220. The psychology of nostalgia and getting stuck in the past

All of us find ourselves remincising on the 'good old days' every now and then, but sometimes we can find ourselves getting trapped in the memories of the past and feeling like it will never be as good as it was. This is the nostalgia trap and it can keep us from being present, from enjoying our current season, or making new memories, it can also lead to nostalgic depression. It can be particulalry hard in our 20s when everyone is telling us these are 'the best years of our lives'. In today's episode we talk about how to find a healthy balance between remembering and enjoying the moment, including: 

• Early ideas of nostalgia 
• The reason we feel nostalgia
• Are we more nostalgic now than ever?
• Can we have too much nostalgia? 
• Peter Pan Syndrome
• Chronic and depressive nostalgia 
• How to be more present + tips for managing our nostalgia 

Listen now! 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Psychology of Your Twenties,
the podcast where we talk through some of the big
life changes and transitions of our twenties and what they
mean for our psychology. Hello everybody, and welcome back to

(00:26):
the show. Welcome back to the podcast. New listeners, old listeners.
Wherever you are in the world, it is so great
to have you here. Back for another episode as we,
of course break down the psychology of our twenties. Here's
a question for you. How often do you find yourself
thinking about the past. How often do you find yourself

(00:48):
daydreaming about your first year at college, or that like
amazing summer you had five years ago, the start of
a relationship, your childhood in those moments, do you feel
happier afterwards or sad that, no matter what you do,
you can't go back to that time or relive those moments.

(01:09):
If you answered sad, or if you feel a real
deep sense of longing, you may or may not be
getting stuck in what I like to call the nostalgia trap,
spending more time in the past and in your memories
and in those really amazing moments than in the present,
and constantly feeling like it was so amazing back then,

(01:29):
and it's never going to be as good as it was,
And I want to talk about it today because I
think a lot of us are finding ourselves in that
trap these days. Nostalgia is a funny emotion in our
twenties because although we are still objectively so young, any
person over thirty or forty would tell you that there

(01:49):
is still this sense that we are living out what
most people would call the best year of best years
of our lives. You know, there's already this sense of anticipatory,
noess for these moments that aren't even over yet. But
on the other hand, we're also getting to an age
where we have enough formative memories and years to look

(02:11):
back on and miss, and it can honestly leave us
feeling really down about the future and whether it will
ever measure up to the amazing memories that we've made.
Let me say this, Nostalgia can be really good for
some things. It can keep us grateful, positive, It can
bond us to people who were in those memories and
in those moments with us. There is even evidence that

(02:33):
it can shield us from negative emotions. But it can
also cause us to honestly feel quite stuck, to miss
out on the present, to just feel a real deep
sense of longing, and also to not be as optimistic
for the future. So in today's episode, I want to
discuss why that is, Where does nostalgia really come from,

(02:55):
what purpose does it serve, and most importantly, what happens
when it begins to take over. There is no doubt
in my mind at least that this generation is more
nostalgic than ever. We see that in the resurgence of movies,
TV shows, you know, picking up childhood hobbies as a

(03:15):
form of escapism. Why is that the case and how
do we handle this increased level of nostalgia in a
healthy way. I am someone who is incredibly sentimental. I
romanticize the past, probably too much. So I'm in the
same boat as you guys. I am a twenty something
already feeling like the best years are behind me. And

(03:35):
I know that sounds ridiculous, but I've just been having
a whole lot of nostalgia recently. I think because I've
been traveling a lot, and I was staying at this
like beautiful airbnb in Bali, and I think because it
was such an oasis and my mind was so quiet
I really started reflecting on all the wonderful moments in
my life and panicking maybe not recreating them whilst I'm

(04:00):
literally in paradise. So I get that it's quite a
complex feeling, and I just want to discuss the science
and of course the psychology behind it and the secret
world of nostalgia. I'm really excited to share everything that
I've learned with you and to help us all cope
a little bit more without further ado. Let's get into it.

