drink last night, and they arrested me for drunken disorder, and here I am.”

My dad said, “Well, what would it take to get you out?” And he said, “Well, I have to pay a two-hundred-dollar fine.” My dad said, “Well, why can’t your family pay the two-hundred-dollar fine?” He said, “Well, I think if I could talk to my father face-to-face, I could get the two hundred dollars from him, but I don’t know how he’s going to react to a collect call from the Boonville jail.”

My dad mulled this over a little while, and he said, “Well, do you think if I turned you loose, you could go find your father and get two hundred dollars and come back?”

I’m going to remind you that my father’s only duty was operating the police radio that talked back and forth with the cars.

So the young man said, “Well, see, I’m from Corinth, Mississippi, and that’s about 20 miles north. They impounded my car. I got no way up there.”

And my daddy said, “Well, is it a blue Chevrolet?” And he said, “Yes, sir.” And then my daddy said, “It’s parked out in the parking lot. I can probably find the keys.”

So he scrounges around in the desk drawers and finds the keys, and he not only releases the prisoner, over whom he has no authority, he gives him a getaway car.

Well, as the kid leaves, my father says, “Now, son, I believe if I could borrow two hundred dollars from my daddy, I’d borrow another five to get me a darn haircut.”

At about four o’clock, the policemen started coming back to change shifts, and as they came in, they check in on the prisoner. And they discovered, to their dismay, that they didn’t have one. And they said, “Mr. George, what happened to the prisoner?”

My daddy was busy doing his closing-up paperwork, and he said, “Oh, yeah. I turned him loose.”
And the police officer said, “You did what?”

“Turned him loose.”

“Mr. George, why did you do that?”

Daddy said, “Well, he just seemed like a nice young man, and he’ll be back in a little while with his two hundred dollars.”

And the police officer was kind of taken aback. He’d known my father all his life; my father was like a grandfather to most of those guys. The officer said, “OK, well, we’ll take care of this,” and he went back to the other policemen to try to figure out how they were gonna get out of this without my father losing his unofficial job, and one of them says, “Well, we ought to remind the chief that George Bullard helped get him elected.” But another of ’em said, “Oh, I got a better idea. Let’s just tear up the paperwork, and we’ll just pretend we never arrested that boy.”

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Well, my father wouldn’t hear of it. He said, “Oh, no. I know that boy’s coming back. I know he is.”

And the police officer said, “How can you be so sure? You don’t even know him.”

And my father’s answer was simple: “He told me that he would.”

They waited around, and 4:30 came and five o’clock, and of course, no young man returned. And at about 5:15, they’re trying to get my dad to go home, ’cause his shift ended at five.
He’s kind of stoic, and he says,“No, I’m gonna wait around until he comes back.”

One of ’em observed, “Might be kind of a long wait.” But no, my dad didn’t get discouraged.
All of a sudden, the door opens, and the young man walks in—shaven, short hair—walks up to the counter, and they don’t even acknowledge him, ’cause they’re still mulling over what they’re gonna do to save my dad, and finally the young man says, “Excuse me; I’d like to pay my fine.” And that kind of got their attention, but they still didn’t recognize him, and one of ’em walked to the counter and said, “What fine is that you’re talking ’bout?”

He said, “Well, you guys arrested me last night—locked me up. I owe two hundred, and I’m here to pay it.” Started counting out 20-dollar bills. When he got to 200, the police didn’t say a word, but they wrote him out a receipt. They thanked him. The boy started to leave. When he got to the door to go out, he turned around and—almost as if he knew what the situation was like there in that office with my dad—said, “Oh, by the way, Mr. Bullard, I’m sorry I was late getting back, but I had to wait in the line at the barbershop.”

A teacher for more than 42 years, Wanda Bullard worked with emotionally disordered kids in Brunswick, Georgia. Her famous Sunday-afternoon cookout included the Moth’s founder, George Dawes Green, among many others. Telling stories on Wanda’s porch inspired him to launch the Moth.

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They wanted a midnight snack. Marlene Alatorre and her sister, Michelle Gonzalez, drove to a taco truck in the parking lot of a nearby strip mall on a June Saturday night in Los Angeles in 2012. Michelle, 22, sat in the car, while 19-year-old Marlene waited in line. Moments later, during a high-speed chase with police, a drunken motorist careened into the food stand at 62 miles per hour, killing Marlene and a second woman on impact.

