220. The psychology of nostalgia and getting stuck in the past

a question for you. How often do you find yourself thinking about the past. How often do you find yourself daydreaming about your first year at college, or that like amazing summer you had five years ago, the start of a relationship, your childhood in those moments, do you feel happier afterwards or sad that, no matter what you do, you can't go back to that time or relive those moments.

If you answered sad, or if you feel a real deep sense of longing, you may or may not be getting stuck in what I like to call the nostalgia trap, spending more time in the past and in your memories and in those really amazing moments than in the present, and constantly feeling like it was so amazing back then, and it's never going to be as good as it was, And I want to talk about it today because I think a lot of us are finding ourselves in that

trap these days. Nostalgia is a funny emotion in our twenties because although we are still objectively so young, any person over thirty or forty would tell you that there is still this sense that we are living out what most people would call the best year of best years of our lives. You know, there's already this sense of anticipatory,

noess for these moments that aren't even over yet. But on the other hand, we're also getting to an age where we have enough formative memories and years to look back on and miss, and it can honestly leave us feeling really down about the future and whether it will ever measure up to the amazing memories that we've made. Let me say this, Nostalgia can be really good for some things. It can keep us grateful, positive, It can bond us to people who were in those memories and

in those moments with us. There is even evidence that it can shield us from negative emotions. But it can also cause us to honestly feel quite stuck, to miss out on the present, to just feel a real deep sense of longing, and also to not be as optimistic for the future. So in today's episode, I want to discuss why that is, Where does nostalgia really come from, what purpose does it serve, and most importantly, what happens

when it begins to take over. There is no doubt in my mind at least that this generation is more nostalgic than ever. We see that in the resurgence of movies, TV shows, you know, picking up childhood hobbies as a form of escapism. Why is that the case and how do we handle this increased level of nostalgia in a healthy way. I am someone who is incredibly sentimental. I romanticize the past, probably too much. So I'm in the same boat as you guys. I am a twenty something

already feeling like the best years are behind me. And I know that sounds ridiculous, but I've just been having a whole lot of nostalgia recently. I think because I've been traveling a lot, and I was staying at this like beautiful airbnb in Bali, and I think because it was such an oasis and my mind was so quiet I really started reflecting on all the wonderful moments in my life and panicking maybe not recreating them whilst I'm

literally in paradise. So I get that it's quite a complex feeling, and I just want to discuss the science and of course the psychology behind it and the secret world of nostalgia. I'm really excited to share everything that I've learned with you and to help us all cope a little bit more without further ado. Let's get into it. Let's get our basics downpat to begin with, before we dive into why we get stuck in the past. There are two types of nostalgia. There is historical nostalgia and

personal nostalgia. So historical nostalgia is a little bit less common, and it's, you know, nostalgia for a time and a place that you've never been, that you've never existed in.

Even so, if you've ever seen people post about being born in the wrong generation, in the wrong decade, that's kind of an example of historical nostalgia, wanting to return to a time period like the sixties or the nineties or wherever where people imagine life was better, even though it probably wasn't the kind of nostalgia that we're talking about today, though, is personal nostalgia, and that is wishing to return to a memory, a time, a moment that

you have already experienced yourself. When we're talking about this kind of nostalgia, we are talking about an emotional state that combines our memories, that combines some form of sentimentality and pleasure, kind of delight and getting to experience a small bit of a feeling and a time for ourselves again. But it also has this undertone.

the longing is what really makes nostalgia nostalgia. Actually, if you were to look at the Greek origins of the word, you would find that it actually comes from two words nostos meaning homecoming and our goss meaning pain. So in that way, it's also really close to the meaning of the word a homesickness, right. I think that that's something that we can all relate to. Nostalgia is, you know, not a sickness, but a longing for a time and

a home that we were once in. It's really different from emotions and feelings like happiness, sadness, anger, because they're often so straightforward, right, they're very easy to identify, But nostalgia is nuanced. It's a mix of good and bad, which means that we can find it hard to place. But also it creates this like weird relationship where sometimes it can be pleasant when you're not like, you know, you're reminiscing with a friend, you're thinking back on a

