Why do people feel nostalgic?

Nostalgia is a psychological phenomenon at first. From the psychological level, nostalgia implies people's "retrogression" psychology, which is a psychological defense mechanism. When we are faced with contradictions and conflicts, we will seek security protection through nostalgia and memories of the past. This kind of conflict can be internal (such as the conflict between one's instinct and morality and conscience) or external (such as the conflict between self and reality)

nostos and algia, which originated in Greek, the former means "going home" and the latter means a painful state. As the name implies, it refers to the pain of longing to go home; Therefore, as a pathological term, it originally refers to "homesickness", including depression, depression, and even emotional diseases prone to self-destruction. Later, the word "nostalgia" gradually moved away from the medical category and gradually integrated into the society, and its connotation also expanded and extended, pointing to personal consciousness and social and cultural trends, and was talked about as "a basic situation of human alienation."

Today, "nostalgia" has become a normal human reaction and a sociological phenomenon. It is not limited to the individual's recollection of his past, or a mark of "the passing years", but as a normal situation, it has both strong personal characteristics and universal social significance.

Social causes of nostalgia

Nostalgia is not specific to people and ages. It can happen to different people or at different stages of life, and it is a stable personal psychological tendency. It only happens most easily in middle age and after retirement, and it is particularly strong in the transitional stage.

With the continuous growth of age, the body is gradually aging, metabolism and endocrine functions are weakened, and various abilities such as thinking, memory and understanding are reduced. However, the "information of the past" stored in the "experienced" brain is deeply rooted, and it is easy to get emotional when encountering certain stimuli, and the past is constantly emerging in the mind.

Therefore, when individuals are faced with some trigger events such as resignation and retirement, the fear of declining self-ability, the fear of declining external control, and the anxiety of a completely unknown life after retirement can easily trigger "nostalgia", so as to obtain psychological comfort and emotional support and grasp the sense of control and security in the past.

Nostalgia is looking for a kind of comfort. Therefore, especially in times of crisis or social unrest, nostalgia can give people positive feelings such as comfort and kindness, and become a refuge in people's hearts. Because for the future, we always have all kinds of unpredictable anxiety. Only for the past, we can freely and simply process it in our minds, evaluate and analyze it, interpret and reconstruct it, and even make functional use of it.

There is no doubt that nostalgia is a reconstruction and yearning for the past, including a sense of control and security for an event that has happened. By further amplifying this protection or recognition, nostalgia can also arouse the intimacy between members of the same interest society and gain group recognition.

From a sociological point of view, people need to use nostalgia to maintain their identity when their lives are undergoing major changes, and the perception of the past can arouse the past self and clearly understand and define themselves, so nostalgia is an indispensable part of self-perception.

Psychological Causes of Nostalgia

Nostalgia is a psychological phenomenon at first. As can be seen from the above, it is manifested in beautifying the "hometown" and sighing and exaggerating the "past". Among them, more are advantages, even ignoring the shortcomings, showing the characteristics that imagination is better than reality. For example, when old friends meet, a glass of wine is in full swing, they miss the intimate friendship between teenagers and feel deeply about the complicated interpersonal relationships in society; Like splendid clothes, I returned to my hometown and stood alone in front of the dried-up stream, feeling the happy time when I fished in the river to catch loach and eel.

General nostalgia is always sweet and warm, and even has some unconscious fantasy elements. Perhaps this is also a reason why people like nostalgia. If nostalgia is always a nightmare, I believe no one likes nostalgia.

from a deeper psychological level, nostalgia implies people's "retrogression" psychology, which is a psychological defense mechanism. When we are faced with contradictions and conflicts, we will seek security protection through nostalgia and memories of the past. This conflict can be internal (such as the conflict between one's instinct and morality and conscience) or external (such as the conflict between self and reality).

Especially among the elderly, because they realize that there is not much left in life, they have a faint panic in their hearts, so they repeatedly recall the past time and beautify it to comfort themselves. At these times, nostalgia satisfies people's instinctive desires by going back to the past. The illusion of time and space caused by it can just bring people security and love in a symbolic way.

Generally speaking, nostalgia is more emotional memory than cognitive memory. This kind of memory is selective, and its emotional structure is complex, including positive emotions such as warmth, joy, gratitude, friendship and simplicity, as well as negative emotions such as loss, sadness and longing. But on the whole, nostalgic feelings are mostly positive, which is to maintain or strengthen personal self-identity by filtering out unpleasant factors.

Nostalgia will happen to almost everyone, but as the saying goes, going too far is not enough. If you deny the present and the future because of nostalgia, you will get sick. This is because the parties encounter social changes, changes in values, or personal sense of loss caused by changes in living environment. When faced with sudden changes, they can't adjust their mentality in time to face life positively and bravely. Instead, they shrink themselves and adopt an evasive or antagonistic attitude to avoid directly facing this unsuitable reality and fall into nostalgia. To make matters worse, being too nostalgic will cause greater frustration and inadaptability, and continue to strengthen the attachment to the past. In the long run, a vicious circle will be formed, and the gap between individuals and the environment will continue to expand like a snowball, forming a morbid nostalgic psychology and behavior.

As a memory function and a means of psychological comfort, the satisfaction generated by nostalgia can enrich life. However, for those who don't know how to treat nostalgia well, nostalgia may become a heavy spiritual fetter when it develops into addiction and affects normal life and work, so we should pay attention to it.