Hi, Waves,


Yes, the Psychology Today explanation is certainly more negative.

This caught my attention:
I have begun to believe that I am living in the past and present at the same time so that maybe there is not much "past" for me. . . . not sure.
Or worse, not living in either.

Mari

Dear MariWow. This applies to me too - whether in the same way or not, I don't know.

Btw, I have often felt like I live in my head. On occasion, others have observed this of me also.

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I have a great attachment to the past and the tendency to cling to elements of it. Clearly, we cannot truly live in the past. At the same time, I feel like my present is empty... I don't feel fully alive in it.

I think this might be seen as a detrimental aspect of nostalgia: clinging so much to the past that the head-trips negatively interfere with the experience of the present. To be clear, I wouldn't say ordinary nostalgia causes me not to live in the present, in general. However, I am aware that if I allow myself to indulge in excessive nostalgia, I start living the present as a collection of absent things. What a mess! That, I believe is how one leaves the crossroads of bittersweet, and turns down the bitter lane. Before one knows it, one is no longer nostalgic ... only bitter.

Perhaps it is just a question of too much of a good thing...

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Btw, I did finally read the articles you posted in full. I found some additional points that correspond well to my experience but got sidetracked and didn't post. At this point, I will need to find the relevant excerpts again.

I still need to look at their nostalgia scale too. I am curious as to how they evaluate it.

waves

Thank you for bringing in the literature. I find all this fascinating. After I read the articles I actually felt slightly encouraged that perhaps what happens to me could is a natural process that might be doing me some good - provided it is within reasonable measure.

That is interesting. I will have to look at the scale to give you my personal take. I also don't know what I would score. I should score high. It will be interesting to see if I actually do, haha.

As I see it, one can be nostalgic about anything in the past. It doesn't have to be concrete - a person, place, thing. It can be a feeling. Indeed feelings from and about the past, are the basis of nostalgia. Concrete stimuli often elicit memories that link us to those feelings, but we may also connect to them spontaneously, without stimuli. Eg. When a song triggers nostalgic feelings in someone, it causes them to re-experience feelings they experienced in the past - good feelings that they kind of yearn for or miss. If the song elicited no feelings there would be no basis for nostalgia - it would be only a memory. (Also, if there were feelings without a sense of yearning, that would be reminiscence and not nostalgia.)

waves

Hi Mari

I just looked at the scale and I was pretty surprised. I expected to find something which attempted to gauge the extent to which a person is nostalgic, but that does not seem to be the case.

The response range of "not at all" to "very much/frequently" is an extremely subjective measure. What is "much" to one person may not be that much to another. Only the last question concretizes frequency and we have no reason to extrapolate the frequencies given to the previous questions. Even if that were possible, frequency cannot be mapped onto the questions dealing with extent (little/some/much).

I thought the scale might measure the degree to which one values nostalgia. This would work when people who value it highly seek it to a subjectively high extent thereby scoring high, while those who value it less would would not see themselves as particularly nostalgic and would score low.

This questionnaire does not, however, try to capture nostalgic experiences that might not be subjectively identified. This limits its sensitivity for any purpose, imho. We must presume those evaluated are given a standardized definition of nostalgia for the purposes of the test and perhaps a little more - that they have been counseled as to what experiences are nostalgic and which not.

I did score high on it, except for a couple of questions. But from the get-go, I was asking myself, "How much is very much?" I could just as easily have scored mid-range, adopting a different working definition of "very much/frequently".

waves