really nice time in your life. But then on the flip side, when you go too far, you get overwhelmed by these really existential anxieties about time passing, about the years slipping by, about happiness and dread and fear. So why do we actually feel this emotion? What is its purpose? I think that's the biggest question of the day. Nostalgia is in part caused by this thing called rosy retrospection, the tendency to recall the past more positively then it

was actually experienced. Basically, the word rosy retrospection comes from putting rose colored classes on. I think about this all the time and how often I fall into this form of false or incorrect remembering just recently, I caught up with my old friend Sam, who I was really really close to it, and we were just telling, you know, like stories about the good old days over coffee in Surrey Hills and thinking about those times in our lives.

And of course, you know, we weren't thinking about the times when we were super stressed or heartbroken or socially anxious, or when you know, we drank too much or we were in fights with people. We only thought about the good things. We only could really hone in on the laughter and the positive memories. And even when we were kind of like when I was leaving and I was like, Wow, that was really really nice, and I'm thinking back on all these times, I kind of like was calling myself

out a bit. I was like, well, it wasn't all like that, and I know that it wasn't all like that, But no matter how hard I tried, I can't really remember many of those details. That is rosy retrospection. The reason this happens is because our brain has adapted to kind of weed out the bad memories over time if they don't particularly serve us. If you've ever seen the movie Inside Out, there is the scene in which the emotion joy basically is like, Oh, we don't need these memories,

these bad memories. I'm just gonna get rid of them, because you know, it's kind of better to have more happy memories than sad memories. Anyway, that's a movie, but it's also something that does really happen. This helps us maintain a more positive sense of self, which is what we want. So nostalgia on some level can stop us reminiscing and all the bad and terrible times and keep

us focused on the good times. I think this theory does get a little bit complicated when we start thinking about PTSD, because in those instances, people only focus on their negative memories and their intense trauma. That is just

a whole other episode. But on a similar note, there was a research paper published back in twenty fourteen that also suggests that based on this rosy retrospection principle, Nostalgia can be men cognitively emotionally protective because of the warm, fund fuzzy feelings that it produces and that we can

voluntarily tap into. So, of course, nostalgia is sometimes triggered by a smell or a movie or a song, or returning to like a city that you used to live in, but we can also call on it deliberately, and so when we're going through periods of isolation or things are just kind of not working out for us, nostalgia acts as a sort of mental time travel, and so, as one researcher suggests, it also helps us feel like we are more in control. Let me explain that for a moment.

So if, for example, you know you've just had an awful friendship breakup, you're feeling really stuck in your job, you're feeling stuck in life. A lot of these circumstances are beyond your control. But when you consciously tap into your old memories, they are within your control because they have already happened. You know what to expect, you know what feeling they're going to elicit, and that is a positive one. So it helps you regulate your emotional experience.

Think about why we reminisce so much at funerals or graduations. Yes, obviously it's like the context is the end of something. But you know, the end of something stings and it hurts, and it's out of our control. But we can lessen that sting by thinking about all the good things that have come from that experience and shielding ourselves from the brunt of it, using our nostalgia to stop us getting

really bogged down in the grief in the end. If you want a study that kind of backs this up, there was this author, doctor Yang, who conducted a series of experiments on people a few years back, and he found that when participants in his study were asked to reminisce on a really beautiful time in their life, they were encouraged to be nostalgic. They were less likely to perceive the pain or the sting of a small electric current versus people who were asked to just think about

the future. So it was almost like sitting back in the memories of your past. Going back to that time stopped you from feeling the pain of the present. And you know what that sounds like to me? That sounds like nostalgia, maybe a form of escapism. It is a way to distance ourselves from our lives. Another explanation comes from possibly the biggest academic in this specific domain of nostalgia psychology. Her name is doctor Christine Barcher, and I love what she has to say about this because I've