A few miles away, Joe Avalos was settled in at home when his cell phone started buzzing. He was on call for a shift with the mayor’s Crisis Response Team (CRT), volunteers dispatched with police, firefighters, and other emergency responders to scenes of deadly accidents and crimes. He got in his car and rushed to the site.

The first thing Joe, 47, remembers is the screaming. Marlene’s mother, Holivia, was on the ground wailing in the intersection, a few feet away from the yellow crime-scene tape she was not allowed to cross. Joe kneeled next to her and introduced himself. “I’m going to do everything I can to help you get through this,” he said, speaking softly but firmly.

In the aftermath of horrific trauma, the CRT serves an unusual civic duty: supporting victims no one thinks about—friends and family left behind.

“We wake up at all hours of the night to be with people at the worst moment of their lives,” says Joe, who spent nine years as a volunteer before becoming the group’s director in 2013. “Victims feel helpless, confused, and out of control. We let them know that we’re there to be their advocate.”

In the incident that inspired the founding of the CRT, two couples had finished dinner at a San Pedro restaurant and were crossing the street when three of the people were hit by a speeding car. One died immediately; another, a few days later. The third was in critical condition for many days.

“[The ambulance crew members] did what they had been trained to do for the three victims who had been hit by the car,” explained LAPD captain Tim King in a letter he wrote a couple of weeks later, recruiting the group’s first volunteers. The police, he explained, fulfilled their responsibilities, protecting the crime scene and investigating the accident.

“Unfortunately,” King went on, “there was no one to respond and assist the uninjured party who had watched the terrible incident happen before his eyes. His needs, although not physical, were as important as the three victims who had been hit by the car.”

King suggested a solution: a volunteer group that could provide emotional assistance to victims’ loved ones. Nearly 24 years after the CRT was founded, groups of its 320 volunteers show up at almost every tragic death in the city of Los Angeles, from shootings to suicides to fires. Ready at a moment’s notice, they each  keep their car trunk stocked with a “war bag,” a duffel packed with items as diverse as blankets and teddy bears. Volunteers liaise between families and investigators, crossing crime-scene tape to share information and answer questions. They might notify schools that kids will be absent or give families referrals for therapy.

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Their most important job is just being present. “Standing there and handing someone a bottle of water can be pretty powerful. Victims just want to tell us their story, especially if they witnessed [the incident],” says Joe, who credits the 20 years he spent as a social worker for teaching him how to listen. “We don’t have to say much. We call it sacred silence.”

Not long after Joe arrived to help Marlene Alatorre’s family that June night, another car pulled up. A young woman jumped out, trying to rush the crime scene—the daughter of the other woman killed. “‘She kept saying, ‘I was pissed off at my mom. I ignored her calls,’” Joe says. “Now her mother was lying several feet away from her under a white sheet.”

“It broke my heart,” he continues. “No matter how upset you are, let it go, because tomorrow, or even the next hour, is not promised to us.” The CRT, Joe says, “constantly reminds me how precious life is.”

Visit lacrt.org for more information.

Read more: This Choir Sings to People on the Verge of Dying, and It’s Just Beautiful

Read more: These Hero Pilots Volunteer to the Very Sick to Help Save Their Lives

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Larry Camerlin knows what desperation sounds like. Each week, his small Massachusetts office answers dozens of frantic phone calls from families of very sick people who hope Larry and his team can help. What they need are flights—to a liver or kidney transplant, to receive ongoing chemotherapy and radiation, or to treat severe burns or other crippling diseases at medical centers far away from home.

As the founder of Angel Flight Northeast, a group that connects patients in need with volunteer pilots who shepherd them, Larry, 68, has never turned away a request.

“People come to us at some of the most frightening times of their lives—they’re running out of money, out of time, and out of faith,” says Larry, who pilots some trips himself while also overseeing scheduling, fund-raising, and other administrative responsibilities. “We help replace that fear with tremendous healing and hope.”

Larry, a father of four and grand-father of six, has spent his entire career providing hope during trauma. He and his wife, Ruth, built a successful ambulance company, and after they sold the business in 1994, Larry got his pilot’s license. Then he read a magazine article about a pilot in California who flew a ten-year-old boy to receive cancer treatment and immediately knew what his next chapter would be.

