Love is a wonderful and amazing feeling. Falling
in love is one of the most exciting and rewarding experiences on this
planet, but it can also be the scariest. There is always that fear of
rejection. It's hard enough to know when you love your man, but what about him? Guys can be very hard to read. I know they say that women are impossible to
figure out, but men are just as bad. Most times, they keep their
feelings very well hidden. If you have that guy who wears his heart on
his sleeve, then you probably know by now where he is at in your
relationship. If your man is a little less obvious, then you may need a little help. Here are 12 signs and signals to watch for to see if your guy is ready to say those pivotal three words.
Start watching your man and look for these signals to see if your relationship is heading towards love.
1. He is constantly gazing into your eyes
When guys are not interested in someone their eyes tend to
look away... a lot. Watch his gaze, and if you find his eyes lock in with yours
constantly he may just be falling in love.
2. He loves forgiving you
If your guy can't stay mad at you for more than a couple of
hours, it's love! People who genuinely love and care about each other can't
stay mad for too long without regretting it.
If he makes the first move to make up with you and
apologizes even if he is not wrong, he truly cares about you.
3. He is always happy to see you
He may be having the worst day in the world, but as soon as
he sets eyes on you, his mood is instantly lifted. That's how you know you are
the light of his life.
4. He throws around the word "we"
In general conversations, whether he is talking to you or
anyone else, and you hear your main man throw out the word "we"
instead of "I," he means business! He likes the idea of you two
together better than himself alone.
Research-based steps for getting closer and making your feelings mutual.
Posted May 25, 2016
Summer crush season is upon us, and these four strategies can help make your interest and good feelings mutual. 1. Let her (or him) know that you might (just might) like her.
Telling a potential partner that you like them may seem bold, but
this disclosure often leads to reciprocal liking: When we find out that
others like us, we tend to like them in return. Mutual liking is
frequently mentioned when people describe the origin of their feelings
for their current partner (Riela et al., 2010) and recall their
experiences of falling in love (Aron et al., 1989). However, recent
research shows that the best way to inspire positive feelings might be
to leave your crush feeling uncertain about how much you like her. Whitchurch et al. (2011) asked women to review the Facebook
profiles of four men who had purportedly also viewed the women’s
profiles. The researchers manipulated the factor of the men’s supposed
liking of the women and then asked the women to rate the men in
return. Women liked the men more when they thought that the men liked
them (rather than disliked them), but they rated the men most favorably when the researchers told them the men either liked them the most or liked them about average. The researchers believe this uncertainty caused the women to think about those
men the most, which in turn enhanced their feelings for those men. So
keep your crush on his or her toes: Let her know you like her, but don't
let her know just how much you do. If this strategy isn't subtle enough
for you, enlist a friend to deliver the message. After hearing that you might like her, she may not be able to stop thinking about you. 2. Get in close physical proximity.
Although many of our social interactions take place in the digital
world, closeness in physical proximity in the “real” world remains a
strong influence on our attraction to others. The mere act of sitting
closer to a potential mate may be enough to increase how much you like
that individual (Back et al., 2008). As a college professor, I
frequently observe friendships and romantic relationships
begin among my students. When I taught my first Attraction class, a
relationship developed between two students who sat next to one another
in class. Not only did they sit next to one another all semester, they
sat closer to one another than my other students did. They may have chosen to sit closer to one another because they liked one another--or their liking for one another may have increased because
they sat closer to one another. Research indicates that even when
people are randomly assigned to sit closer to another individual, they
report liking that person more (Back et al., 2008; Slane and Leak,
1978). When we are in close physical proximity to other people, we
become more familiar with them, and this familiarity often leads to
liking (Reis et al., 2011). So go ahead and sidle up to your crush; the
physical closeness may just increase his or her feelings for you. 3. Hold eye contact.
Sustained eye contact can be an indicator of mutual liking, but even eye contact among strangers
can ignite feelings of liking and loving (Kellerman et al., 1989). The
direct gaze of an attractive companion increases activity in the area of
the brain
associated with reward (Kampe et al., 2001). In particular, women seem
to use eye contact as a subtle signal of interest in a partner (Moore,
2010). For example, as I related in a previous post,
my friends Suzie and Jake* met at a bar. Upon arriving, Suzie scanned
the bar and immediately made eye contact with Jake. She smiled and then
looked away. Soon afterward they made eye contact again, but this time
they sustained their eye contact. Suzie would later describe this as
“meaningful eye contact.” After a few more flirtatious glances, Jake
approached Suzie and asked her to dance. The two ended up dancing
together all night, kissing in the parking lot, and having lunch
together the next day. Don’t be afraid to meet your crush’s eyes and
hold his or her gaze; it may enhance the person's feelings for you.
Advertisement
4. Attend an exciting event together.
Go rock climbing, visit an amusement park, see a scary movie, or stop
by the gym where your crush works out. Any activity that increases
physiological arousal can also increase attraction (e.g. Dutton &
Aron, 1974; Ma-Kellams et al., 2012; Meston and Frohlich, 2003; White et
al., 1981). When we are physiologically aroused--specifically, when our
heart beats faster and our respiration rate increases--sometimes we
mistakenly attribute some of that arousal to an attractive person, which
can make us view that person as even more attractive. In
one classic study, Dutton and Aron asked an attractive female research
assistant to stop men as they crossed two bridges to ask them to
participate in research. One bridge was very high above the ground, very
unstable, and very exciting to cross. The other bridge was much lower
and much more stable, so it elicited much less physiological
arousal. The research assistant gave each of the men she spoke with her
phone number in case they wanted to know more about the research. Men
who crossed the higher bridge were more likely to call her, presumably
because they found the research assistant more attractive due to the
increased physiological arousal associated with crossing the high
bridge. So make plans to proceed to an exciting venue, and your crush
may find you even more attractive. * all names have been changed Each of these strategies can inspire liking, regardless of the gender of your crush. To learn more strategies that enhance attraction, check out our book, The Social Psychology of Attraction and Romantic Relationships.
Portions of this post were taken from The Social Psychology of Attraction and Romantic Relationships. Copyright 2015 Madeleine A. Fugère.
Karin
Klaver woke in the darkness and searched the nightstand for her iPhone.