never thought about it in this way before. But on the Speaking of Psychology podcast, which is another amazing psychology podcast if you're sick of mine, she was interviewed and she explains how nostalgia helps unite our sense of self. It helps unite who we were before and who we are now and create this like a line or sense of continuity between the different versions of ourselves. I have never thought about it in that way that nostalgia may be a form of identity preservation. But it makes a

lot of sense. Right If we never thought about who we were in the past, the memories that have made us who we are today, what we were like the happy times, I think we would be a lot more shallow as people and also a little bit lost because we aren't able to tap into how our past self treated a situation or what makes us us. The final theory about why we experience nostalgia is that being able to look back at old memories gives us the opportunity

to connect with others. Like I was telling you this example of me meeting up with an old friend, we tapped into those joint experiences that we felt so funnly about and it gave us a chance to really reinforce an old bond. But it can also help us problems solve as well, Like there is a lot of knowledge and a lot of information in the past, and nostalgia is our way of tapping into those to benefit our current selves, to benefit our current relationships, to benefit our

current mental states. So, yes, a few explanations, most of them good or at least showing how nostalgia serves some function when we look at it that way. What's really interesting, and I did mention this at the beginning, though, is that for all of those benefits, there has been a lot of suggestions from researchers and psychologists that this generation is experiencing more nostalgia than ever, so they are relying on its function and its utility for emotional protection, for

social connection more than any other generation ever has. Think about this in terms of pop culture, last year we saw Barbie break every single box office record like therever is there you are. Currently, you know, Hollywood is releasing a bunch of movies based around childhood nostalgia. Childhood TV shows objects, you know, things from the past. We're all listening to like early two thousand throwbacks. We're like getting back into childhood hobbies like getting digital cameras or journaling

or scrapbooking or collecting trinkets. And you know, even on a personal level, I have so many friends who have like said to me recently, like, oh, remember the good old days. I just can't stop thinking about it. We should go back to where we went to Uni. We should go back to these times. Here's why I think this is happening, and it comes down to two elements. The world is just really, really tough right now. We

are more stressed than ever. We are more overwhelmed by just like literally the chaos of living, and we're very disconnected. So we are resorting to nostalgia as a pretty detective defense mechanism. We know from a twenty sixteen study that we experience nostalgia more when our mood is lower because it helps us feel better. It can also leave us feeling like we've returned somewhere safe that is familiar. And you know, it's a tough world out there. Maybe we

need more of that. We really want the comfort of the past. And secondly, I think that it's a lingering effect of the pandemic and how that whole time in our lives put us in a weird limbo state for a few years when a lot of us were just starting out as adults. There was a before and there was an after, and it really kind of threw a spanner in the works of our timelines and our memories, and for many of us that experienced that in our in our early twenties, it kind of feels like this

decade is now split into two parts. So we are feeling nostalgic a lot sooner for what life was before because of what some researchers are calling the pandemic skip, feeling like we skipped a lot of our life and our milestones because of those lockdowns that were obviously absolutely necessary because of that period of disease and fear, And so we are consequently more nostalgic for the past for

a time before the pandemic. But it also feels like because we lived through that like one two year period where we weren't really doing anything that suddenly we like put a stop to everything that was making us experience our youth and our joy so much and kind of were pushed straight into the adult world. We feel more nostalgic for that time before. Hopefully that makes sense. Hopefully

you can resonate with that. But this can create problems though, because whilst feeling nostalgic, maybe instinctial, maybe in these circumstances, is actually quite beneficial and is protecting us from some kind of negative mental state, it can definitely go too far. It can definitely become, as I said before, a form of escapism, and that is what I've been hearing a lot from you guys from the listeners. I had this

story from someone the other day. He was like, I don't even want to go out anymore, Like why would I keep living this life that I have? Why would I invest in new memories where my old memories are so good. Let's talk about it, because that is no way to live your life. You only get one of them. I feel like we all want to be more present. How can we do that? How can we break out of the nostalgia chap. We're going to talk about all