“This enormous emotional wave hit me,” Larry says. “This is what God wants me to do.”

The first Angel Flight NE trip took to the skies on May 31, 1996. Today, Larry relies on a network of nearly 500 volunteer pilots who donate their own time, planes, and fuel. Larry’s crews on the ground, Earth Angels, drive patients to and from the airport. To date, Angel Flight NE has helped 65,000 people. Bonds between patients and pilots can last for weeks, months, or longer. One cancer patient took more than 585 trips over ten years. And every single one—for every single patient—is free of charge.

“Sometimes patients can’t talk to their family about their fears, but being up in the heavens, it’s therapeutic to talk to a pilot helping you get better,” Larry says. “Mothers, if their children are asleep, may break down about how difficult it is to see their kids so badly hurt.” Not every journey, of course, has a storybook ending. Larry had been flying a boy with a life-threatening genetic disorder from Maine to Boston for years.

“He was witty, fun, and insightful—an 11-going-on-40-with-a-PhD-from-Harvard type,” says Larry. One day, he got a call from the boy’s mother: “Benjamin [name has been changed] is dying, and he would like to see you.” Larry flew there the next day.

“Why does God hate me?” Benjamin asked Larry. “I’m only a little boy, and I’m dying. I shouldn’t be dying as a little boy.” Larry thought for a second. “Look how smart you are, how good you are, how many people you’ve touched,” he said. “God needs you to be one of his special angels. He loves you so much; that’s why he wants you.”

That flight home from Benjamin’s house felt different from usual. “The closer I got to home, the sky became more flushed with yellow and orange,” Larry remembers. “The sun dipped below the horizon as I touched down my wheels. Everything was so ethereal. It was like God was telling me everything was going to be OK.”

Visit angelflightne.org for more information.

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Her friend was dying of AIDS, and Kate Munger didn’t quite know how to help. She volunteered for a shift at his Petaluma, California, home. “When it was time to sit by his bedside, I was terrified,” says Kate, 66. He was agitated, thrashing under the sheets. So Kate did what she always did when she felt afraid—she began to sing:

“There’s a moon / There’s a star in the sky / There’s a cloud / There’s a tear in my eye / There’s a light / There’s a night that is long / There’s a friend / There’s a pain that is gone.”

Kate repeated the lyrics over and over, singing for two and a half hours. “It calmed me down, which calmed him down,” she recalls. “I knew I had given him the very best gift that I could. And by the time I finished singing, I knew this was something that would be shared.” And the Threshold Choir was born—now a group of 1,300 volunteers in 120 chapters around the world who provide comfort through song to people on the threshold of life.

“We’re death– and tear-phobic in our culture,” says Kate, who lives outside San Francisco, where the first choirs were founded in 2000. “We tend to make ourselves busy when we should sit down or pray or hold someone’s hand.” Singing gives a patient’s family “permission to be authentic with their tears, their laughter, their sorrow, their grief,” says Kate.

When invited to a bedside, choir volunteers select from a repertoire of about 300 songs, many written by Kate and other choir members specifically to convey presence, peace, and comfort. “We sing very softly and quite close,” says Kate. “We’re trying to re-create the distance between a mother’s mouth and a baby’s ear.”

Kate, who has sung at hundreds of bedsides, recalls singing to a newborn daughter of a Cuban musician two days before the infant died at 17 days old. The choir started with all the Spanish songs its members knew but finished with an original piece whose last line was “May you find all the love that you needed was here.”

“It inspired the mom and dad to recognize that they had given this baby everything they could,” says Kate. “They heaped love on her and received love from her. That really helped them grieve and heal.”

Choir singers join to make a difference but remain dedicated volunteers because of the group’s deep sense of community, which is especially apparent when a volunteer’s own loved one falls ill. Kristin Masters asked her Santa Cruz choir members to sing nearly every day throughout her partner Claudette’s final months (she died of brain cancer in 2013). “I didn’t have to hold everything together,” Kristin says. “Being surrounded by love and support let my heart relax.” Claudette’s last days were rich, warm, and sweet. “It was like a sanctuary in there,” Kristin says. “I got to give her that kind of death.”

Visit thresholdchoir.org for more information.

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“Salaam alaikum, sister. I see you watched my video. It’s gone viral—crazy! Are you Muslim?”