It was 2 a.m. Her husband slept quietly beside her. They had arrived in
Johannesburg early that morning on the red-eye from Amsterdam and spent
the day window shopping and people watching in the city. “This is
nice,” Klaver had thought to herself as she and her husband relaxed on
the outdoor terrace of a shopping mall.
That evening, they retired
to a bed-and-breakfast with garden rooms and enthusiastic online
reviews. The couple were on their way to Port Elizabeth, where they own a
house and spend several weeks each year. But this was the first time
they had stayed overnight in South Africa’s biggest city.
In the
blackness of the room, Klaver sensed a presence at her bedside. A man
was standing there with a gun in his hand, and he raised it to her head.
Terrified, Klaver rolled onto her stomach. If she was to be shot, she
thought to herself, better to be shot in the back. Her movement woke her
husband, and the intruder demanded their cash and valuables. Then he
slipped away into the night, leaving them unharmed but shaken.
Back
in Holland, Klaver, 56, struggled to resume her normal life. What had
once been comfortable and familiar now felt like an iron maiden.
“Everything would remind me of what happened in Johannesburg,” she said.
She was nervous around unfamiliar men, and her house became a racket of
threatening noises. The wind rustling in the curtains could keep her
awake for hours. Nothing could dispel the dread that had overwhelmed her
in that hotel room, when she was sure that she would die. “It was
always there,” she recalled recently. “It felt like a balloon inside.”
Klaver
found it difficult to talk about her anxiety, even with her husband.
Thinking back to the robbery left her feeling even more isolated and
vulnerable. “The first seconds, you feel so very, very lonely,” she
said. She resisted the idea of psychotherapy, with its long sessions
devoted to reliving and processing the trauma.
A year and a half
later, in 2013, Klaver read an item in the newspaper about Merel Kindt, a
professor of clinical psychology at the University of Amsterdam. Kindt
had developed a revolutionary treatment
that could “neutralize” fear memories with a single pill. This
treatment was a scientific breakthrough, building on decades of
psychological research. It was also deceptively simple. “It was quick
and dirty, and that’s what I like,” Klaver said. She wrote an email to
Kindt introducing herself, and Kindt invited her to the university for a
screening.
In the lab, one of Kindt’s assistants asked Klaver a
series of questions. What did she remember about the robbery? How did
she feel when she remembered it? Kindt reviewed Klaver’s answers and
recognized the intrusive memories, avoidance behaviors, and other
hallmarks of post-traumatic stress disorder. Klaver would indeed be a
good candidate for the treatment, Kindt decided.
Three weeks
later, Kindt, a striking woman with sharp features, crisp blue eyes, and
stylishly tousled blonde hair, ushered Klaver into a small, plain room
with a table and two chairs. Klaver, who has shoulder-length silver
hair, wore black to the session. Normally, a patient who had suffered a
traumatic experience might expect a therapist to proceed slowly and
gently, offering comfort and support. Instead, Kindt dived straight in,
pushing Klaver to relive the night of the robbery and focus on the
source of her fear. “There is no escape,” Kindt told her, as Klaver wept
into her hands. “Nobody can help you.” After 15 minutes, Klaver seemed
shattered by her memories, and Kindt abruptly stopped the interrogation.
She gave Klaver a round, white pill, which she swallowed with a sip of
water. “I was totally broken,” Klaver said.
Klaver went to bed
early that night and slept for twelve hours. When she woke the next
morning, she found that her memory was transformed. She recalled the
details of what had happened in that bedroom in Johannesburg: She could
still see the man’s dirty cap, oversized jeans, and cheap plastic shoes.
Yet she was able for the first time to think about the experience
without anxiety or panic. “It felt like there was not that much weight
on my shoulders,” she said.
A pill of propranolol, which doctors have
prescribed for decades to treat heart disease. Now it may be put to a
very different use.
When she returned to see Kindt a week later, she wore white, as
though to telegraph her mood reversal. “It’s really gone,” Klaver said.
“It is quite special, isn’t it?” Kindt smiled and leaned forward in her
chair. “Yes,” she agreed. “Very special.”
Kindt, 48, has devoted
her career to understanding human fear and memory. She has built her own
laboratory, published in the most prestigious scientific journals,
and developed a simple treatment she hopes might one day help millions
of people who suffer from PTSD, phobias, and other anxiety disorders. In
her clinic, she has seen it work in hundreds of cases, and yet she
still marvels every time she sees a patient disencumbered of fear and
trauma after such a short procedure. In those moments, she told me
recently, her work doesn’t feel like science or medicine at all. “It
still feels,” she said, “a bit like magic.”
The sober-minded
scientific community shares Kindt’s awe. “‘Cure’ is a word not often
encountered in psychiatry,” Roger Pitman, a psychiatrist at Harvard
Medical School, wrote in December in the journal Biological Psychiatry,
in response to a study in which Kindt had successfully treated a group
of people who were afraid of spiders. But a cure is exactly what Kindt
appears to have found.
Not all fear needs to be cured, of course. A healthy amount of fear is essential to survival.
When we encounter danger, the brain activates the sympathetic nervous
system. Adrenaline floods our veins, our hearts race, and our fight-or-flight response
kicks into gear. The more quickly we can recognize a threat, the better
our ability to avoid it in the future. In this way, our fears are
lessons we have drawn from our experiences in the world. “Fear is a very
adaptive emotion,” Kindt said. “Because of fear, we anticipate and
plan.”
For millions of people, however, fear can be debilitating. Twenty-nine percent of people will suffer from an anxiety disorder at some point in their lives. The most common are specific phobias,
in which people develop an irrational fear of a situation or an object,
such as heights or spiders. Some people will take extreme measures to
avoid the things that trigger their fears—a height-phobic person, for
instance, might drive hours out of his way just to avoid crossing a
bridge. Other anxiety disorders, such as panic disorder and PTSD, can be
even more difficult to manage.
Kindt has been contacted by people
seeking help for all kinds of fears and anxieties. There was a police
officer who suffered panic attacks whenever he left the country, and a
woman who had been unable to cope with her mother’s suicide. Others had
the familiar phobias of snakes, dogs, heights, and spiders, as well as
some stranger varieties. Recently, she heard from two people who were
deathly afraid of ladybugs. A third person was terrified of balloons.
