Is Nostalgia Beneficial or Detrimental?

In Keeping the Faith, Billy Joel sang, “If it seems like I've been lost in let's remember.  If you think I'm feeling older, and missing my younger days.  Oh, then you should have known me much better … And I'm not ashamed to say the wild boys were my friends.”

Nostalgia, of course, is not necessarily good or bad. It depends on how nostalgia translates into current thoughts, feelings, actions, and activities.

Let’s start with the potential benefits.  Nostalgia can help us recall past experiences that can be used constructively to deal with present challenges.  We gain confidence, for instance, by remembering how we successfully persevered in a difficulty school course that we had wanted to drop.  And we bolster our problem solving repertoire by recollecting how we once creatively overcame a previously threatening financial crisis.

Nostalgia also can reinforce positive features of our identity.  When reflecting on our past, we can see how our behaviors and attitudes have stood the test of time, that we have maintained our integrity to a constructive outcome despite all our trials and tribulations.  

Similarly, nostalgia can contribute to our healthful interpersonal relationships.  Like Billy Joel, family and friends often become “lost in let’s remember” to their mutual delight.  Research has suggested that to remain strong relationships need at least five positive interactions for every negative one, five supportive, constructive interactions.  And nostalgic reflections certainly can serve that purpose.

A final benefit that I will address is the stress-reducing one.  It is no secret that nostalgia can be an escape from an unpleasant present into a fondly recalled past.  That is, nostalgia can help propagate positive feelings, and positive feelings mitigate stress.  Less well-known is the fact that nostalgia can help relieve physiological discomfort.  Xinyue  Zhou and colleagues (2012) demonstrated, for instance, that pleasant nostalgia literally produced a warm feeling in their experimental subjects.  Those recalling positive nostalgic memories were less distressed and more tolerant of an induced cold condition (the cold pressor test) than were those remembering non-nostalgic autobiographical memories.

Sounds great, doesn’t it?  But our everyday experience is that while most nostalgia is pleasant, some is not.  When writing the nostalgia-supporting comments above I consistently used the verb “can” because we all know that nostalgia “can” also be detrimental.  Becoming lost in negative “let’s remember” contributes to stress, depression, and discontent.  Equally important, even “positive” nostalgia can become a distraction.  Physical and mental health demands activity and anything that lulls us into prolonged inactivity and complacency is suspect. 

References

Gottman, J. M. (1994).  What predicts divorce: The relationship between marital processes and marital outcomes.  Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Zhou, X., et al. (2012).  Heartwarming memories: Nostalgia maintains physiological comfort.. Emotion, 12, 4), 678-684.  doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0027236.

Your Time, Your Space, and Your Health

As you experience virtually every day, there is no shortage of expert advice about what you should do to become healthier.  Most “experts” sincerely believe that they know what is “good” for you.  And most are intent on having you embrace the health plan that they have developed.

Unfortunately, most experts also become so wedded to their method that they unwittingly ignore the fact that they do not know you and, so, they do not know your idiosyncratic strengths, weaknesses, and circumstances.  Of course, if asked, any sensible one of them would readily accept that you are a “special case;” it’s just that they have content to deliver and are blinded by their devotion to it.  Moreover, that blindness afflicts many experts regardless of their profession or skill.

Although I too am vulnerable to expert blindness, I continually struggle to minimize it.  That is why my focus is much less on promoting any given content and more on facilitating your understanding and application of personalized health-relevant processes.  Although I am in the minority in that regard, there certainly are other psychologists who share my beliefs.  Most of the rest of this blog will extrapolate from the work of two like-minded ones: Tim Gomersall and Anna Madill.

Gomersall and Madill (2015) underscore the health-relevant importance of an individual’s experience of time and space.  (For our purposes, read "space" as "place.") You have a history of behaving as you do and that history has been enacted in certain spaces.  Similarly, you are creating a history every day.  Both of these—your past and “current” histories—profoundly influence what you are doing and what you will do.  A central tenet of the aforementioned psychologists is that your particular times and spaces are interwoven and unique, and, therefore, unappreciated by most people who seek to “help” you.  They explain their views using diabetes as an example.

One issue concerned the patient’s assessments of real-life experiences preceding or following their diabetes diagnosis.  The investigator’s noted that the patients’ experiences often were different from what doctors had suggested or predicted.  Those discrepancies, in turn, often caused the diabetics either to reevaluate their past to make it consistent with the doctors’ information or to reject the information instead.  The second issue involved ways in which diabetes affected the patients’ times and spaces.  As one would expect, with increased illness severity, more and more limitations became obvious.  I offer as an example that a given person with diabetes might spend more time preparing unprocessed foods and eating at home, rather than at restaurants, to control his blood sugars and general nutrition.  The final issue centered upon the patients’ motivations to handle the limitations that did arise.  Some, for instance, were driven by an intense effort to deny their deficits while others accepted and tried to adaptively manage them.