It was ten o’clock on a Friday night in April 2014.

I was sitting on my sofa in my one-bedroom Parisian apartment when a terrorist based in Syria contacted me on Facebook. I’d been studying European jihadists in the Islamic State and was interested in understanding what it was that made someone give up everything and brave death for this cause.

Like many journalists, I had a fictional Facebook account I’d created to keep an eye on current events. My profile picture was a cartoon image of Princess Jasmine from the Disney movie Aladdin. I claimed to be in Toulouse, a city in southwestern France. My name on this account was Mélodie. Mélodie’s age: 20.

During my research, I came across many propaganda films on YouTube filled with images of torture and charred bodies laid out in the sun. The juvenile laughter accompanying these horrific scenes made the videos all the more unbearable.

That Friday night, I came across a video of a French jihadist who looked to be about 35. The video showed him taking inventory of the items inside his SUV. The man in the video wore military fatigues and Ray-Bans and called himself Abu Bilel. He claimed to be in Syria. The scene around him, a true no-man’s-land, didn’t contradict him. In the back of his car, his bulletproof vest sat beside a machine gun. I would later discover that Abu Bilel had spent the past 15 years waging jihad all over the world as a confidant of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of ISIS.

Soon after I shared this video, my computer alerted me to three messages sent to “Mélodie’s” private inbox … all from Abu Bilel. “Are you thinking about coming to Syria?” he asked in one of them.

“Walaikum salaam. I didn’t think a jihadist would talk to me,” I replied. “Don’t you have better things to do? LOL.”

In my message, I told him I’d converted to Islam but didn’t offer any details. I deliberately included spelling mistakes and used a teen’s vocabulary. I waited for his reply, a knot in my stomach: I couldn’t believe this was happening.

“Of course I have a lot of things to do! But here it’s 11 o’clock at night and the fighters are finished for the day. We should talk over Skype.”

Skype was out of the question! I ignored his proposal and suggested we talk another time. Abu Bilel understood; he’d make himself available for Mélodie tomorrow whenever she wanted.

“You converted, so you should get ready for your hijrah [emigration]. I’ll take care of you, Mélodie.” He didn’t know anything about this girl, and he was already asking her to join him in the bloodiest country on earth.

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The next time we spoke, Bilel asked, “Do you have a boyfriend?” “No, I don’t,” I said, speaking as Mélodie. “I don’t feel comfortable talking about this with a man. It’s haram [forbidden]. My mother will be home from work soon. I have to hide my Koran and go to bed.”

“Soon you won’t have to hide anything, Insha’Allah [God willing]! I want to help you lead the life awaiting you here. Before you go to sleep, answer me something: Can I be your boyfriend?”

I logged off Facebook. We’d exchanged 120 messages in the space of two hours. That Monday, I rushed to the magazine where I freelance. My editor agreed that this was a unique opportunity, but he reminded me of the dangers. Urging caution, he assigned me a photographer, André. I would agree to Bilel’s request to meet over Skype, and André would take pictures.

To become Mélodie, I needed to look ten years younger and find a veil. Another editor lent me a hijab [veil] and a djellaba [long black dress]. I was glad to wear them. The idea of a terrorist becoming familiar with my face didn’t thrill me, especially not when the man in question could return to France, his home country, at any moment.

André arrived at my apartment that night around six o’clock. We had an hour to prepare before Bilel “got home from fighting” and contacted Mélodie. I pulled on Mélodie’s floor-length black djellaba over my jeans and sweater. I removed my rings and covered the small tattoo on my wrist with foundation, assuming Bilel wouldn’t appreciate such frivolousness.

It was time. I sat cross-legged on my sofa. André positioned himself in a blind spot behind the sofa. The Islamic State is brimming with counterespionage experts and hackers. It was safer if Bilel didn’t know my phone number, so Mélodie had her own. I’d also created a Skype account in her name.

The Skype ringtone sounded like a church bell. I took a moment to breathe, then clicked the button, and there he was. Bilel’s eyes smoldered as he gazed at the young Mélodie, as if trying to cast a spell. Bilel was Skyping from his car. He looked clean and well-groomed after his day on the front.

“Salaam alaikum, my sister,” he said.

I smiled. “It’s crazy to be talking to a mujahid in Syria. It’s like you have easier access to the Internet than I do in Toulouse!”