At other clinics, these patients would have undergone “exposure therapy.”
A therapist would have taught them coping mechanisms and presented them
with their triggers so that, over time, they could hopefully learn to
tolerate them. For decades, exposure therapy has been the best method
for fighting anxiety disorders. But the treatment is slow and
emotionally draining, and patients often relapse after apparently
successful interventions. In cases of PTSD, exposure therapy works only about half the time.
Kindt’s
research, by contrast, holds out the promise of a simple
treatment—maybe even a permanent cure—that doesn’t require prolonged
therapy sessions or antidepressant medications. Richard Friedman, the
director of the psychopharmacology clinic at Weill Cornell Medicine, recently lauded Kindt’s work in The New York Times.
“These studies,” he wrote, “suggest that someday, a single dose of a
drug, combined with exposure to your fear at the right moment, could
free you of that fear forever.”
Indeed, Kindt’s treatment is so effective that the sudden
transformation can be disorienting. A former patient named Erik, who
asked to be identified only by his first name, visited Kindt’s lab last
year to overcome his fear of snakes. “The next morning, I was afraid it
didn’t work,” he told me recently. “The only way to find out was to
expose yourself again.” He returned to the lab and found himself able to
touch a snake, first with gloves and then without them. Next he visited
a reptile center. Even surrounded by snakes, he felt no fear or panic.
Over the past few months, he has visited forests he had been afraid to
explore, and he told me he looked forward to traveling to countries he
would previously have avoided. Ireland, he said, was the only country in
Europe without snakes. “It was really hard to go on vacation.”
In
a culture that encourages people to conquer their fears, as though they
are Mount Everest, Erik’s main qualm about his experience was that it
was almost too effective. “I thought that if I overcame this, it would
be a great victory in my life, but that isn’t the case,” he said. “I
don’t have the feeling that I did it myself.”
The
root cause of fear, and how to treat it, has been one of modern
psychology’s central questions. In the early twentieth century, Sigmund Freud argued
phobias were “protective structures” springing from a patient’s
“repressed longing” for his mother. In 1920, however, the American
psychologist John B. Watson put forward a simpler theory: People develop
fears through negative experiences. To test his hypothesis, he sought
to condition an infant, whom he called “Little Albert,” to fear a white rat by presenting the rat to the child and simultaneously striking a steel bar.
Indeed, the loud noise upset Little Albert,
and he soon wailed not only at the sight of white rats but also other
furry objects. Watson was quick to justify the child’s sufferings. “They
will be worth all they cost if through them we can find a method which
will help us remove fear,” he wrote.
Watson’s experiment falls far
short of contemporary ethical and scientific standards, but it
nevertheless established an important principle: that fear could be
learned. That discovery, in turn, suggested a different treatment for
anxiety disorders from Freud’s psychoanalytic method.
“If a fear or a phobia is the result of a learning experience, then it
also means you can somehow learn not to fear anymore,” Kindt explained.
In the second half of the twentieth century, cognitive behavioral therapy incorporated Watson’s insight
into mental health care. Rather than trying to help patients by
dredging up repressed memories and urges to consciousness, as Freud had
done, therapists sought to modify behaviors and teach their patients
positive ways of thinking. The aim was not so much to uncover the hidden
source of a person’s fear, but rather to help him reduce and manage his
fear when he encountered a trigger.
In 1992, Kindt began working
toward her Ph.D. in clinical psychology at the University of Amsterdam.
As a student, she learned that cognitive behavioral therapy—and exposure
therapy, specifically—was psychology’s best tool for treating anxiety
disorders. (Antidepressants can be an alternative in particularly severe
cases.) If you could convince a person who is afraid of heights to
stand on a balcony, for example, his fear response would eventually
abate, and he would learn the balcony was harmless. In the future, he
could remember this safe experience rather than his older, irrational
association between balconies and danger.
Exposure therapy has
its limits, however. “In fear memory, people or animals learn a rule,
whereas with extinction memories they learn an exception to the rule,”
Kindt explained. A height-phobic patient who learned not to fear
balconies would still typically fear other high places. And long after
the treatment, the old fear could return unexpectedly, and the patient
would be overwhelmed with panic once again. The fear memory was like an
old bomb—buried, but not defused.
“I felt like we did not really
understand why exposure therapy sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t,”
Kindt said. As a student, she wondered whether there might be a better
treatment—a way, perhaps, to defuse fear memories altogether.
Most
other scientists believed that was impossible. “The dogma was, once a
memory is fixed, it’s fixed for your lifetime,” said Susan J. Sara, a
professor of neuroscience at the Collège de France in Paris, who has
studied how memories are formed.
In the 1960s, researchers started to pinpoint
exactly how new memories are created. In one set of experiments, they
gave rats a drug that inhibited protein synthesis in the brain. Then
they trained the rats to fear a bell by pairing it with an electric
shock. Soon, the rats froze in terror whenever the bell chimed. The
following day, however, the rats no longer froze when they heard the
bell. They appeared to have forgotten their learning. The drug had
disrupted their long-term memory formation.
From this, the
researchers concluded that long-term memories require protein
synthesis—with each new memory subtly altering the cellular structure of
the brain. This process is called “consolidation,” and scientists
believed it happened only once for each memory in the hours immediately
after learning.
Different types of memories consolidate in
different parts of the brain. Explicit memories of life events, for
instance, consolidate in the hippocampus, the long, podlike structures
near the center of the brain. Emotional memories, including fear,
consolidate nearby in the amygdala, which activates the fight-or-flight
response when it senses danger. The subjective experience of fear often
involves both of these memory systems—a person will consciously remember
past experiences while also undergoing several automatic physiological
responses, such as increased heart rate—but they operate independently of each other.
Anxiety disorders, these scientists proposed, are caused by fear memories that “over-consolidate” in the amygdala. They found they could enhance or impair a rat’s memory
by tweaking the levels of stress hormones in the brain immediately
after learning. Adrenaline, for instance, boosted rats’ ability to remember a maze,
while an adrenaline-blocking drug weakened it. “Adrenaline is released
when you get stressed, and you tend to remember things better if you
were excited at the time of learning,” said James McGaugh, one of the
authors of consolidation theory.
