As we approach the New
Year, much of what we see and hear on the media is looking back on what was the
best of the year 2019 and what was the worst!
I am sometimes uncertain as to whether looking back, dwelling in the
past, is helpful or not, however, I was enlightened by an article written by
Tim Adams suggesting that looking back improves the look of tomorrow. “Long considered a disorder, nostalgia is now
recognised as a powerful tool in the battle against anxiety and depression. Is
it healthy to dwell in the past? Up until about 15 years ago, most
psychologists would have suggested probably not. The habit of living in memory
rather than the present, of comparing how things once were with how things are
now, was for several centuries thought at best a trait to avoid and at worst a
root cause of depressive illness. Nostalgia was the soldiers’ malady – a state
of mind that made life in the here and now a debilitating process of yearning
for that which had been lost: rose-tinted peace, happiness, loved ones. It had
been considered a psychological disorder ever since the term was coined by a
17th-century Swiss army physician who attributed the fragile mental and physical
health of some troops to their longing to return home— nostos in Greek,
and algos, the pain that attended thoughts of it.”
Since the turn of this
century, however, rather than being a malady, researchers have found that
memories can help us feel good about ourselves, make sense of our journey and
root us to our history. Nostalgia is
both a driver of empathy and social connectedness, and a potent internal
antidote for loneliness and alienation—a fact which has led to the beginnings
of nostalgia-based therapies for illnesses that include clinical depression and
perhaps Alzheimer’s. Some of this
research is historical. Researcher, Tim Wildschut, was intrigued by the strong
anecdotal evidence of women in concentration camps during the Holocaust who
“responded to starvation by waxing nostalgic about shared meals with their
families and arguing about recipes and so on.”
A concentration camp survivor said: “We used our memories to
temporarily alter our perception of the state we were in. It was not a
solution, but the temporary change in perception allowed you to persevere just
a bit longer. And that could be crucial.” Nostalgia helps build resources
like optimism or inspiration or creativity.
In difficult situations, nostalgia grounds you and gives you a base on
which to evaluate the present as a temporary state, and in doing so it perhaps
builds resilience.
I had no idea that
nostalgia held such power! As you look
back upon this past year and reflect on memories of your life, I hope that
those memories strengthen you to look forward to tomorrow with hope and
joy. Happy New Year!