(04:24):
Let's get our basics downpat to begin with, before we
dive into why we get stuck in the past. There
are two types of nostalgia. There is historical nostalgia and
personal nostalgia. So historical nostalgia is a little bit less common,
and it's, you know, nostalgia for a time and a
place that you've never been, that you've never existed in.

(04:45):
Even so, if you've ever seen people post about being
born in the wrong generation, in the wrong decade, that's
kind of an example of historical nostalgia, wanting to return
to a time period like the sixties or the nineties
or wherever where people imagine life was better, even though
it probably wasn't the kind of nostalgia that we're talking

(05:08):
about today, though, is personal nostalgia, and that is wishing
to return to a memory, a time, a moment that
you have already experienced yourself. When we're talking about this
kind of nostalgia, we are talking about an emotional state
that combines our memories, that combines some form of sentimentality

(05:30):
and pleasure, kind of delight and getting to experience a
small bit of a feeling and a time for ourselves again.
But it also has this undertone.

Speaker 2 (05:43):
Of melancholy and pain. It's a positive remembering because we
really can only feel nostalgia about good experiences that we
enjoyed or felt happy in, or that we now see
as being valuable. But it's not necessary soroughly a positive
emotion because in this process of remembering, our nostalgia often

(06:07):
stirs up this deeper feeling of like longing for a
time we can never get back to and therefore feeling
quite stuck. I think the aching and the subtle sadness,
the longing is what really makes nostalgia nostalgia. Actually, if
you were to look at the Greek origins of the word,
you would find that it actually comes from two words

(06:28):
nostos meaning homecoming and our goss meaning pain. So in
that way, it's also really close to the meaning of
the word a homesickness, right. I think that that's something
that we can all relate to. Nostalgia is, you know,
not a sickness, but a longing for a time and
a home that we were once in. It's really different
from emotions and feelings like happiness, sadness, anger, because they're

(06:53):
often so straightforward, right, they're very easy to identify, But
nostalgia is nuanced. It's a mix of good and bad,
which means that we can find it hard to place.
But also it creates this like weird relationship where sometimes
it can be pleasant when you're not like, you know,
you're reminiscing with a friend, you're thinking back on a
really nice time in your life. But then on the

(07:14):
flip side, when you go too far, you get overwhelmed
by these really existential anxieties about time passing, about the
years slipping by, about happiness and dread and fear. So
why do we actually feel this emotion? What is its purpose?
I think that's the biggest question of the day. Nostalgia
is in part caused by this thing called rosy retrospection,

(07:36):
the tendency to recall the past more positively then it
was actually experienced. Basically, the word rosy retrospection comes from
putting rose colored classes on. I think about this all
the time and how often I fall into this form
of false or incorrect remembering just recently, I caught up

(07:56):
with my old friend Sam, who I was really really
close to it, and we were just telling, you know,
like stories about the good old days over coffee in
Surrey Hills and thinking about those times in our lives.
And of course, you know, we weren't thinking about the
times when we were super stressed or heartbroken or socially anxious,
or when you know, we drank too much or we

(08:18):
were in fights with people. We only thought about the
good things. We only could really hone in on the
laughter and the positive memories. And even when we were
kind of like when I was leaving and I was like, Wow,
that was really really nice, and I'm thinking back on
all these times, I kind of like was calling myself
out a bit. I was like, well, it wasn't all

(08:39):
like that, and I know that it wasn't all like that,
But no matter how hard I tried, I can't really
remember many of those details. That is rosy retrospection. The
reason this happens is because our brain has adapted to
kind of weed out the bad memories over time if
they don't particularly serve us. If you've ever seen the

(09:01):
movie Inside Out, there is the scene in which the
emotion joy basically is like, Oh, we don't need these memories,
these bad memories. I'm just gonna get rid of them,
because you know, it's kind of better to have more
happy memories than sad memories. Anyway, that's a movie, but
it's also something that does really happen. This helps us

(09:21):
maintain a more positive sense of self, which is what
we want. So nostalgia on some level can stop us
reminiscing and all the bad and terrible times and keep
us focused on the good times. I think this theory
does get a little bit complicated when we start thinking
about PTSD, because in those instances, people only focus on