This makes sense from an
evolutionary standpoint. The same adrenaline rush that causes an animal
to flee a bear will also make more vivid the memory of the encounter, so
the animal will remember to avoid bears in the future. In the case of
phobias and disorders like PTSD, however, the surge in stress hormones at the time of trauma makes the memory too vivid, so that it intrudes on the victim’s everyday life.
Merel Kindt in her laboratory at the University of Amsterdam.
Consolidation theory made clearer the limits of exposure therapy. If
it was impossible to dislodge a memory once it consolidated,
psychologists could only help patients learn to live with those
memories. “You put one red M&M in a jar, and then you fill the jar
with as many blue M&Ms as you can, so that when the person is
triggered, he is more likely to pull a blue M&M, a safe memory,”
said Michael Tompkins, the director of the San Francisco Bay Area Center
for Cognitive Therapy. But the red M&M was always there.
Some
doctors thought they might be able to blunt the emotional hangover of
traumatic experiences with drugs that regulated stress hormones in the
brain. But any intervention would need to take place within a few hours
of a victim’s trauma, before the memory consolidated. This was possible
in some circumstances, such as in hospital emergency rooms. In 2002,
Roger Pitman published a study in
which victims of car accidents and other trauma at Massachusetts
General Hospital in Boston were given either a placebo or propranolol, a
beta blocker that is one of the most commonly prescribed heart
medicines in the world, which also lowers adrenaline and noradrenaline
levels in the brain. Three months later, almost half of the placebo
patients showed signs of PTSD, like sweaty hands and
higher heart rates, when recounting their trauma. None of the members of
the propranolol group exhibited symptoms. Pitman’s experiment had
worked.
Such a measure raised ethical concerns, however. Only 10 to 30 percent of all trauma victims develop PTSD,
and there is no way to predict who will and who will not. It is normal
for victims to suffer in the days and weeks immediately following their
trauma, so doctors need to wait at least a month in order to make a PTSD diagnosis—long after the memory consolidation window has closed. Regarding Pitman’s study, many doctors were uncomfortable with the idea
of administering a drug to patients that could alter the emotional
texture of memories that most of them would otherwise integrate
healthily into their lives.
In 2003, the President’s Council on Bioethics condemned the use of “memory blunters”
like propranolol following trauma. “In the immediate aftermath of a
painful experience, we simply cannot know either the full meaning of the
experience in question or the ultimate character and future prospects
of the individual who experiences it,” the council wrote. “By
‘rewriting’ memories pharmacologically we might succeed in easing real
suffering at the risk of falsifying our perception of the world and
undermining our true identity.”
The treatment drew comparisons to the 2004 film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,
in which scientists erase a couple’s shared memories after a painful
breakup. Leon Kass, the lead author of the council’s report, called propranolol “the morning-after pill for just about anything that produces regret, remorse, pain, or guilt.”
In
2003, Kindt was working as an associate professor at Maastricht
University. She lived with her husband and children in Amsterdam, and
commuted two-and-half hours by train to the school several times a week.
She spent the time poring over neuroscience and clinical psychology
journals. On one train ride, she came across the work of a scientist
named Karim Nader, then at NYU.
Nader had published an article in Nature in 2000 that sent shock waves
through the scientific community. His findings built on research Susan
J. Sara had conducted several years earlier. Sara had made a chance
discovery in her lab in Paris: While studying the function of a specific
brain receptor, she had taught rats to solve a maze, but accidentally
induced amnesia in the animals a day later, after their memories had
consolidated. According to consolidation theory, these old memories
should have been impervious to disruption. But apparently this was not
the case. To explain the result, Sara proposed that consolidation didn’t
happen just once, but over and over again. “Memory is reconsolidated,
so to speak, each time it is retrieved,” she wrote in her report.
Nader
tested this idea specifically with fear memories. He trained rats to
fear a tone by pairing it with a shock, and let them rest for 24 hours,
so the memory would consolidate. Then he played the tone once to remind
the rats of the previous day’s learning, and immediately injected a drug
that blocked protein synthesis into the rats’ brains. When Nader tested
the rats again a day later, they no longer froze in terror when he
played the tone. They had forgotten their fear, even though the fear
memories had consolidated. Nader theorized that old memories were made
“labile” whenever they were recalled, and required further protein
synthesis in order to remain usable in future situations. In other
words, under the right circumstances, our memories could be changed.
Nader’s
and Sara’s findings upended previously held notions about the way
memory works. “The idea that a memory trace becomes labile when it’s
reactivated doesn’t fit too well with the idea of consolidation,” Sara
said. Many of their peers initially resisted the idea. “It was very hard
to get this work published, because it challenged the consolidation
theory,” she said. But the implications were profound. “It might be
possible,” Nader wrote in his Nature article, “to treat persons
with post-traumatic stress disorder or other related anxiety conditions
by reactivating traumatic memories under conditions that would prevent
reconsolidation.”
Kindt was thrilled when she read about Nader’s
work. “It was a sort of accepted idea that emotional memory is forever,
that the best thing you can do is form an inhibitory memory, but the
fear memory is always there and we have to live with it,” she said. “I
realized this might mean we can change fear memory.”
As researchers replicated and expanded on Nader’s and Sara’s
findings, they found evidence of reconsolidation in animals as different
as crabs, fish, chickens, and snails. “It’s throughout the animal
kingdom,” said Carsten Wotjak, an expert in neuronal plasticity at the
Max Planck Institute. The basic theory works like this: In any given
situation, the brain will retrieve old memories to inform an organism’s
behavior. If the memory is relevant to the situation, the organism can
act on the information; if it is not relevant, then the organism can
learn from the situation and create a new memory. With reconsolidation,
researchers argued, there seemed to be a brief window in between the
retrieval of an old memory and the creation of a new memory in which the
old memory is vulnerable to manipulation.
Kindt wanted to make
the leap from studying reconsolidation in animals to humans—a huge
challenge, given the complexity of the human brain. In the past, many
promising lines of research had fallen flat in this transition. But
Kindt looked forward to the task. “What I really liked and still like
about studying emotions is that they are very difficult to grasp in an
experimental setting,” she said.