“Syria is amazing. We have everything here. Masha’Allah [God has willed it], you have to believe me: It’s paradise! A lot of women fantasize about us; we’re Allah’s warriors.”

“But every day people die in your paradise …”

“That’s true, and every day I fight to stop the killing. Here the enemy is the devil. You have no idea. Tell me, do you wear your hijab every day?”

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Mélodie recited what I’d heard from girls I’d met during my career who had secretly converted to Islam. “I dress normally in the morning. I say goodbye to my mom, and when I’m outside the house, I put on my djellaba and my veil.”

“I’m proud of you. You have a beautiful soul. And you’re very pretty on the outside too.” Bilel peered lecherously at Mélodie. Suddenly, men’s thick voices broke the mournful silence.

“Don’t say anything!” Bilel ordered. “I don’t want anyone to see or hear you! You’re my jewel.” I listened to the conversation and could distinguish the voices of two other men. They greeted Bilel in Arabic, then switched to French. They laughed a lot, congratulating themselves for having “slaughtered them.”

The dried blood I saw on the concrete was evidence of the attack. ISIS’s black flags with white insignia floated in the distance. The other men seemed to treat Bilel with respect. Their way of politely addressing him suggested my contact was higher in the ranks than they were. A minute later, he said goodbye to his fellow fighters and spoke into the phone.

“Oh, you’re still there! And just as beautiful—”

“Who were they?”

“Fighters who came to say hello. Anyway, you’re not interested in all that. Tell me about you! What guided you to Allah’s path?”

I began to stammer—I hadn’t had time to invent a “real” life for Mélodie. “One of my cousins was Muslim, and I was fascinated by the inner peace that his religion gave him. He guided me to Islam,” I said.

“Does he know that you want to come to al-Sham?”

Bilel assumed that everything had been decided—Mélodie would soon arrive in Syria.

“I’m not sure that I want to go—”

“Listen, Mélodie. You’ll be well taken care of here. You’ll be important. And if you agree to marry me, I’ll treat you like a queen.”

Marry him?! I logged off Skype as a kind of survival reflex. Pulling the hijab down to my neck, I turned toward André, who looked as dumbfounded as I was.

How was I to respond to Bilel’s proposal? André suggested explaining that since Mélodie wasn’t married, she didn’t want to arrive in Syria alone. If she decided to go at all.

Bilel called back.

“My friend Yasmine is Muslim,” I said, changing the subject. “I could invite her to come with me, but she’s only 15.”

“Here, women are supposed to get married when they turn 14. If Yasmine comes, I’ll find her a good man.”

Yasmine didn’t exist, but I wondered how many real Yasmines were being lured at that very moment by men like Bilel.

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“Bilel, I have to hang up. My mom is getting home.”

“I’ll be here tomorrow after the fighting, as usual, at seven. Insha’Allah… Good night, my baby.”

My baby? As soon as Abu Bilel announced his plan to marry Mélodie, her list of virtual friends grew. Girls began asking Mélodie for advice on the safest route to Syria. Some of the questions were both technical and strange: “Should I bring a lot of sanitary pads or can I find them there?”; “If I arrive in Syria without a husband, it’s probably not a good idea to draw attention to myself by bringing thong underwear; my future husband might think I’m immodest. But will I be able to find them there?”

I was bewildered by the mundane fixations of these girls who were signing up for death. How was I supposed to answer their questions? I wasted a lot of time playing along with Bilel’s game of seduction in order to gain his trust. No one, not even André, could comprehend the level of controlled schizophrenia that this exercise demanded. No matter what he said, Bilel was terrifying.

“Oh, there are you are, my wife!” he said one night. “Good news. I spoke with the qadi [judge] in Raqqa [ISIS’s stronghold in Syria]. He’s looking forward to marrying us.”

Stunned, I didn’t know what to say. “What are weddings like there?”

“Actually, we’re already married.”

“Excuse me?”

“I thought I’d already spoken enough about the idea of marriage with you. I asked you to marry me a while ago, and I talked about it with the judge, who drew up the papers. We’re officially married, my wife! Masha’Allah. You’re really mine now.”