(09:41):
their negative memories and their intense trauma. That is just
a whole other episode. But on a similar note, there
was a research paper published back in twenty fourteen that
also suggests that based on this rosy retrospection principle, Nostalgia
can be men cognitively emotionally protective because of the warm,

(10:04):
fund fuzzy feelings that it produces and that we can
voluntarily tap into. So, of course, nostalgia is sometimes triggered
by a smell or a movie or a song, or
returning to like a city that you used to live in,
but we can also call on it deliberately, and so
when we're going through periods of isolation or things are

(10:26):
just kind of not working out for us, nostalgia acts
as a sort of mental time travel, and so, as
one researcher suggests, it also helps us feel like we
are more in control. Let me explain that for a moment.
So if, for example, you know you've just had an
awful friendship breakup, you're feeling really stuck in your job,

(10:47):
you're feeling stuck in life. A lot of these circumstances
are beyond your control. But when you consciously tap into
your old memories, they are within your control because they
have already happened. You know what to expect, you know
what feeling they're going to elicit, and that is a
positive one. So it helps you regulate your emotional experience.

(11:09):
Think about why we reminisce so much at funerals or graduations. Yes,
obviously it's like the context is the end of something.
But you know, the end of something stings and it hurts,
and it's out of our control. But we can lessen
that sting by thinking about all the good things that
have come from that experience and shielding ourselves from the

(11:32):
brunt of it, using our nostalgia to stop us getting
really bogged down in the grief in the end. If
you want a study that kind of backs this up,
there was this author, doctor Yang, who conducted a series
of experiments on people a few years back, and he
found that when participants in his study were asked to

(11:53):
reminisce on a really beautiful time in their life, they
were encouraged to be nostalgic. They were less likely to
perceive the pain or the sting of a small electric
current versus people who were asked to just think about
the future. So it was almost like sitting back in
the memories of your past. Going back to that time

(12:14):
stopped you from feeling the pain of the present. And
you know what that sounds like to me? That sounds
like nostalgia, maybe a form of escapism. It is a
way to distance ourselves from our lives. Another explanation comes
from possibly the biggest academic in this specific domain of

(12:37):
nostalgia psychology. Her name is doctor Christine Barcher, and I
love what she has to say about this because I've
never thought about it in this way before. But on
the Speaking of Psychology podcast, which is another amazing psychology
podcast if you're sick of mine, she was interviewed and
she explains how nostalgia helps unite our sense of self.

(12:59):
It helps unite who we were before and who we
are now and create this like a line or sense
of continuity between the different versions of ourselves. I have
never thought about it in that way that nostalgia may
be a form of identity preservation. But it makes a
lot of sense. Right If we never thought about who
we were in the past, the memories that have made

(13:19):
us who we are today, what we were like the
happy times, I think we would be a lot more
shallow as people and also a little bit lost because
we aren't able to tap into how our past self
treated a situation or what makes us us. The final
theory about why we experience nostalgia is that being able

(13:41):
to look back at old memories gives us the opportunity
to connect with others. Like I was telling you this
example of me meeting up with an old friend, we
tapped into those joint experiences that we felt so funnly
about and it gave us a chance to really reinforce
an old bond. But it can also help us problems
solve as well, Like there is a lot of knowledge

(14:04):
and a lot of information in the past, and nostalgia
is our way of tapping into those to benefit our
current selves, to benefit our current relationships, to benefit our
current mental states. So, yes, a few explanations, most of
them good or at least showing how nostalgia serves some
function when we look at it that way. What's really interesting,

(14:27):
and I did mention this at the beginning, though, is
that for all of those benefits, there has been a
lot of suggestions from researchers and psychologists that this generation
is experiencing more nostalgia than ever, so they are relying
on its function and its utility for emotional protection, for

(14:48):
social connection more than any other generation ever has. Think
about this in terms of pop culture, last year we
saw Barbie break every single box office record like therever
is there you are. Currently, you know, Hollywood is releasing
a bunch of movies based around childhood nostalgia. Childhood TV

(15:12):
shows objects, you know, things from the past. We're all
listening to like early two thousand throwbacks. We're like getting
back into childhood hobbies like getting digital cameras or journaling
or scrapbooking or collecting trinkets. And you know, even on
a personal level, I have so many friends who have
like said to me recently, like, oh, remember the good

(15:33):
old days. I just can't stop thinking about it. We
should go back to where we went to Uni. We
should go back to these times. Here's why I think
this is happening, and it comes down to two elements.
The world is just really, really tough right now. We
are more stressed than ever. We are more overwhelmed by
just like literally the chaos of living, and we're very disconnected.

