Function & Clinical Uses
Now we examine some of the functional uses of nostalgia as well as applying them in clinical settings. The main functions of nostalgia that will be discussed include an: increase in optimism, counteracting loneliness, and maintain physiological comfort. Starting with a paper from Zhou (2008) that looked at nostalgia being used to counteract loneliness. Over the course of four studies, they hypothesized that induced nostalgia could counteract perceived social support caused by loneliness. The reported results showed that loneliness is associated with decreased perceived social support along with a reported increase in feelings of nostalgia-itself associated with increased perceived social support. This relation shows
…show more content…
1492). These findings are congruent with previous studies that showed nostalgia is related to a generally pleasurable feeling. Further observations showed that nostalgia is directly correlated to heightened self-esteem, which, in turn, heightens optimism. This serves as an important finding as it alleviates some of the original concerns that these higher levels of optimism are simply due to positive mood and not truly an effect of nostalgia. By showing the step-by-step process, we see that nostalgia increase self-esteem, which causes optimism to increase.
Further studies from Zhou (2012) looked at nostalgia’s effect as a homeostatic role along with the psychological benefits mentioned above. Their results from a set of conducted studies showed that:
Thermoregulatory discomfort triggered nostalgia: nostalgia was stronger on colder (vs. warmer) days and in a cold (vs. neutral or warm) room. Nostalgia induced patients reported an increase in physical warmth, music-evoked nostalgia participants predicted the physical sensation of warmth, and recalling a nostalgic [vs. ordinary autobiographical] event made a cold room feel warmer.
…show more content…
While this paper served more as an all-encompassing literature review of the topic, the main ideas can be summarized as followed. First, nostalgia is most commonly induced during a negative mindset but is regarded as a positive emotion due to its increase in positive mood affects. Secondly, the limbic system, especially the hypothalamus and amygdala, are vital to the overall process as they are chiefly involved with attributing emotions to memories. Finally, due to all the positive associations correlated with nostalgia, it has potential to be used as a coping mechanism in clinical settings for patients dealing with social interactions and loneliness. For further clinical applications, research regarding induced nostalgia should become the forefront of the field. We see the positive benefits that nostalgia can have, now we must find better ways to induce that emotion in a clinical setting. Possible ways of doing may be patient exposure to potentially nostalgic stimuli such as music, movies, and television from the era they grew up along with photos and
Their memories will give them an ideal live to go towards or a life in which they want to progress from. If an individual chooses to run from the past in which they lived, it is still a component in their life which shaped them to be who it is they became, despite their efforts to repress those memories. Nevertheless, the positive memories of an individual’s past will also shape who they are. Both good and bad memories are able to give an individual a glimpse into their ideal life and a target in which they wish to strive for and memories in which they can aim to prevent from happening once
In Incontinent Nostalgia, a 63 year old woman is living with Parkinson disease since she was 18 years old. She is using L-Dopa to treat her disease, which causes the nostalgia and joyful memories of the youthful past.
Webster has defined nostalgia as a “wistful or excessively sentimental, sometimes abnormal yearning for a return to or of some past period or irrecoverable condition.” Nostalgia is a psychological time machine that transplants adults to the good old days of another era. Once there, they will find that it is a state of mind, oblivious to actual or imagined barriers. For some it is a pleasant stroll through yesterday, a simple, less turbulent past.
In the few minutes that it takes to do a physical assessment, a breathing treatment, a bath, or a gastric tube feeding, we could engage in 5 to 10 minutes of eye to eye contact, therapeutically reminiscing with our elders, and in doing so could possibly influence the health of our patients profoundly. With the collective efforts among health care workers, it could eventually turn out to be a measurable cause and effect when thousands of injuries that occur every year, as a result of the many effects of Depression begin to show a significant decrease because of our joint efforts of Reminiscence therapy. Then we would see it as a preventive safety measure just as important as administering the right medication to the right patient. Perhaps then we would never have to face regret of dismissing the benefits of such a therapy that could have been bestowed upon our elders (who needed the reminiscing in the last stage of their life in order to find inner satisfaction and ward off depression). Let it not be said: Benefits that were never brought into fruition, because it simply wasn’t facilitated by us, their Health Care
Nostalgia is described as sentimental feelings for the past. Things such as smell and touch can trigger nostalgia. Nostalgia is relating po...