It had been nearly a month. André feared that the longer we let Mélodie exist, the more I was at risk. I agreed with him. Together with my editors, I planned the investigation’s end. I had told Bilel that Yasmine and I would meet him in Syria. He instructed me to go to Amsterdam and then on to Istanbul. Once I was there, he would send further instructions. “You’re my jewel, and Raqqa is your palace. You’ll be treated like a princess,” he assured me.

It was true. I was really going to Istanbul, but André—not Yasmine—would accompany me. The plan was simple: Bilel had told me an older woman known as Mother would meet us there. André would surreptitiously capture Mother on film for the article. While she looked for Yasmine and Mélodie, André and I would continue on to Kilis, a city near the Syrian border. Turkey controlled it, and it would be safer than other places.

The story would end there, with a photograph of Mélodie looking out at the Syrian border from behind. The journalist would stop at the doors to hell, and Mélodie would step through them. We were finally wrapping this up. At least that’s what I thought. A few days later, I was in a tiny hotel room in Amsterdam when Bilel Skyped.

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“Salaam alaikum, my darling; are you really in Amsterdam? I can’t believe it. You’ll be here soon. I’m the happiest man on earth. I love you, my wife.”

I’d never seen him look so happy. Bilel was alone in an Internet café. He’d just finished “work.”

“Tell me about your trip. How did you pay for the tickets?”

“I stole my mom’s debit card.”

“You’re so strong, my wife! If you still have the debit card, feel free to buy me some stuff.”

What do you get for a man who talks about beheading people in one breath and how much he loves you in the next?

“What do you want?”

“Well, cologne! I love Égoïste by Chanel or something nice from Dior.”

“OK, baby. Can we talk about tomorrow? What is going to happen after we meet Mother?”

“Actually, nobody will be there to meet you.”

“But that wasn’t the plan, Bilel,” I said, my voice genuinely frayed with anxiety. “You were adamant—as was I—that a woman come to meet us. You told me we would be safe.”

“Listen to me,” he said, his tone hardening. “You’re going to shut up for a minute and let me speak. When you arrive at the airport in Istanbul, buy two one-way tickets for Urfa.”

Urfa? Urfa was infiltrated by the Islamic State. Going there was suicide.

“All I ask is that you respect what you’ve promised me.”

“You can’t talk to me like that! I’m the one who gives orders around here, not you. From now on, you’re going to shut up. Don’t you know who I am? I command a hundred soldiers every day. I haven’t even told you a quarter of the truth!”

When the conversation ended, I tore off the hijab. Everything was falling apart. I phoned my editor in chief, who gave me orders to wrap up this story. To put things in perspective, she reminded me that two French journalists sent to the Urfa region had just been freed after ten months of captivity at the hands of ISIS. The next morning, we flew home.

Mélodie sent Bilel a Skype message from the airport informing him that a “strange” man had questioned the girls. Yasmine and Mélodie felt they were being watched, and they decided to return to France until better circumstances presented themselves.

Back home, my editors were realizing just how much information I had: Bilel had revealed many details about the structure of ISIS and the way new recruits were treated. I began writing. A week later, the magazine published my article under a pseudonym. Out of fear that the terrorists could trace me, I moved out of my apartment and twice changed my phone number.

I stopped counting the number of statements I’ve given to various branches of the police when it reached 254. An antiterrorist judge also asked to hear my testimony after my real identity started appearing in a number of their files. According to those files, Bilel has three wives, ages 20, 28, and 39. They’re all with him in Syria. He is the father of at least three boys under the age of 13. The two eldest are already fighting on the front in Syria.

I never had direct contact with Bilel again. But recently, a journalist friend called to tell me he’d learned there was a fatwa against me.

I found a video on the Web that showed me wearing Mélodie’s veil on my couch. It was taken, I imagine, by Bilel. There’s no audio, but it does include cartoon characters of a devil and bilingual, French and Arabic, subtitles. I’ve seen the video only once, but I remember every word:

“My brothers from around the world, I issue a fatwa against this impure person who has scorned the Almighty. If you see her anywhere on earth, follow Islamic law and kill her. Make sure she suffers a long and painful death. Whoever mocks Islam will pay for it in blood. She’s more impure than a dog. Rape, stone, and finish her. Insha’Allah.”

I don’t think I’ll watch it again.

From the book In The Skin of a Jihadist by Anna Erelle. Copyright © 2015 by Anna Erelle. Reprinted with permission by HarperCollins Publishers, harpercollins.com  Buy the book here.

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