(15:57):
So we are resorting to nostalgia as a pretty detective
defense mechanism. We know from a twenty sixteen study that
we experience nostalgia more when our mood is lower because
it helps us feel better. It can also leave us
feeling like we've returned somewhere safe that is familiar. And
you know, it's a tough world out there. Maybe we

(16:18):
need more of that. We really want the comfort of
the past. And secondly, I think that it's a lingering
effect of the pandemic and how that whole time in
our lives put us in a weird limbo state for
a few years when a lot of us were just
starting out as adults. There was a before and there

(16:41):
was an after, and it really kind of threw a
spanner in the works of our timelines and our memories,
and for many of us that experienced that in our
in our early twenties, it kind of feels like this
decade is now split into two parts. So we are
feeling nostalgic a lot sooner for what life was before

(17:02):
because of what some researchers are calling the pandemic skip,
feeling like we skipped a lot of our life and
our milestones because of those lockdowns that were obviously absolutely
necessary because of that period of disease and fear, And
so we are consequently more nostalgic for the past for
a time before the pandemic. But it also feels like

(17:24):
because we lived through that like one two year period
where we weren't really doing anything that suddenly we like
put a stop to everything that was making us experience
our youth and our joy so much and kind of
were pushed straight into the adult world. We feel more
nostalgic for that time before. Hopefully that makes sense. Hopefully
you can resonate with that. But this can create problems though,

(17:45):
because whilst feeling nostalgic, maybe instinctial, maybe in these circumstances,
is actually quite beneficial and is protecting us from some
kind of negative mental state, it can definitely go too far.
It can definitely become, as I said before, a form
of escapism, and that is what I've been hearing a

(18:06):
lot from you guys from the listeners. I had this
story from someone the other day. He was like, I
don't even want to go out anymore, Like why would
I keep living this life that I have? Why would
I invest in new memories where my old memories are
so good. Let's talk about it, because that is no
way to live your life. You only get one of them.
I feel like we all want to be more present.

(18:28):
How can we do that? How can we break out
of the nostalgia chap. We're going to talk about all
of that and more after this short break. The saying
always goes too much of anything, even a good thing
can quickly become a bad thing, And the same goes
for our nostalgia. There is always a point for me

(18:50):
when it switches from reminiscing and feeling really happy about
all the memories that I've made with the people that
I love to wondering and getting really stuck in this
quite dark bubble of like, is it ever going to
get as good as that? Is it ever going to
be like it was then? And the answer is like,
I don't know, And that answer is a scary one

(19:12):
because it's quite uncertain. It's also really tapping into a
big fear that a lot of us twenty somethings have.
This decade is depicted as the best years of our
lives and full of spark and our greatest moments. The
older we get, the more scary it becomes, and the
more detached we feel from this period and from these golden,

(19:33):
amazing years that everyone is telling us to enjoy. It
can be hard to not want to hold onto that
and to not want to be careless and youthful and enthusiastic.
But I don't think that's a healthy way to think.
I don't think it's healthy to think that our twenties
are the best that it's ever going to be, because
a lot of research actually says that it's not. And

(19:56):
this is exactly when our nostalgia becomes maladaptive, being harmful, counterproductive.
It distances you from reality because if your present isn't
as good as the past, why would you want to
spend more time there when you can just keep replaying
what's already happened. It's a cycle. The more time you