of that and more after this short break. The saying always goes too much of anything, even a good thing can quickly become a bad thing, And the same goes for our nostalgia. There is always a point for me when it switches from reminiscing and feeling really happy about all the memories that I've made with the people that I love to wondering and getting really stuck in this quite dark bubble of like, is it ever going to get as good as that? Is it ever going to

be like it was then? And the answer is like, I don't know, And that answer is a scary one because it's quite uncertain. It's also really tapping into a big fear that a lot of us twenty somethings have. This decade is depicted as the best years of our lives and full of spark and our greatest moments. The older we get, the more scary it becomes, and the more detached we feel from this period and from these golden,

amazing years that everyone is telling us to enjoy. It can be hard to not want to hold onto that and to not want to be careless and youthful and enthusiastic. But I don't think that's a healthy way to think. I don't think it's healthy to think that our twenties are the best that it's ever going to be, because a lot of research actually says that it's not. And this is exactly when our nostalgia becomes maladaptive, being harmful, counterproductive.

It distances you from reality because if your present isn't as good as the past, why would you want to spend more time there when you can just keep replaying

what's already happened. It's a cycle. The more time you spend in your memories, the worse your present feels, which causes you to revert back to nostalgia even more, and then you know, the cycle continues to begin to perceive your daily life even worse, and it just never ends, despite the fact that actually you're probably not remembering those moments all that accurate anyway. That's what the whole principle of rosy retrospection is telling us. As much as we

like nostalgia, can we really trust nostalgia? That is the key thing. To remember the times you feel nostalgic for were they necessarily that much better than where you are now? And even if they were, what's to say that it's not going to be like that again, just because you're in a tough spot regardless moving on from that, it stops us from, i think, trying to make do with what our current circumstances are, and it can leave us feeling quite detached. I had a friend from university that

I lost touch with a few years back. Super lovely guy, so intelligent, but he was someone who would always, without fail when we would catch up, he would just want to talk about specifically our first year of university, even five, six, seven years on, he would bring up like the same five memories or moments of us drinking at our college bar, or the time that we all were like running around and I don't know what we were doing, just like funny stuff, crazy stuff, and it almost kind of like

became a joke between us, like I would tease him. I was like, oh my gosh, which memories are you going to pull out today? Like I can't wait to reminisce. And the older I've gotten, the more I realized that still he's not been able to really let go of those times. But I think that those memories let him get back to a happy place and his life, you know, wasn't as good as it was then, and so it was a coping mechanism. This often goes hand in hand

with a phenomenon known as peter Pan syndrome. Peter Pan syndrome describes people who don't want to grow up or accept responsibility except the future. Maybe an element of that is because they are very infatuated with their youth and staying young and infatuated with the past. It's a very extreme consequence of chronic nostalgia. But it's not like we

don't see it. Something interesting here that I read about the other day was a twenty thirteen report released by Georgetown University which spoke about how peter Pan syndrome is becoming more common now because of how hard it is to transition into adulthood in recent decades, you know, becoming financially independent. I think that's one domain where we can

all relate. It's really hard. It's a lot harder than it was for our parents' generation, and it kind of means that we want to stay a kid a little bit longer before having to face the reality that, oh, yeah, you know, I'm probably never going to be able to afford a home, I have to pay bills like it's this never ending cycle of adult responsibilities that might feel really comfortable for a while, but I think we all know that sometimes avoidance and suppressing reality, like trying to,

I don't know, create the illusion that you can stop the clock, is you know that illusion is inevitably going to fade and you're going to be left with a reality that you can't necessarily cope with. One final downside of too much nostalgia. It taints the present before we've even left it, and it can end up making us feel quite existential because we start missing things too soon.

This is this idea called anticipatory nostalgia, missing something before it's even over, feeling sad and anxious whilst you are still in the process of making the memory, like when you're already thinking about how the holiday is going to end, or you meet someone new and amazing and you're already contemplating how awful the breakup is going to be. Like you move into a new house, you're already picturing moving out. That's a personal one. I literally had that thlought recently

when I moved. I was like, Wow, I wonder what it's going to be like to pack up this place. And I was like, that's really not healthy because I'm already feeling sad for a moment that I haven't in a period of time that I haven't even experienced yet, and it can honestly feel like time is slipping away. What can we do about that? Where is the balance?

