Nostalgia. It Used To Be Better? Psychology Of Nostalgia

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

What is the psychology of nostalgia? What does our psyche want to tell us when we are nostalgic?

Recently, this topic has become quite relevant. When can we feel nostalgic? In general, there are three main factors influencing the emergence of this painful feeling - longing for the past, for a certain person and for a certain place. However, all these factors are connected by one common feature - longing for oneself, for the identity and life that we had in the past (for example, nostalgia for the institute years, etc.).

From my own experience, I can say that my nostalgia for the time spent at the institute influenced the decision to get a second education, also at a hospital. The student period is always new and vivid impressions (the first distance from parents; independent life; more responsibility, which nevertheless has a tinge of youthful carelessness - students think only about where and with whom they will walk, how and with whom they will communicate; change environment in which you can express yourself in a completely different way). Often, students at a more conscious and mature age do not bring us such vivid sensations as in adolescence, when many situations are perceived easier and more pleasant, we do not think about boring couples and endless long notes, from which our hand falls off, about unwillingness to go to classes in the morning … For every student, exams are stressful, but everyone here has always had fun, and an incredible rise in energy helped to survive stressful times and deadlines.

Many people are nostalgic for a more childhood period, when we all had fun and played, not thinking about the time at all ("12 o'clock in the morning? So what? I don't want to sleep at all!"). In adulthood, sometimes at 9 o'clock in the evening you already want to sleep (relatively speaking - quickly to the pillow!).

Some are nostalgic for their homeland. For those who left to live abroad, their home country is a special place on the map, and they continue to live the life of their homeland (they read the news, participate in elections, etc.). In fact, such nostalgia is quite understandable and is associated with the deeper aspects of the human psyche. In the popular science book "The Naughty Child of the Biosphere" by Viktor Dolnik, some "oddities" and basic foundations (instincts) in human behavior are explained in a fascinating manner. According to the author, love for the homeland is a useful instinct of humanity, which has not disappeared in the process of evolution. And no matter how many years you have lived in the place where you were born, there will still be longing! This basic instinct is well seen in birds - they instinctively know how to fly south and return home. Without a map and navigation, birds obey deep instincts. In our minds, the homeland is the place where they always wait for me, receive me, caress me, and they will be kind. Such a regressive state may be associated with the lack of some kind of resource (for example, if you went abroad, it takes you a lot of energy to adapt). Accordingly, if the resource is exhausted or depleted, the psyche has a desire to go to that point on the map, which is called homeland - to recuperate, because there is no need to strain, and we are accepted as we are, loved and expected. Surprisingly, even if the expected warmth is not there, our brain still draws an attractive picture, and the main thing we remember is warmth and comfort. Somewhere in the depths of the soul, grievances against parents and friends remain, but nevertheless, the feeling that it is better there than here overshadows everything negative.

Longing for a certain person arises for the same reason - supposedly it was much better with him than without him, and our brain selects only positive situations in memory (this very much includes strong grievances experienced in contact with this person). A curious factor - we rarely feel nostalgic for those people with whom we had a very close and close relationship. We are not nostalgic for our parents, as a rule, nostalgia is “turned on” only for the childhood period, when we were small and carefree, we did not have to make any decisions. We are not nostalgic for the institute itself or the professors, we feel a feeling of longing for the time when we were young and energetic, we did not have to overexert ourselves and think about serious life problems.

Why is that? The point is that at the point "here and now" something is wrong, we do not like something. This impression is built in the same way as addiction - supposedly I felt good there! There is tension, a feeling of heaviness, melancholy, no comfort, and in general - it hurts here, my needs are not satisfied. I feel nostalgic, and everything will be fine. It's like a defensive reaction - to go into your fantasies and fffffffff to release tension (in other words, channeling your tension). Going into nostalgic fantasies works in a similar way to dreaming about the future. Some people try to repeat their experience in the past, but in reality, the recreated picture is not so interesting and attractive.

Our present can change our past, just as our past can change the present. In other words, the past changes every second. If I feel bad now, I can do two things: distort my past for the worse or, conversely, for the better (depending on what need is at the moment - to engage in self-flagellation or to be comforted). Accordingly, returning to the past, the picture of which we have drawn in our head, we calm ourselves down.

If we talk about a particular case, for me nostalgia is the need to return to myself, when there were fewer problems, responsibility, tension, everything went well and worked out, there was support and resources.

If you start to feel nostalgic, ask yourself, what are you missing at the moment, what seems so unbearable to you that you go into nostalgia, like a computer game? The game, like any other addiction, for example, alcoholism or drug addiction, is a departure from reality. It is often difficult for a person to admit to himself that something does not suit him, and he channels all his energy into fantasy, trying to return to people in the past, to re-experience all the events. Such thoughts about the past are also a fantasy, because our brain draws only selective moments in our head, vivid life situations when we were really good. From a psychological point of view, this is a channeling of tension - a person “merged” it into the past and can continue to live on in an unmet need for many years to come.

So, we are nostalgic if we lack emotions, experiences, events, people, intimacy - anything! An emptiness formed in our psyche due to the absence of people or events that gave us something important and meaningful in life, and now we do not have this. Nostalgia is always the channeling of tension in order not to change anything in your life, but at the same time to at least somehow satisfy an unfulfilled, but very important spiritual need here and now. It should be understood that mental needs are no less important than physiological ones - to eat, go to the toilet, etc. The psyche will take its toll in any way, and often this is nostalgic. Is this a productive way? The answer to this question depends on how you organize it in your life.

Always try to analyze why you are bored, bored, and nostalgic. Frequently ask yourself how you feel in the here and now, what is wrong, how to organize your life to meet your needs. Don't hide from reality, don't drain or channel energy into nostalgia. In fact, this is a great work for the psyche, analogous to direct actions. That is why, in order to find the answer, it is worth correctly formulating the question - How to do this?