(20:16):
spend in your memories, the worse your present feels, which
causes you to revert back to nostalgia even more, and
then you know, the cycle continues to begin to perceive
your daily life even worse, and it just never ends,
despite the fact that actually you're probably not remembering those
moments all that accurate anyway. That's what the whole principle

(20:39):
of rosy retrospection is telling us. As much as we
like nostalgia, can we really trust nostalgia? That is the
key thing. To remember the times you feel nostalgic for
were they necessarily that much better than where you are now?
And even if they were, what's to say that it's
not going to be like that again, just because you're

(21:00):
in a tough spot regardless moving on from that, it
stops us from, i think, trying to make do with
what our current circumstances are, and it can leave us
feeling quite detached. I had a friend from university that
I lost touch with a few years back. Super lovely guy,
so intelligent, but he was someone who would always, without

(21:22):
fail when we would catch up, he would just want
to talk about specifically our first year of university, even five, six,
seven years on, he would bring up like the same
five memories or moments of us drinking at our college bar,
or the time that we all were like running around

(21:43):
and I don't know what we were doing, just like
funny stuff, crazy stuff, and it almost kind of like
became a joke between us, like I would tease him.
I was like, oh my gosh, which memories are you
going to pull out today? Like I can't wait to reminisce.
And the older I've gotten, the more I realized that
still he's not been able to really let go of
those times. But I think that those memories let him

(22:07):
get back to a happy place and his life, you know,
wasn't as good as it was then, and so it
was a coping mechanism. This often goes hand in hand
with a phenomenon known as peter Pan syndrome. Peter Pan
syndrome describes people who don't want to grow up or
accept responsibility except the future. Maybe an element of that

(22:29):
is because they are very infatuated with their youth and
staying young and infatuated with the past. It's a very
extreme consequence of chronic nostalgia. But it's not like we
don't see it. Something interesting here that I read about
the other day was a twenty thirteen report released by
Georgetown University which spoke about how peter Pan syndrome is

(22:52):
becoming more common now because of how hard it is
to transition into adulthood in recent decades, you know, becoming
financially independent. I think that's one domain where we can
all relate. It's really hard. It's a lot harder than
it was for our parents' generation, and it kind of
means that we want to stay a kid a little
bit longer before having to face the reality that, oh, yeah,

(23:15):
you know, I'm probably never going to be able to
afford a home, I have to pay bills like it's
this never ending cycle of adult responsibilities that might feel
really comfortable for a while, but I think we all
know that sometimes avoidance and suppressing reality, like trying to,
I don't know, create the illusion that you can stop

(23:35):
the clock, is you know that illusion is inevitably going
to fade and you're going to be left with a
reality that you can't necessarily cope with. One final downside
of too much nostalgia. It taints the present before we've
even left it, and it can end up making us
feel quite existential because we start missing things too soon.

(23:58):
This is this idea called anticipatory nostalgia, missing something before
it's even over, feeling sad and anxious whilst you are
still in the process of making the memory, like when
you're already thinking about how the holiday is going to end,
or you meet someone new and amazing and you're already

(24:19):
contemplating how awful the breakup is going to be. Like
you move into a new house, you're already picturing moving out.
That's a personal one. I literally had that thlought recently
when I moved. I was like, Wow, I wonder what
it's going to be like to pack up this place.
And I was like, that's really not healthy because I'm
already feeling sad for a moment that I haven't in
a period of time that I haven't even experienced yet,

(24:41):
and it can honestly feel like time is slipping away.
What can we do about that? Where is the balance?
What is the line between feeling reflective and appreciating your
happy memories and falling into an obsession with the past
and also falsely believing that that is the best it
will ever be. Well, I've got four tips for you
guys today to kind of get back to the bright

(25:04):
side of nostalgia and break out of the nostalgia trap. Firstly,
give yourself space for nostalgia and embrace it. This may
sound counterintuitive, but every emotion has a place and serves
a function, otherwise they wouldn't exist. I believe that fully,
and we know that nostalgia is actually quite useful in

(25:24):
certain situations, so we don't want to ban ourselves from
ever dipping into the past. Also, because the more you
deny something, usually the stronger it gets. That's the whole
principle behind avoidance. It's about balance. But more than that,
leaning into your nostalgia rather than fighting against it, because