In 2003, Kindt took a job as a
professor at the University of Amsterdam and began to lay the groundwork
for her research into reconsolidation. Four years later, she won a
grant to study the theory in humans. She couldn’t simply repeat Nader’s
method, however. The drug he had used on rats, anisomycin, is too toxic for people.
She was aware, though, of the studies Pitman, McGaugh, and others had
conducted using propranolol. If propranolol could be used to prevent new
fear memories from over-consolidating, she wondered, could it also
perhaps be used to keep old, traumatic memories from reconsolidating?
In
2008, Kindt and a colleague, Marieke Soeter, recruited 60 undergraduate
students to come to their lab for a three-day study. The rooms were
small and sterile, with little equipment except for computers and a few
strange wires: an electrode to deliver shocks and nodes to measure the
subjects’ reactions. On the first day, Kindt conditioned the students to
fear an image of a spider shown on a slide by pairing it with an
unpleasant shock. She and Soeter then divided the students into three
groups. On the second day, two of the groups received propranolol while
the third group received a placebo. Then one of the propranolol groups
and the placebo group had their memories of the previous day’s trial
“reactivated” with a single presentation of the spider slide. On the
third day, Kindt and Soeter showed the subjects the image yet again, to
see if they still responded fearfully.
“It was a Saturday morning,
and Marieke had analyzed the data for the whole night,” Kindt
remembered. “I woke up, and the first thing I did was I opened my
laptop. There was already a graph in my inbox, and there was a flat
line.” The group that had received propranolol and reactivation showed
almost no fear response 24 hours later. It was gone completely. “I
thought, ‘This cannot be true,’ ” Kindt said. “But then we checked it
and double-checked it. I asked someone else to check it blind with the
raw data from the computer to be sure.”
Kindt and Soeter
immediately replicated the study in order to shore up their confidence.
Then they began to expand their research. For subjects who received
propranolol, they found that the fear response was still gone even 30
days later (it had returned in the control groups). Moreover, reminder
shocks, which reinstated fear in the control groups, didn’t work on
those subjects who had received the drug. It was as if she and Soeter
had removed the red M&M from the jar. They had found a way to defuse
the bomb.
As extraordinary as this
discovery was, Kindt still felt it was a bit limited. It was one thing
to condition people to fear a picture with a few mild shocks in a lab,
but real trauma was something else entirely. Fear-conditioning studies
tested fears that were only a day old, after all, while people often
live with anxieties and phobias for years before seeking treatment.
Kindt’s ultimate goal was to find a cure for the kind of fear that
people like Karin Klaver felt. “I thought this fear is so much stronger
than what we instill by the fear conditioning,” Kindt said. She was
skeptical that her treatment would even work on such patients. “I could
imagine that it wouldn’t happen at all,” she said.
In 2013, Kindt
recruited subjects who were very afraid of spiders—one of the most
common phobias, and a fear that is also relatively easy to control in a
laboratory setting. She instructed the participants to approach a
terrarium that held a tarantula inside. Most of the participants
struggled even to look at it. After two minutes, Kindt took them to
another room and gave them either propranolol or a placebo. A few days
later, Kindt put them back in the room with the spider. Every single
participant in the propranolol group was able to approach the tarantula
and, even more incredibly, reach out and touch its hairy abdomen with a
finger. A year later, the propranolol group still reported levels of
spider fear so low they would not have qualified for the study in the
first place.
A tarantula in Kindt’s lab. After her
treatment, arachnophobic patients were able to approach the spider and,
even more incredibly, reach out and touch it.
One of the patients in Kindt’s spider study, a psychology student
named Sascha de Waal, told me she had feared spiders ever since she was a
little girl. “You have a feeling if you have a problem for a long time,
then it takes a long time to get rid of it,” she said. And yet in a day
it was gone. Kindt still sometimes finds it hard to believe herself.
“It is so strange to see someone who is so scared come back and start to
move to the spider,” she said. “They touch it, and they say, ‘Wow,
wow.’”
Since Kindt published her findings in December, her peers
have similarly marveled at the results. “Kindt and her team are like
magicians of reconsolidation,” said Karim Nader, who now runs a laboratory
at McGill University. It is exciting for basic scientists like Nader
and Sara, who focus on the mechanisms of memory, to see someone unlock
the potential of this knowledge to actually improve people’s lives. “For
people like us, who work in the basic sciences and are always being
questioned about the relevance of their work, it’s very gratifying to
see this body of work emerging from her laboratory,” Sara said. In light
of Kindt’s study, Pitman wrote in his commentary, the prospects for
reconsolidation-based treatments “seem more promising than ever.”
Science
thrives on replication, and nearly every doctor I spoke with said they
wanted their peers to replicate Kindt’s spider study before they thought
about using her method in clinical practice. But there are few hurdles
to widespread adoption. Propranolol, which has been used for decades to
treat heart disease, is a safe, cheap, and common drug. (It earned its
inventor, Sir James Black, the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1988.)
All Kindt’s method requires is a patient willing to tolerate a short
exposure to their trauma and an off-label prescription. Daniela
Schiller, a professor of psychiatry and neuroscience at NYU who, like
Kindt, has studied reconsolidation in humans and its potential for
treating anxiety, said she hoped their findings will become part of
mainstream clinical practice within the next ten years.
Kindt
is currently focusing her research on the specific conditions that
trigger reconsolidation in people with more complicated anxiety
disorders than specific phobias. She believes reconsolidation is
normally initiated by what she calls a “prediction error”: The actual
events that follow a trigger must be different from the outcome the
patient anticipated. In the case of arachnophobic patients, this is
relatively straightforward: They fear the tarantula will attack them,
and it does not. Or they fear their panic will overwhelm them, but are
able to remain in control. For people with PTSD,
however, memory is much more complex, and it is harder for researchers
like Kindt to pinpoint the external stimuli, such as a tarantula, that
will trigger their fear memories. Nevertheless, Kindt’s work with these
anxiety disorders so far has been very successful: It has worked 70
percent of the time with panic disorder and in ten of the twelve PTSD cases she has accepted.
Kindt is aware her work brings to mind Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
But she prefers to say her treatment “neutralizes” fear memories,
instead of erasing them. Her patients are able to remember the traumatic
experiences that caused their fear. But now, instead of developing an
extreme anxious response, they are able to deal with those experiences
normally. Kindt hopes that, for some patients, her treatment will open a
door to more conventional forms of psychotherapy, rather than replacing
them. By removing mental blockages and making it easier for people to
think about what has hurt them, it may enable them to analyze and
discuss their personal histories in ways they couldn’t previously.
