Thinking Many people remember the “good old days” with nostalgia, others with tears in their eyes because those childhood days were good or bad or so different from today’s world. We all have different opinions about -- 6.2 We Cannot Control How Our Lives Began but We Can Control Our Present and Our Future 7 Nostalgia Is Helpful When It Leads Us to Be Grateful for What We’ve Achieved 8 When You’re Feeling Down, It Can Often Help to Look Back on Fond Memories 8.1 It Might Even Motivate You to Make Progress on Your Current Goals! 9 Don’t Use Nostalgia to Run Away From Your Problems 10 Childhood Memories Can Hold Important Information That Helps Us Navigate Our Lives Now -- If you’re having a hard time living in the present when you think about the past, it’s called nostalgia-which means “deep longing or homesickness for the past”-and is generally perceived as a positive or negative emotion. Or perhaps even bittersweet? -- helps us progress in life. Nostalgia Is Helpful When It Leads Us to Be Grateful for What We’ve Achieved Thinking about the past is natural and can be helpful. -- if you just look for them more often. Nostalgia can hold us back just as easily as it can propel us forward. When we spend time thinking about the past instead of planning for the future, our goals can fall by the wayside. -- When You’re Feeling Down, It Can Often Help to Look Back on Fond Memories Nostalgia is a form of self-care – a reminder that the past had its good points, too, and that there’s still plenty to look forward to. -- It Might Even Motivate You to Make Progress on Your Current Goals! Nostalgia can also be a form of escapism, as it distracts us from our current problems or helps us avoid them. Nostalgia can also be a form of escapism, as it distracts us from our current problems or serves to help us avoid them. For example, you might avoid dealing with your marital problems by reminiscing about the -- the current relationship problems. Since nostalgia can be used as a distraction to avoid certain problems, it’s important that we don’t abuse it and instead use it in a productive way. To accomplish this, let’s look at some common ways we can abuse nostalgia and how you can tell if you’re using nostalgia as a distraction. Don’t Use Nostalgia to Run Away From Your Problems When people have unresolved issues in their relationships, they often use nostalgia as an excuse to avoid dealing with those issues. The problem is that while they’re stuck in the past, they aren’t making -- excuse not to work on their problems. Nostalgia isn’t about “all or nothing” – you don’t have to think back only to the good or bad times. Instead, think about the good and bad things that happened in your life, and don’t try to see something through rose-colored glasses. When we use nostalgia as a form of escapism and avoid seeing both the good and the bad from our past, it can cause us to avoid dealing with our current problems and get stuck in the past. -- member, but instead of working on those problems, you spend all your time thinking about the past ups and downs of your relationship, that’s one way nostalgia can be used as an escape mechanism. You’re trying to escape from something negative in your life by focusing on the positive aspects of something else. While this is natural, it’s unhealthy when you overuse nostalgia to escape from things. If you find yourself doing this, try to figure out why you feel the need to escape what’s happening. -- our memories of the past to guide our actions in the future. The third reason nostalgia helps us deal with our problems is that it allows us to avoid dealing with those very problems. For example, if you spend all your free time thinking about the good old days when you were a young adult instead of working to solve a problem that’s bothering you today, then nostalgia may play an unfavorable role in managing your emotions and stressors. -- and what we think it’s in our minds. Lovers of nostalgia can wander through their own time capsules, reliving their favorite moments from their youth and longing for the life they could’ve lived had they not failed (or not failed so often). -- When I look back, I see that my life has been full of ups and downs since elementary school! When we look back on our childhood, most of us probably feel some degree of happy nostalgia and painful memories – memories of past childhood activities, friendships, or toys may put a smile on our face. Many people look back on their teenage years or the first few years after leaving home as the best days of their lives. For me, nostalgia is like time travel, and I enjoy the good times and the bad times like watching a movie. -- American Psychological Association – Speaking of Psychology: Does nostalgia have a psychological purpose? American Psychological Association – Memories of Childhood Abuse