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Life Before and After: The Experience of Nostalgia and Trauma
It's normal to have moments of nostalgia. Maybe you see something that recalls a memory from the past, or you hear a certain sound, smell a particular scent, or even just an old familiar feeling washes over you in a moment that takes you back momentarily. These moments can be bittersweet—the memories can serve as reminders of a time that likely was meaningful, but also perhaps combined with a sense of loss of that time in your life. This is a common experience.
Deeply Consuming Nostalgia Goes Beyond a Momentary Memory
Many people can struggle with deep, heavy, and frequent moments of painful nostalgia. There may be an overwhelming yearning or craving to return to times or places in life in the past. Perhaps times like holidays, or experiences with certain family members, or places that have meaning, or even just returning to simpler times with less responsibility where so many possibilities still lay ahead in life. Whatever it may be, some people can become embedded within deeply consuming nostalgic emotional states.
Within this heavy experience of nostalgia, it goes beyond the bittersweet, once-in-a-while moments. Emotional memories can come up throughout each day and become fully consuming. Often when in these states of deep nostalgia, the memories can be filled with idealized moments, and in turn can be riddled with grief and longing for them in the present. It's even possible that many memories contain a euphoric lacquer brushed over them that makes them appear ideal now in the mind's eye—as if getting back to these moments in time will be the key to happiness and the cure to pain.
How Trauma Can Play a Role in Deep Nostalgia
This deeply yearning form of nostalgia can often happen when people struggle with depression, or the experience of Grass Is Greener Syndrome (which I've written about on my blog if you would like to see more). However, it's also common to experience deep and heavily consuming nostalgia when you've been through certain types of trauma.
If you're a survivor of trauma, you may recognize how trauma can have a way of dividing a person's world. When trauma (it doesn't only have to be one traumatic moment, necessarily, but various types of trauma including ongoing trauma) happens, it can often have a "before" and "after" effect. Basically, the mental and emotional experience can be that there is life before the trauma, and then life after. Trauma is generally a painful and very real turning point in one's life.
Traumatic Impact on the Mind and Body
Traumatic experiences have a strong impact on the mind and body. Trauma is often the result of experiences that you likely didn't how to process in the moments you were faced with. In the experience of trauma, the mind and body wrestles with something overstimulating, scary, painful (and more), and too much to take in and make sense of all at once. It creates not only an earthquake in the mind and body to contend with in the present and going forward, it also often creates a feeling of loss of a certain type of innocence prior to the trauma.
When trauma happens, there is often a new sense of danger, threat, and vulnerability in the world that maybe wasn't experienced before. This can lead to all sorts of emotional responses, such as panic attacks, anxiety, gaps in memory, escapism, difficulty letting one's guard down or relinquishing control, and more as the mind and body struggles to process these overstimulating and overwhelming experiences. This internal shift can result in dividing life into a before-and-after experience as you move forward carrying the impact of trauma.
Comfort in Visiting the Past Before Trauma
When it comes to nostalgia, it is actually quite common for people who've been through trauma to sometimes find safety and comfort in accessing experiences in the past—traveling within themselves back in time to a time and place that made more sense and was perhaps more pure and grounded. Maybe listening to certain music, watching familiar TV shows or movies, engaging in activities that can almost create a cocoon in the past, prior to the trauma. At times, this can serve as a useful coping mechanism.
However, simultaneously, the frequent time spent revisiting the "before" can also create a strong sense of dwelling and paralysis away from life in the present. Within deep and frequent nostalgia, whether it's depression and/or trauma experiences, there can often be a sense of unprocessed grief when dwelling frequently in certain memories. As comforting as these emotional memories may be, the experience of dwelling can sometimes tell us when we haven't processed something painful.
In fact, it is not uncommon for people to begin understanding when they've been through trauma because of their deep nostalgia.
Healing From Trauma and Finding the Path Through
To clarify, having nostalgic moments is completely normal and doesn't mean you're automatically struggling with trauma or depression. But if you're spending a lot of time or emotional energy dwelling in memories of the past, are deeply yearning to relive these moments, or are regularly looking to find escapes to "life before", it may mean that there's at least something unprocessed—perhaps something to be grieved or understood—calling for your attention.
When I work with people who struggle with trauma, depression, Grass Is Greener Syndrome, or even just when frequent experiences of nostalgia show up, we take the time to explore and understand the emotional meaning of these moments and memories. The road to healing can be found through these memories.
#Trauma #Depression #MentalHealth #grassisgreenersyndrome #ComplexPosttraumaticStressDisorder
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