“We’re
not advocating that it would be a good idea to wipe a memory completely
of traumatic events,” said Jonathan Lee, a psychologist specializing in
reconsolidation at the University of Birmingham in the U.K. “What we’re
hoping this approach might do is to essentially give the patient back
some control over those unconscious urges, that avoidance, or the
physiological fright.”
Perhaps it will even help people appreciate
the positive role fear can play in their lives. Kindt once took a pill
of propranolol herself before her daughter underwent surgery. The drug
has a palliative effect—musicians often take it
before big performances—and she did not want to feel anxious while her
daughter was in the operating room. “During the operation, I was indeed
very relaxed,” she said. Afterwards, though, she wondered whether the
medication had deprived her of an important memory. The surgery wasn’t a
traumatic event, after all, merely a stressful one. “My memory feels
very strange,” she said, thinking back. “Normally I might have had a
very emotional memory, but now it’s just an event.” Not all fears need
to be neutralized. “I missed the emotion,” Kindt said. “It gives color
to experience.”
Ben Crair is a contributing editor at the New Republic.
Most theories of relationships focus on how intimate partners feel about each other, but according to John Gottman’s behavioral approach, you need to focus on outward signs to test the health of yours. This approach follows from the assumption that observable actions provide, in many cases, harder evidence about what’s going on inside a person than the inferences we make from what he or she says.
I’ve taken the liberty of translating Gottman’s theory, along with
information from other supporting psychological research, into 11 clues
you can use in your own daily life to gauge the depth of your lover's
feelings:
Wants to spend time with you. Wanting to invest time into your relationship is a key indicator of successful long-term intimacy, according to one recent theory.
Although both of you may be tied up with work, family, and other
commitments, someone who truly cares about you will use whatever time is
left over to have some alone time together.
Asks about your day. During that time you spend
together, does your partner ask about, and show interest in, the high
and low points of your work day? Couples build their love for each other not necessarily on the ethereal, but on the practical supports that keep communication routes open.
Trusts you. Partners who truly care about you will give you the benefit of the doubt. Research shows that in successful long-term relationships,
partners want to have a sense of knowing where their mates are at any
given time. However, they don't have this wish because of worry that
their partners might be up to something nefarious. A partner who doesn’t
question where you are if you come home late or doesn’t snoop through
your cell phone bills is showing the kind of trust that shows true
caring.
Helps you when you need it. As busy as we all get,
adding extra chores or duties to your day may be the last thing you feel
like doing. However, if your partner is a technophobe, and you’re
techno-savvy, you’ll help out when something goes wrong with your home
Wi-Fi network. Similarly, if you absolutely need something from the drug
store and are too sick to go there yourself, a partner who cares about
you will run a rescue mission and get you that cold medicine.
Shows respect for your views. If recent research on complementarity in relationships
is true, it’s possible for you and your partner to be on completely
opposite poles of the political spectrum and still remain happy together
for years. The key feature is not what your beliefs are, though, but
how open you can be to accepting your partner’s perspective as valid.
Let’s say you’re an ardent feminist and your partner holds pre-1970s
views about women. If he truly cares about you, he’ll at least listen to
you when you express concern about women’s status in the workplace.
Includes you in decisions. Couples decide on
everything from mundane chores to high-stakes questions of where (and
how) to invest their income. It’s fine and probably advisable for each
person to specialize in some tasks needed to keep the household going,
but at some point you need to feel that your views will still be sought
(and heard).
Shows affection. Couples don’t have to engage in frequent sex, or even any sex at all, to be emotionally intimate. However, showing some sign of physical closeness, even if it’s resting a hand on your shoulder, suggests that your partner feels a vital connection to you.
Looks at you. The nonverbal cues that partners
share with each other reveal their deeper feelings. If your partner
looks at you while you’re talking, or if you catch him or her darting a
glance your way, this suggests that he or she takes pleasure in being
with you. The two of you don’t need to spend hours gazing into each
other’s eyes; even a quick glance can be enough to send positive,
love-confirming, vibes.
Likes to talk about the past. Couples who spend time reliving their enjoyable moments
from the past, and do so in a positive and supportive way, can
strengthen their ties in the present and future. If your partner uses
phrases such as “Remember the time we…?” and then proceeds to tell a
great story from your past (which you might not even recall), it
suggests that you and your shared experiences play an important role in
your partner’s mind.
Is willing to go to bat for you and your relationship.
Does your partner defend you when someone else criticizes you or does
he or she join in the fray? We certainly know from great literature that
people who truly care about each other will risk their own well-being
for the other's welfare. Partners in more ordinary relationships can
still show their love for each other by bonding together against outside
attacks. In a study of lesbian, gay, and bisexual individuals in close
relationships, San Francisco State sexuality
researcher David Frost found that many who felt stigmatized because of
their relationships drew strength from each other and felt that they
bonded more closely in the face of adversity.
Makes you feel good about yourself. A partner who truly cares about you boosts your self-esteem and sense of identity.
If nothing else, being with someone who makes you feel valued provides
you with strong positive reinforcement. We want to be with people who
make us feel good. This doesn’t mean that you’ll always have wonderful
days and nights in which you never quibble or become frustrated and
annoyed with each other. However, overall, if you feel that your partner
boosts your self-confidence,
you’ll not only be more likely to want to spend time together, but
you'll also regard yourself more positively in the times that you’re
apart.
There's
no set number of these 11 that would indicate whether a specific
partner hits above or below the threshold for truly loving you. However,
with these signs as a guide, you can gain insight into your
relationship's strengths and weaknesses and from there, address the
areas of weakness. At the same time, if you want your partner to feel
truly loved, ask yourself honestly how you would rate on these 11
indicators. Perhaps it's time for you not only to count the ways that
you're loved, but the ways that you show your love.
For starters, live longer, feel smarter, and ward off depression.
Posted May 04, 2016
It’s you versus the couch. How much does catching up on four seasons of Game of Thrones
cost you? Summer is coming and with it comes the old, familiar
determination to get in shape before it’s time to start shedding layers.