What is the line between feeling reflective and appreciating your happy memories and falling into an obsession with the past and also falsely believing that that is the best it will ever be. Well, I've got four tips for you guys today to kind of get back to the bright side of nostalgia and break out of the nostalgia trap. Firstly, give yourself space for nostalgia and embrace it. This may sound counterintuitive, but every emotion has a place and serves

a function, otherwise they wouldn't exist. I believe that fully, and we know that nostalgia is actually quite useful in certain situations, so we don't want to ban ourselves from ever dipping into the past. Also, because the more you deny something, usually the stronger it gets. That's the whole principle behind avoidance. It's about balance. But more than that, leaning into your nostalgia rather than fighting against it, because that just makes it stronger. A few ways that we

can do this. Firstly, use this tactic that I like to call the acknowledged and divert tactic. This basically involves, you know, when you feel nostalgia coming up, give yourself two to five minutes to feel it, to really be like, yeah, that was such a great time. I really miss those people, I really miss those memories, and then transition into doing something else that is kind of aligned with nostalgia. So, for example, swap out thinking about the past for thinking

about the future. I also like to swap out longing for the past with gratitude like Wow, it's amazing that I got to have those experiences, rather than I wish I was still there. But also keeping a running list of things that I'm excited for in the future. And every time I feel myself getting sad about the past and feel you know, sad about the memories that exist there, I like to add myself add something else to that list. So I always think about, like when I get my

first dog, how exciting is that going to be? When I get to decorate my own home that I own, You know, I think about the next time I get to go on vacation and it positions myself to think positively about my future memories and their capacity to be amazing, rather than only focusing on what comes before. Adding to that, I would also say create events, book trips, put things in the calendar to look forward to, so that feeling nostalgia is not the only thing that comes up. Watch

just how this works, wonders. I think hope and anticipation is such a beautiful antidote to a lot of things, not just nostalgia. Secondly, I would say, probe, what about those times makes you so reminiscent and happy. Is the reason you feel nostalgic for that time when you lived with your friends in that big house, or when you saw your friends every day, or when you were at UNI or at college or in high school? Is it because there is something contained in those memories that you

now feel like you are missing. Is it because you are lonelier now? Is it because you feel isolated? It's really important to remember that often you're nostalgia is indicating to you something that you don't feel like you currently have, Something about your current circumstances that needs to shift. Whether you need more community, more people, more, I don't know.

Hope like more work, life balance, more purpose. Whatever it is what we feel nostalgic for is usually what we lack, because you can't really miss something if you still have it. And the same goes for a lot of things, like feeling nostalgic not just for the times when you had a lot of friends, but feeling nostalgic for a time of a lot of freedom or a time when you're experiencing a lot of love. The root of nostalgia is longing, so by fulfilling that aspect that we miss in our lives,

by addressing it normally, the nostalgia tends to fade. On that note as well, Remember that there are cognitive biases at work here that you can't see that is sometimes causing you to think about things and think about things in the past as being better than they were. If you need a little bit of a reality check, try and fill in the gaps, not necessarily just to focus on the negatives, but make sure that you're not ignoring the nuances of your memories. I see this a lot

with people who have just gone through a breakup. Normally, like two to three months down the line, they'll really start reminiscing and they'll really start being like, oh, but I really like he made me feel amazing, she was so kind, she was so smart. Remember that time that

we went and picnicked and that beautiful thing happened. And it's like, that is zero point zero zero one percent of that experience, and that is your mind trying to keep the positive memories afloat to block out the darkness when you really start to fill in the gaps of those experiences and when you know, in these situations, I encourage people to be like, Okay, but tell me, tell

me a negative memory, tell me a negative experience. The nostalgia also starts to fade because I think you just you see things as clearer and more realistically, and you stop glamorizing them. Some people can end up falling into quite what they call a nostalgic depression, which isn't a specific DSM diagnos but basically describes a pattern of symptoms surrounding depression that are mainly focused on feeling overwhelmingly dissatisfied

about the present compared to the past. And I'm not sure how common this is, but if you truly can't find a way to live in the moment, if you're feeling increasingly deflated, exhausted by life, not wanting to try.