Wagner, U., Hallschmid, M., Rasch, B.H., & Born, J. (2006). Brief sleep after learning keeps emotional memories alive for years. Biological Psychiatry, 60, 788–790.
The Hunger Games was a critically acclaimed movie when it came out; however, some critics would argue that the movie can be sometimes too violent for its intended audience. In this essay I would dissert Brian Bethune’s essay “Dystopia Now” in order to find its weaknesses and compare the movie Battle Royale with his essay.
Storbeck, J., & Clore, G. L. (2005). With sadness comes accuracy; with happiness, false memory. Psychological Science, 16(10), 785-791.
Sadness is an important feeling various people have throughout their lifetime. Some experience it more than others causing it to become a disorder, or most commonly known as depression. The background to the fictional novel, “Where Things Come Back” by John Corey Whaley, is that the character go through many difficult conflicts such as isolation, sadness, and mortality.The perspective of sadness varies throughout different people, therefore it is important to understand others point of view.
Emotion can elicit false memories; past experiences can create ‘emotional’ experiences from trauma events. Some of these events may include seeing someone at gunpoint or seeing a building vandalized. These events may elicit emotion for an individual; they may not want to remember these
Nostalgia is, by definition, a longing for another person. It is an idealized past, or a combination of many different memories; all integrated together, and in the process all negative emotions filtered out (google). I believe that nostalgia is a term that I believe to be overused, misunderstood, and often confused with the act of remembering or reminiscing. Nostalgia is the emotional attachment; longing to go back to that memory, it often overcomes one without warning. I believe we all have the capacity of nostalgia, but the over labeling has cheapened such a unique raw feeling. As a society, we have misrepresented nostalgia and the effects are a water downed replacement. We are muddling the true definition of nostalgia. This misuse will
People thrived to experience life, and to seek out emotions, whether they were good or bad. This emotion and imagination of th...
With nostalgia making us feel certain emotions in all different kinds of scenarios, scientists have conducted studies to find out how nostalgia functions inside our brain. According to the article, “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 specific frame, and choose to idealize that specific time. We deduce that because we remember that feeling of happiness at the park, our childhood must have been better than right now.” Due to nostalgia being based on emotional states instead of memories, a common ground is now established between everyone who has experienced nostalgia. For example, everyone may not have experienced memories of playing at the park or watching Disney movies as kids but everyone at some point in their childhood has experienced some form of happiness whether it be in the form of a game (ala hide and go seek or tag) or a simple car ride you shared between your siblings and/or parents. Another study discussed in the article was, “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.
The concept of nostalgia was first introduced by the Swiss physician Johannes Hofer in 1688. He created the name by combining the Greek words nostos and algos, which mean “return” and “suffering” respectively (“Why Does Nostalgia”). Although Hofer defined it, the idea of nostalgia was introduced even earlier in the writings of Shakespeare, Caesar, Hippocrates, and Homer (Wildschut, Sedikides, Arndt, and Routledge). He was inspired to coin the term after witnessing countless Swiss soldiers experiencing homesickness while at war. Symptoms associated with this homesick-induced nostalgia included bouts of weeping, anxiety, irregular heartbeat, anorexia, and insomnia (Wildschut, Sedikides, Arndt, and Routledge). However, by the early 19th century, people began viewing nostalgia as a medical disorder in the form of melancholia or depression instead. This notion eventually disappeared at the beginning of the 20th century when nostalgia earned its own definition apart from its negative legacy. Even though nostalgia is no longer widely associated with sickness, this does not mean that it is exempt from scrutiny by skeptics and researchers alike.
Although, because I didn’t mourn then, as I got older, I became more vulnerable, it made me more sensitive about anything and everything. Controlling emotions was much easier then, than now. I learned that we tend to know how to keep ourselves in control, and in a healthy state of mind. I learned that it’s better to talk about the death of my father than avoiding the subject. I learned that eating ice cream after a breakup helps the emptiness of the heart and stomach. However, in overall, we cry, laugh and get angry, no matter what because our body needs to feel vulnerable to express how we truly feel, controlling our emotions makes us strong and gives us a higher chance of happiness but the feeling of loneliness too. Controlling emotions takes practice, it involves emotional empathy, which is the ability to concentrate and recognize mood both for themselves and