But exercise does so much more than make us beach-worthy. It’s been
called a magic drug,
one that has the power to keep us at our best in ways that aren't just
skin deep. Add up the research and the picture is clear: Physical
activity (with the OK of your doctor, of course) should be part of your
life, no matter the season.
These are just a few reasons to stay active: 1. Exercise boosts life expectancy.
Lack of exercise is linked to twice as many early deaths as obesity.
The good news is that even modest activity makes a big difference. For
example, a 2015 University of Cambridge study found that a brisk
20-minute daily walk can reduce the risk of early death by 16 to 30
percent.
Even if you’re older and unable to get around like you once did, you
still benefit by doing whatever you can to be active—and the more
active, the better. Research confirms that physical activity during retirement can reduce death risk by two-thirds. 2. Exercise is powerful medicine for depression and anxiety.
A 2010 analysis of dozens of studies found that exercise acts on the same neurotransmitter systems in the brain as antidepressants, and people who exercise have fewer anxiety and depression symptoms, and lower stress and anger levels.
Other research
has shown that exercise is not only good for treating depression but
can actually prevent it from occurring in the first place. 3. Exercise slows aging.
A 2016 study using mice found that physical activity, especially when combined with a healthy diet, can slow the accumulation of a type of cell, called senescent cells, that contributes to aging and age-related conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease, heart disease, and osteoporosis.
Exercise also keeps the brain young. It counteracts brain atrophy, and a 2016 study
found that older people who get at least moderate exercise are mentally
about 10 years younger in terms of their thinking skills than those who
get little to no exercise. 4. Exercise aids sobriety.
We in the addiction treatment community see how exercise can help people struggling to overcome problems with drugs and alcohol. And multiple studies back this observation up: Exercise has been shown to help curb a person’s drug and alcohol use and cravings, to make cigarettes less attractive, and to make relapse
less likely. Part of the reason seems to be that exercise and substance
use trigger the same reward centers in the brain. Exercise can also
help stabilize circadian rhythms, our daily rhythms of eating, sleeping, and social interaction that so often get out of sync with substance use.
Advertisement
People who exercise are also less likely to turn to drugs or alcohol in the first place. 5. Exercise improves gut microbes.
New research points to the importance of gut microbes in mental and physical health. Exercise, especially early in life when these microorganisms are especially plastic, alters the microbial environment. Research indicates that this has a positive influence on brain function and metabolism over the course of a lifetime. 6. Exercise means better mental health.
A 2015 study
by researchers at the Technical University of Madrid showed that people
with low levels of physical activity are more vulnerable to mental
health issues. Among people who got at least moderate exercise, the risk
was cut by more than half.
Exercise has also been shown to help people with emotional regulation, and improve the prognosis for those diagnosed with schizophrenia and psychosis. A University of Vermont study of high school students found that exercise even benefits those who have been bullied, by reducing suicidal ideation and suicide attempts by 23 percent.
Exercise is so effective for emotional well-being that insurers have been urged to increase coverage of exercise programming for people with mental health issues.
If you’re eager to maximize the benefits of exercise on your mental health, take it outside. Research
shows that getting physical activity in nature is linked to decreases
in anger, depression, tension, and confusion, and that it boosts
feelings of revitalization, energy, and positive engagement. 7. Exercise means better physical health.
Advertisement
No surprise here. But what may be news is the sheer range of
illnesses that exercise can either help prevent or fight. We know
exercise is good for our hearts, but studies show that regular exercise can also:
Help decrease the odds of getting age-related macular degeneration, an eye disorder that can lead to blindness in those with a family history of the illness.
And the list goes on and on... 8. Exercise makes your brain work better.
Exercise causes a variety of reactions in the brain that increase its
ability to do its job. For example, intense exercise increases the
levels of two neurotransmitters,
glutamate and GABA (gamma-aminobutyric acid), which handle chemical
messaging between brain cells. That messaging helps regulate physical
and emotional health.
Exercise is also believed to boost the development of new brain cells in adults, as well as release certain hormones, both of which help with learning and memory; a 2015 neuroimaging study found a direct relationship between exercise and brain activity and function.
Research shows that fit people also tend to have more white matter
and larger brains than those who get little exercise. People who get at
least moderate activity show more variable brain activity at rest, which
is linked to cognitive performance.
Feeling sluggish? Ditching these bad habits that drain your energy will help.
Reasons why you're always tired
by Linda Melone
Lack of sleep isn't the only thing sapping your energy. Little things you do (and don't do) can exhaust you both mentally and
physically, which can make getting through your day a chore. Here,
experts reveal common bad habits that can make you feel tired, plus
simple lifestyle tweaks that will put the pep back in your step.
You skip exercise when you're tired
Skipping your workout
to save energy actually works against you. In a University of Georgia
study, sedentary but otherwise healthy adults who began exercising
lightly three days a week for as little as 20 minutes at a time reported
feeling less fatigued and more energized after six weeks. Regular
exercise boosts strength and endurance, helps make your cardiovascular
system run more efficiently, and delivers oxygen and nutrients to your
tissues. So next time you're tempted to crash on the couch, at least go
for a brisk walk—you won't regret it.
You don't drink enough water
Being even slightly dehydrated—as little as 2%
of normal fluid loss—takes a toll on energy levels, says Amy Goodson,
RD, a dietitian for Texas Health Ben Hogan Sports Medicine. Dehydration
causes a reduction in blood volume, explains Goodson, which makes the
blood thicker. This requires your heart to pump less efficiently,
reducing the speed at which oxygen and nutrients reach your muscles and
organs. To calculate your normal fluid needs, take your weight in
pounds, divide in half and drink that number of ounces of fluid a day,
Goodson recommends.
You're not consuming enough iron
An iron deficiency can leave you feeling
sluggish, irritable, weak, and unable to focus. "It makes you tired
because less oxygen travels to the muscles and cells," says
Goodson. Boost your iron intake to reduce your risk of anemia: load up
on lean beef, kidney beans, tofu, eggs (including the yolk), dark green
leafy vegetables, nuts, and peanut butter, and pair them with foods high in vitamin C
(vitamin C improves iron absorption when eaten together), suggests
Goodson. Note: an iron deficiency may be due to an underlying health
problem, so if you're experiencing these symptoms of iron deficiency, you should visit your doc.
