Companies that digitize family photos and video collections are reporting a major boost in sales in recent months. And nostalgia could be to blame. Since shelter-in-place orders began in March in the U. Anything from childhood friends to discontinued candy bars can spark feelings of nostalgia. It all begs the question of how this serves our psyche. Mental health experts say it can be a double-edged sword.
Tanya J. It runs on the thesis that those who are already suffering from feelings of discontentment or low self-worth are able to reach into their personal reservoir of nostalgic memories and find some comfort in them. With this in mind, nostalgia is now regarded as a sort of in-built, psychological medicine, that people can take a dose of in order to conjure up the material they need.
Most often, nostalgia materialises memories of close relationships, or beloved places, making the person feel as though they are supported and strengthened by those dear to them.
Reflecting on past events can also aid mental states by serving as a reminder of the times difficult challenges or failures were overcome — the mind is simply serving a pep talk that states, if you did it then, then you can do it now.
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Get the latest and greatest happenings in Auckland delivered straight to your inbox every Wednesday morning. Kindly share a little more insight into who you are below and one of our team will be in touch soon. Lockdown How to deal with stress and anxiety in the age of isolation. According to Alan R. You remember fleeting feelings, emotions and moments of glee.
You do not remember the seconds of sadness and hurt before it. You only remember what your biased mind has chosen to recall. However, as it turns out, nostalgia isn't about remembering memories at all. As Hirsh points out, nostalgia does not relate to a specific memory, but rather an emotional state.
We put an emotional state within an era, or a specific frame, and choose to idealize that specific time. We deduce that because we remember the feeling of happiness at the park, our childhood must have been better than right now. We even place it in inanimate objects, places and smells. Like with Horcruxes shout-out to my "Harry Potter" fans , we lock away bits of ourselves into things and beings.
Anything we experienced concurrently with those feelings is placed away as something to be recalled and reminisced over later. Thus, while the average person can smell 10, odors, no two people smell the same thing.
We react to smells differently, associate them with different things and yearn for them differently. According to Erica Hepper, a psychologist at the University of Surrey in England, the usefulness of nostalgia varies with age, with young adults participating in it most.
There is then a decline in nostalgic thoughts and tendencies towards middle age and even old age. However, it makes sense that those in the most turbulent and unsettled time of their lives would yearn for the simplicity and safety of childhood. In your twenties and thirties, you are lost in the upheaval of everything you once knew to complete isolation and independence.
However, as more and more research attests to the positive capabilities of nostalgia, maybe we should think about indulging in it for the rest of our lives.
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