(25:47):
that just makes it stronger. A few ways that we
can do this. Firstly, use this tactic that I like
to call the acknowledged and divert tactic. This basically involves,
you know, when you feel nostalgia coming up, give yourself
two to five minutes to feel it, to really be like, yeah,
that was such a great time. I really miss those people,
I really miss those memories, and then transition into doing

(26:10):
something else that is kind of aligned with nostalgia. So,
for example, swap out thinking about the past for thinking
about the future. I also like to swap out longing
for the past with gratitude like Wow, it's amazing that
I got to have those experiences, rather than I wish
I was still there. But also keeping a running list
of things that I'm excited for in the future. And

(26:31):
every time I feel myself getting sad about the past
and feel you know, sad about the memories that exist there,
I like to add myself add something else to that list.
So I always think about, like when I get my
first dog, how exciting is that going to be? When
I get to decorate my own home that I own,
You know, I think about the next time I get

(26:52):
to go on vacation and it positions myself to think
positively about my future memories and their capacity to be amazing,
rather than only focusing on what comes before. Adding to that,
I would also say create events, book trips, put things
in the calendar to look forward to, so that feeling
nostalgia is not the only thing that comes up. Watch

(27:14):
just how this works, wonders. I think hope and anticipation
is such a beautiful antidote to a lot of things,
not just nostalgia. Secondly, I would say, probe, what about
those times makes you so reminiscent and happy. Is the
reason you feel nostalgic for that time when you lived
with your friends in that big house, or when you
saw your friends every day, or when you were at

(27:36):
UNI or at college or in high school? Is it
because there is something contained in those memories that you
now feel like you are missing. Is it because you
are lonelier now? Is it because you feel isolated? It's
really important to remember that often you're nostalgia is indicating
to you something that you don't feel like you currently have,

(27:59):
Something about your current circumstances that needs to shift. Whether
you need more community, more people, more, I don't know.
Hope like more work, life balance, more purpose. Whatever it
is what we feel nostalgic for is usually what we lack,
because you can't really miss something if you still have it.
And the same goes for a lot of things, like
feeling nostalgic not just for the times when you had

(28:21):
a lot of friends, but feeling nostalgic for a time
of a lot of freedom or a time when you're
experiencing a lot of love. The root of nostalgia is longing,
so by fulfilling that aspect that we miss in our lives,
by addressing it normally, the nostalgia tends to fade. On
that note as well, Remember that there are cognitive biases

(28:43):
at work here that you can't see that is sometimes
causing you to think about things and think about things
in the past as being better than they were. If
you need a little bit of a reality check, try
and fill in the gaps, not necessarily just to focus
on the negatives, but make sure that you're not ignoring
the nuances of your memories. I see this a lot

(29:03):
with people who have just gone through a breakup. Normally,
like two to three months down the line, they'll really
start reminiscing and they'll really start being like, oh, but
I really like he made me feel amazing, she was
so kind, she was so smart. Remember that time that
we went and picnicked and that beautiful thing happened. And
it's like, that is zero point zero zero one percent

(29:25):
of that experience, and that is your mind trying to
keep the positive memories afloat to block out the darkness
when you really start to fill in the gaps of
those experiences and when you know, in these situations, I
encourage people to be like, Okay, but tell me, tell
me a negative memory, tell me a negative experience. The
nostalgia also starts to fade because I think you just

(29:47):
you see things as clearer and more realistically, and you
stop glamorizing them. Some people can end up falling into
quite what they call a nostalgic depression, which isn't a
specific DSM diagnos but basically describes a pattern of symptoms
surrounding depression that are mainly focused on feeling overwhelmingly dissatisfied

(30:08):
about the present compared to the past. And I'm not
sure how common this is, but if you truly can't
find a way to live in the moment, if you're
feeling increasingly deflated, exhausted by life, not wanting to try.
I think that's also where more help is required, and
a therapist might suggest some things for you to do,
like mindfulness or focusing on intentional nostalgia rather than spontaneous nostalgia,

(30:35):
which basically means, like we said before, giving yourself a
dedicated time to feel nostalgic and to let that inform
your next steps. To feel grateful for the past, to
connect with others, but then also refocus on the future,
refocus on you know what's going on right now. I
want to say this, for the people who really struggle

(30:57):
with nostalgia, you would be blown away by how many
people feel exactly the same way as you do. Who
wish for a time that has passed, Who wonder if
it will ever be good as it was before, Who
watch those golden memories and feel really sad then it's over.