You're a perfectionist
Striving to be perfect—which, let's face it, is
impossible—makes you work much harder and longer than necessary, says
Irene S. Levine, PhD, professor of psychiatry at the New York University
School of Medicine. "You set goals that are so unrealistic that they
are difficult or impossible to achieve, and in the end, there is no
sense of self-satisfaction." Levine recommends setting a time limit for
yourself on your projects, and taking care to obey it. In time, you'll
realize that the extra time you were taking wasn't actually improving
your work.
You make mountains out of molehills
If you assume that you're about to get fired
when your boss calls you into an unexpected meeting, or you're too
afraid to ride your bike because you worry you'll get into an accident,
then you're guilty of "catastrophizing," or expecting that the
worst-case scenario will always occur. This anxiety
can paralyze you and make you mentally exhausted, says Levine. When you
catch yourself having these thoughts, take a deep breath and ask
yourself how likely it is that the worst really will happen. Getting
outdoors, meditating, exercising, or sharing your concerns with a friend
may help you better cope and become more realistic.
You skip breakfast
The food you eat fuels your body, and when you
sleep, your body continues using what you consumed at dinner the night
before to keep your blood pumping and oxygen flowing. So, when you wake
up in the morning, you need to refuel with breakfast. Skip it, and you'll feel sluggish. "Eating breakfast is like starting a fire in your body by kickstarting your metabolism,"
Goodson says. Goodson recommends a breakfast that includes whole
grains, lean protein, and healthy fat. Good examples include oatmeal
with protein powder and a dab of peanut butter; a smoothie made with
fruit, protein powder, low-fat milk, and almond butter; or eggs with two
slices of whole-wheat toast and low-fat Greek yogurt.
You live on junk food
Foods loaded with sugar and simple carbs (like
the ones you'll find in a box or at the drive-thru window) rank high on
the glycemic index (GI), an indicator of how rapidly carbohydrates
increase blood sugar. Constant blood sugar spikes followed by sharp
drops cause fatigue over the course of the day, says Goodson. Keep blood
sugar steady by having a lean protein along with a whole grain at every
meal, says Goodson. Good choices include chicken (baked, not fried) and
brown rice, salmon and sweet potato, or salad with chicken and fruit.
You have trouble saying 'no'
People-pleasing often comes at the expense of
your own energy and happiness. To make matters worse, it can make you
resentful and angry over time. So whether it's your kid's coach asking
you to bake cookies for her soccer team or your boss seeing if you can
work on a Saturday, you don't have to say yes. Train yourself to
say 'no' out loud, suggests Susan Albers, a licensed clinical
psychologist with Cleveland Clinic and author of Eat.Q.: Unlock the Weight-Loss Power of Emotional Intelligence.
"Try it alone in your car," she says. "Hearing yourself say the word
aloud makes it easier to say it when the next opportunity calls for it."
You have a messy office
A cluttered desk mentally exhausts you by restricting your ability to focus
and limits your brain's ability to process information, according to a
Princeton University study. "At the end of each day, make sure your work
and personal items are organized and put away," suggests Lombardo. "It
will help you have a positive start to your day the next morning." If
your office needs major reorganizing, avoid becoming totally overwhelmed
by taking it one step at a time: start by tidying what you can see,
then move through your desk and cabinets drawer by drawer.
You work through vacation
Checking your email when you should be relaxing
by the pool puts you at risk of burnout, says Lombardo. Unplugging and
allowing yourself to truly unwind allows your mind and body to
rejuvenate and return to the office stronger. "When you truly take
breaks, you will be more creative, productive, and effective when you
return," says Lombardo.
You have a glass of wine (or two) before bed
A nightcap sounds like a good way to unwind before falling asleep, but it can easily backfire. Alcohol
initially depresses the central nervous system, producing a sedative
effect, says Allen Towfigh, MD, medical director of New York Neurology
& Sleep Medicine, P.C., in New York City. "But it ultimately
sabotages sleep maintenance." Alcohol creates a rebound effect as it's
metabolized, which creates an abrupt surge in the adrenaline system, he
says. This is why you're more likely to wake up in the middle of the
night after you've been drinking. Dr. Towfigh recommends stopping all
alcohol three to four hours before bedtime.
You check e-mails at bedtime
The glaring light of a tablet, smartphone, or
your computer's backlit screen can throw off your body's natural
circadian rhythm by suppressing melatonin, a hormone that helps regulate
sleep and wake cycles, says Dr. Towfigh. Sensitivity to the digital
glow of tech toys can vary from person to person, but in general it's a
good idea to avoid all technology for one to two hours before bedtime,
he says. Can't avoid checking your device before your head hits the
pillow? Then hold it at least 14 inches away from your face to reduce
the risk of sleep interference.
You rely on caffeine to get through the day
Starting your morning with a java jolt is no big deal—in fact, studies show that up to three daily cups of coffee is good for you—but
using caffeine improperly can seriously disrupt your sleep-wake cycle,
says Dr. Towfigh. Caffeine blocks adenosine, the byproduct of active
cells that drives you to sleep as it accumulates, he explains. A study
published in the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine revealed that consuming caffeine even six hours prior to bedtime affects sleep, so cut yourself off by mid-afternoon and watch out for these surprising sources of caffeine.
You stay up late on weekends
Burning the midnight oil on Saturday night and
then sleeping in Sunday morning leads to difficulty falling asleep
Sunday night—and a sleep-deprived Monday morning, says Dr. Towfigh.
Since staying in can cramp your social life, try to wake up close to
your normal time the following morning, and then take a power nap in the
afternoon. "Napping for 20 minutes or so allows the body to recharge
without entering the deeper stages of sleep, which can cause you to wake
up more tired," he says.
Summer crush season is upon us, and these four strategies can help make your interest and good feelings mutual. 
Most theories of relationships focus on how intimate partners feel about each other, but according to John Gottman’s 
It’s you versus the couch. How much does catching up on four seasons of Game of Thrones
cost you? Summer is coming and with it comes the old, familiar
determination to get in shape before it’s time to start shedding layers.
But exercise does so much more than make us beach-worthy. It’s been
called a 
