Nostalgia: Positive or Negative Emotion?

They say it was the best ever. But remember, it is not an exclusive shelter for the elderly. Nostalgia is ageless and can be a positive emotion (in small doses).

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The 20-year-old traveler, seated behind me on my flight, was amusedly telling a group of her friends how her grandmother was: a strong lady and a wonderful cook who still remembered her soup. Oh, the smell, it’s always fresh The limbic system, the formal seat of the emotions. They all laugh. They’ve also been kids lately.

At the destination airport, the phrase reads on the window of a small shop The future is here (The future was here). I tend to be a victim of curiosity and the effect of focus (the shop window is round like a big binoculars). inside things classic Country, old radio, record player, fashion from other times. Each country has its own story to tell. It’s nostalgia again.

sweet sour emotion

Nostalgia mixes sadness and joy, sweet and bitter taste at the same time. Who among us has not felt this strange sensation? Open your mind photo album and save memoryMaybe your last school days or vacations. A feeling quickly passes through your body, from the stomach to the chest and settles into the sternum. There is your longing. A mixture of the tenderness of the past, the joy of what he lived, and the sadness that he is gone and Some nostalgia there again.

The Royal Academy defines nostalgia in two ways. The first is “the bleak sadness of being lost” and the other “the pain of being away from home, relatives, or friends.” Both are not very positive. This is due to the history of passion. The Swiss physician Johannes Hofer described it in 1688 as the feeling that overwhelms soldiers in war because of “Longing for Home”. It was associated with a pathology that involved insomnia, crying and sadness at not being able to return to their country.

The rise of nostalgia

However, in 1979, by the American sociologist Fred Davis and his book Yesterday’s Longing: The Sociology of Nostalgia He changes his old assessment and becomes a positive emotion associated with Remembering the people, situations, or places that once made us happy. Indeed, in these troubled times where the future is uncertain, nostalgia is a growing feeling. why? What is your friendly face?

• building security. The past is a safe place to return to if you remember a difficult time that you managed to overcome and thus connect with your strongest person. Emotions are fleeting, not where they come from.
• Enhances identity. In moments of change, nostalgia reconnects with that person you once were that you probably can’t see now. He looks at a picture of you from other times and says that’s me!
• Give meaning to your life. He prefers understanding the present through history itself, with the added benefit of accepting the passage of time, and settling on the good things that have happened, not on the traumas of yesterday.
• Increases self-esteem. Remorse insists on what you could not do or what you did not do well; Evoking the good life opens up room for action: “If I was like this once, I can be like that again.”
• Increased optimism. Scientists at the University of Southampton (UK) asked a group of young people to remember their past. Those who evoked nostalgic memories felt much happier. It helps to face the difficulties of the present.
• Reduces feelings of loneliness. Connecting with who you were as an individual or who we are as a society directs the gaze towards others and creates a sense of unity. Avoid solitude because it forces you to call friends, go back to certain places, etc.
• It reduces pain and suffering. Some studies show that it reduces pro-inflammatory cytokines that are involved in pain pathways. In addition, it enhances the memory of happy times compared to unhappy times, reducing suffering.

It’s not pure

‘Sick of homesickness’ Someone told me recently. All of these positive influences can transform and become a painful emotion: gloom that brings bitterness, attachment, sadness, and indifference. Sometimes also resentment or regret. Sigmund Freud had already linked it to what is known today as depressive disorders. he is nostalgia shift On his dark side it happens when:

1. You make the past perfect: “Ever had the best”.

two. relate to someone Or something like that and you start to suffer because it’s not there.

3. When you look a lot at the past You do not live in the present.

4. If he lives in the past does not become Changes in your current life.

5. Looking back is a constant reminder Trauma and loss.

6. If you remember the past It gets too long in time.

7. If your memory is limited to specific episode.

Nostalgia is not a chronophobia either, coexisting with the passage of time Obsession and anguish, which increases every time we say: “I used to be…”. This is especially evident in those addicted to body worship, because no matter how much they are kicked, time will pass them by.

Miss Anonymous

Is it possible? The answer is positive. its name AnemiaRemember the past where you were never, that person you can’t meet, that place you can’t go. Can We miss the life we ​​could have had Or that unfulfilled dream that persists in your imagination. Just remember Woody Allen is making fun of himself on the couch and you’ll know what I’m talking about.

serve nostalgia A bridge between the past and the future, but above all, it is useful to make us savor the present. Every moment has its own nostalgia, because every change in life has a different reason. It is only dangerous if it stays forever. or if it becomes a file ‘Nostalgia Industry’ In the service of marketing or some ideology that glorifies a great hypothetical past and separates us (instead of our resettlement) from our identity as individuals. In the words of writer Svelana Boehm in nostalgia futureIt is positive that it helps us to reflect and reclaim the person we really are. In this case, you will always produce more joy than sadness.

How to use nostalgia to grow

• use the past as inspiration to restore energy.
• The past in the group is better, Connect with you.
• Creates new memories And keep the traditions alive.
• use it for Be happy in the present And anticipate yourself in the future.
• Remember: health is accept who left and who is this?
• Rewrite the past and if there is anything You can change, do it.
• Create your own album positive memories.
• take advantage of gratitude It carries with it an implicit nostalgia.
• Don’t get hung up on, whoever or whoever you’re craving for “You can live without it.”

Isabel Serrano Rosa * Psychiatrist and Director enposisi.com