(31:18):
But here's the thing. When you ask yourself is it
going to get better? It will? There is your answer.
And here's how I know why. I know that from
a study that was published in twenty eighteen in this
book called the Happiness Curve. This study in this book,
in general, looked at happiness over our lifetime. We normally
reach peak happiness around our mid twenties to thirties, so

(31:42):
that's basically where most of us are at right now.
We're kind of just passed or reaching or close to
reaching peak happiness. Then it kind of starts to plateau
and decrease after our thirties, which is when we tend
to get more nostalgic. This is when I think we
start to think that the best years are behind us,

(32:04):
and just when we lose hope in our forties, in
our late forties, look at that things start picking up again,
and by the time we're in our late fifties early sixties,
we are often the happiest that we have ever been,
and our nostalgia just becomes gratitude and it goes hand
in hand with the good experiences that we continue to have.

(32:28):
So that myth that this is the best years of
your life not true. Seems you've got a little while
longer before that happens, and in the meantime, you're still
going to make really, really, really good memories. I know
it feels like a long time away, especially if you're
trapped in the nostalgia cycle right now, but you can't
feel nostalgic forever. Eventually there will be Eventually you kind

(32:51):
of start to realize, like, ah, but now I'm feeling
nostalgic for a time when I was nostalgic about a
time when I was nostalgic, Like if you kind of
get where I'm coming from, And it's like, you're still
making memories in the process that you're going to be
nostalgic for in three six months, and so your brain
kind of starts to teach itself like, hmm, maybe it's

(33:12):
better to focus on these now so that we have
more to feel thankful for in the future. And it
will eventually, I think, start to do some of the
work for you and break you out of the cycle.
That is the most important thing that I think, actually
the best way to finish out this episode is to
remind you fully, wholeheartedly that right now, these days that

(33:37):
you are living you will eventually look back on fondly,
and even if you don't look back on them fondly,
you will find a lesson contained in them, and you
will find something in them to remember in some positive
or informative light. So just try your best to focus
on what's happening around you right now. Even if it's

(33:57):
a rough time in your life, it's leading you somewhere bigger.
One day. This will be a memory to reminisce on
when the good times come back around. I know that
the nostalgia trap feels so rough sometimes that it also
sometimes feels really nice to live in the past, when
everything when we already understood everything that was going to happen.
But whatever you do, whenever you do, do not base

(34:20):
your life on just a few memories. Continue to create
fuel and make more so that your future self has
more to think about. Your future self has more to
feel grateful for. Thank you again for listening to this episode.
Thank you to those of you who suggested it. It
was a great topic to cover. I feel like the

(34:41):
more I speak about it to people around me, the
more people come out of the woodwork and go, oh, yeah,
I have those existential fears. I have those worries as well.
So as always, I think that vulnerability unites us, and
that vulnerability makes us feel less alone. So I hope
that you learn something. I hope that you can take
something away and apply it to your own life. If

(35:02):
you enjoyed this episode, make sure that you're following along
on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, and please feel free to
leave a five star review. It helps the show to
grow so much, and I really appreciate seeing your feedback
and hearing from you guys, and just knowing you know
what's going on in your lives, but also what content
you want to see, what episodes you want to hear.

(35:24):
So if that, if you've got an episode suggestion, if
you've got something on your mind, please feel free to
DM me on Instagram at that Psychology Podcast. I would
love to hear from you. I would love to hear
you know what you want us to talk about. So
until next time, until we talk soon, stay safe, stay kind,
and of course be gentle with yourself