The past returns to a person in images and emotions, thoughts and associations. Sometimes these memories are associated with a feeling called nostalgia. As a rule, this feeling is caused by longing for the past, but it is light, light sadness when the past is seen in a positive light. What is nostalgia and why does it arise?
Instructions
Step 1
For the first time, nostalgia was "diagnosed" in immigrants who yearned for their homeland. They idealized their Fatherland, feeling cut off from the world of their childhood. But psychologists began to analyze nostalgia only in the second half of the 20th century, when it became necessary to think about the adaptation of immigrants, and the level of development of psychology as a science was previously insufficient for this kind of research.
Step 2
Nostalgia is not limited to the feelings of immigrants, most people know it. The further in time a person's pleasant memories are, the more likely he will feel nostalgia. Psychologists associate this feeling with selective memorization, because when the situation no longer affects a person, he cannot assess its negative qualities. He only has an image, a cast of a situation in which some positive details can be exaggerated, while others, negative ones, decrease and begin to seem insignificant. And every time a person returns with his thoughts to the situation, it begins to seem better than it seemed at the time.
Step 3
It is often said that this is because a person does not keep what he has. But one should learn to objectively judge the events that have taken place, and not find advantages in the lost, otherwise there is a danger of starting to live in the past. Nostalgia is a longing for the past, seen in an idealized light, which makes a person live with memories and not respond to the needs of the current time.
Step 4
People who find themselves in the grip of nostalgia bathe in the images of the past and the present does not occupy them enough. Perhaps it would not be so bad if they did not lose contact with their contemporary reality. They become like dreamers who also create a surrogate for reality for themselves. The main thing for people prone to nostalgia is to realize that the future is happening in the present and that you need to be here and now every minute. After all, the past cannot give happiness by itself, it is just a mirage, a phantom.