MISSION VIEJO, Calif. (AP) - In the wake of the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history, office buildings and schools around the country were partially empty as people retreated to the only security they knew - home.

Millions of Americans sought refuge among friends and family Wednesday as they tried to come to terms with the gravity of the attacks. Psychologists say it's a natural response to traumatic events.

"You're going to find people needing to be held more, hugged more, reassured more in the days and weeks ahead," said Alan D. Wolfelt, director of the Center for Loss and Life Transition in Fort Collins, Colo.

"Whenever you have experiences that put you in the position for being out of control, you'll search for things that give you control - family, home."

After watching television reports of Tuesday's airliner hijackings and deadly crashes into the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon, Brooke Bourland took her 6-year-old daughter to work and called her husband repeatedly. She went home early, closing up shop at the women's gym she manages.

"What makes us more special than those people in those airplanes, those people in the World Trade Center or the Pentagon? Nothing. Fate," said Bourland, who reopened the gym on Wednesday. "It just puts it all into perspective. You need to be with the people you love."

Some say the nation last experienced this need to be anchored when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Before that, it was the attack on Pearl Harbor.

"People are looking for whatever their symbol of security and safety is, and for most people that's the family and the home. That's where they want to be. That's where they need to be," said Howard A. Starr, professor of psychology at Austin College in Sherman, Texas.

It's a feeling Tom Dobyns, a financial consultant from Laguna Hills, Calif., understood all too well.

In the hours after the attacks, he raced home from a meeting in San Diego to hug his wife. He spent the next day just trying to enjoy his life.

"We sat on the couch holding each others' hands. Somehow, being together just made it better," Dobyns said.

Douglas Reid took little comfort in the distance between his Costa Mesa, Calif., home and the disaster sites in New York, Washington, D.C., and western Pennsylvania.

"That last 'I love you.' How many people forgot to say that? Everything seems juvenile and irrelevant when you think how important that is," Reid said.

For nearly two days, he and his wife, Kristen, called friends and family around the country.

"Do they know I'm worried about them? Do they know I care about them?" he said. "It didn't seem important until (the attacks)."

Now, Reid says, he will never forget it. As people return to work, experts say they'll likely feel a sense of helplessness, panic or fear. Some may struggle to concentrate.

"Normal response time to problems will diminish. I think employers, teachers, people in authority need to recognize this," Starr said. "A lot of people may ask, 'Is what I'm feeling normal?' There is no 'normal' in this case."

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