I think that's also where more help is required, and a therapist might suggest some things for you to do, like mindfulness or focusing on intentional nostalgia rather than spontaneous nostalgia, which basically means, like we said before, giving yourself a dedicated time to feel nostalgic and to let that inform your next steps. To feel grateful for the past, to connect with others, but then also refocus on the future,

refocus on you know what's going on right now. I want to say this, for the people who really struggle with nostalgia, you would be blown away by how many people feel exactly the same way as you do. Who wish for a time that has passed, Who wonder if it will ever be good as it was before, Who watch those golden memories and feel really sad then it's over. But here's the thing. When you ask yourself is it going to get better? It will? There is your answer.

And here's how I know why. I know that from a study that was published in twenty eighteen in this book called the Happiness Curve. This study in this book, in general, looked at happiness over our lifetime. We normally reach peak happiness around our mid twenties to thirties, so that's basically where most of us are at right now. We're kind of just passed or reaching or close to reaching peak happiness. Then it kind of starts to plateau and decrease after our thirties, which is when we tend

to get more nostalgic. This is when I think we start to think that the best years are behind us, and just when we lose hope in our forties, in our late forties, look at that things start picking up again, and by the time we're in our late fifties early sixties, we are often the happiest that we have ever been, and our nostalgia just becomes gratitude and it goes hand in hand with the good experiences that we continue to have. So that myth that this is the best years of

your life not true. Seems you've got a little while longer before that happens, and in the meantime, you're still going to make really, really, really good memories. I know it feels like a long time away, especially if you're trapped in the nostalgia cycle right now, but you can't

feel nostalgic forever. Eventually there will be Eventually you kind of start to realize, like, ah, but now I'm feeling nostalgic for a time when I was nostalgic about a time when I was nostalgic, Like if you kind of get where I'm coming from, And it's like, you're still making memories in the process that you're going to be nostalgic for in three six months, and so your brain kind of starts to teach itself like, hmm, maybe it's better to focus on these now so that we have

more to feel thankful for in the future. And it will eventually, I think, start to do some of the work for you and break you out of the cycle.

That is the most important thing that I think, actually the best way to finish out this episode is to remind you fully, wholeheartedly that right now, these days that you are living you will eventually look back on fondly, and even if you don't look back on them fondly, you will find a lesson contained in them, and you will find something in them to remember in some positive or informative light. So just try your best to focus

on what's happening around you right now. Even if it's a rough time in your life, it's leading you somewhere bigger. One day. This will be a memory to reminisce on when the good times come back around. I know that the nostalgia trap feels so rough sometimes that it also sometimes feels really nice to live in the past, when everything when we already understood everything that was going to happen. But whatever you do, whenever you do, do not base

your life on just a few memories. Continue to create fuel and make more so that your future self has more to think about. Your future self has more to feel grateful for. Thank you again for listening to this episode. Thank you to those of you who suggested it. It was a great topic to cover. I feel like the more I speak about it to people around me, the more people come out of the woodwork and go, oh, yeah, I have those existential fears. I have those worries as well.

So as always, I think that vulnerability unites us, and that vulnerability makes us feel less alone. So I hope that you learn something. I hope that you can take something away and apply it to your own life. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure that you're following along on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, and please feel free to

leave a five star review. It helps the show to grow so much, and I really appreciate seeing your feedback and hearing from you guys, and just knowing you know what's going on in your lives, but also what content you want to see, what episodes you want to hear. So if that, if you've got an episode suggestion, if you've got something on your mind, please feel free to DM me on Instagram at that Psychology Podcast. I would love to hear from you. I would love to hear

you know what you want us to talk about. So until next time, until we talk soon, stay safe, stay kind, and of course be gentle with yourself