Nostalgia: Is Craving The Past Good or Bad?

An old Lego set. Your rickety beach house. A playground in your neighborhood. We all have these bits of our past that we deem nostalgic. You know, when you walk by, you just get that feeling. It makes sense that nostalgia can be linked to our mental health since it’s just one of the many feelings we feel throughout the day. That raises the question: is nostalgia an inherently good or bad thing?

Nostalgia can be described as “a wistful or excessively sentimental yearning for a return to or of some past period or irrecoverable condition” according to Merriam-Webster. A certain sentimentality, even. So now that we have covered the basic definition, let’s dive deeper. 

The general consensus of whether nostalgia is positive or negative for a person has been debated by psychologists for a while. D.S. Werman, author of The Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, states in their novel that nostalgia can be substituted for mourning by displacing the painful memories associated with the item or place you feel nostalgic for, acting as a coping mechanism in a way. That same article, though, goes on to say that nostalgia can be helpful in promoting sense of self, boosting moods, and even growing bonds with others. With the uncertainty of the future, nostalgia can help ground us in a way, and assist us through the many transitional periods that accompany life. 

Nostalgia can also be linked to depression in some instances, according to Stacey Colino and Denise Miles, PsyD at Psycom.net. Considering the past as better than the present can contribute to one regressing to their childhood, whether that’s through childlike tendencies or other harmful behaviors. Anticipatory nostalgia, or when one preemptively worries about future losses in their life, is also a common symptom of depressive nostalgia. 

It was also pointed out in a study conducted by David Benjamin Newman from the National Library of Medicine that poor relationships between nostalgia were stronger among low-income households. In his study, he pointed out that “nostalgia proneness was particularly detrimental to well-being under objectively less desirable circumstances.” 

While we have accumulated a lot of information on the topic of nostalgia, we can’t jump to conclusions about whether nostalgia is good or bad yet. Let’s take a more broad look. 

I’m sure you’ve seen modern-day pop culture trying to play on our nostalgia in some instance– whether it’s the flopped ICarly reboot, Sunny-D with alcohol, or Fortnite’s OG update, it’s clear that nostalgia is a powerful marketing tactic. This, of course, ties into consumerism within capitalism. These corporations bet on us yearning for our youth. This feeling of nostalgia can lead us to spend more money on these materialistic goods, and, in the best case scenario for the companies, can make the consumer reach for more and more. 

“I definitely have fallen for some of the ways companies use nostalgia,” Sophie Pattison, 10, said. “With clothes and other stuff, it’s really easy to want to buy everything you see.”

Now, I’m not trying to slam on consumerism. That topic is for another day. Hell, I think that Sunny-D with alcohol is actually pretty cool. But it’s important to recognize that these companies use the tactic of nostalgia to simply make a buck off of us. 

There’s two sides of the coin here. In some instances, nostalgia is simply just a feeling– no more, no less. But, in some other cases, it can be harmful. It’s important to realize where it can be detrimental to us– whether it’s affecting our mental health or our pockets.