The report by Gomersall and Madill was directed at health care professionals.  They wanted to encourage them to carefully consider the particular realities of their patients’ illnesses in terms of time and space, and to tailor their treatments accordingly.  In this blog, my purpose is to have you think about how your own times and spaces impact your health.  Whenever you encounter health-related information, whether provided by me or someone else, you will do well to frame it in terms of your unique experiences of time and space.  For instance, think about the time and space tolls required to apply the information provided, and the time and space benefits that could result if you apply information that is valid and health-promoting.  Know that your past and current experiences of time and space will make you either more or less receptive to the proffered information.  Ensure that you don’t blindly accept information simply because an expert told it to you.  On the other hand, do not summarily dismiss it either. 

Reference

Gomersall, T. & Madill, A. (2015).  Chronotope disruption as a sensitizing concept for understanding chronic illness narratives.  Health Psychology, 34,4, 407-416      http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/hea0000151 

This Too Shall Pass

Some trying circumstances seem interminable.  Many varieties of experience can evoke that feeling.  You, for example, could be unemployed, at war with your spouse, or be unable to lose weight no matter how hard you try.  Everyone at some time suffers an unfortunate circumstance that they feel never will end.  But could some people be more vulnerable to perceiving a trial as never-ending?

Emma Bruehlman-Senecal, Özlem Ayduk, and Oliver P. John (2016) investigated trying circumstances in terms of “temporal distancing” which, as you might guess, refers to framing upsetting experiences within a long-distance context.   For instance, an unemployed temporal distancer would be a person who, knowing that she has a good previous work record, is highly qualified, and is determined to do all necessary to find a job, sincerely believes that gainful employment is just a matter of time.

As expected, the investigators found that persons high in temporal distancing not only regarded their unfortunate circumstances as time-limited, but they also understood their negative thoughts and emotions in the same time-limited fashion.  Accordingly, the negatives “stung” less.  Moreover, consistent with their greater hopefulness, high temporal distancers experienced greater confidence in their abilities to actively problem solve and to manage their challenging emotions.

Given that trying circumstances are a common feature of our existence, no one would be surprised to learn that high temporal distancers evaluated their lives as more satisfying than did low temporal distancers.  And, almost by definition, the former worried less than the latter.

You might be thinking, “When stressed out, taking a long view is easier said than done,” and I heartily agree.  That is why with this research, as with all research and professional advice, you must filter its implications through the colander of your ego strength—your history, temperament, personality, and environments.  When confronted with past stressors, when and why were you able or unable to adopt a long-view?  What elements of your temperament (e.g., frustration tolerance) were assets or liabilities during that time?  Which features of your personality (e.g., openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, or neuroticism) played a part? And, finally, what environments (natural, fabricated, or interpersonal) helped or hindered?

By scrutinizing your ego strength and learning from your worst and best experiences you will be able to put stressors into perspective, not only time-wise but in many other ways, such as by knowing which specific strategies have worked and will work for you.  You also must strive to problem solve and to manage your emotions.  Those skills, too, will profit from whatever ego strength insight you can manage and from your intelligent application of the insights.  

Reference

Bruehlman-Senecal, Emma; Ayduk, Özlem; John, Oliver P.  (2016).  Taking the Long View: Implications of Individual Differences in Temporal Distancing for Affect, Stress Reactivity, and Well-Being.  Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, July 11, No Pagination Specified. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/pspp0000103. 

Healthy As an Olympian

Michael Phelps, arguably the greatest swimmer of all time with 22 Olympic gold medals and 39 world records, provided us implicit advice about maintaining an activity-oriented approach to a healthful lifestyle. In an interview with Bob Costas on August 3, 2016, Phelps acknowledged how his physical and emotional health declined after taking “a break” from swimming.  He said that he “…literally [did] nothing, for a long time. I gained 25 pounds” and his mental health deteriorated so markedly that he had contemplated suicide.  This man who had been diagnosed with  attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) at age nine managed to create a phenomenally successful life centered upon swimming. Swimming had become so essential to his physical and mental health that life without swimming seemed meaningless.

As few could, Phelps epitomizes my personal definition of a healthful lifestyle activity.  That is, he has fashioned an activity that is rational, organized, comprehensive, and long-lived.  And he has executed the activity to benefit him both physically and mentally.

There is only one Michael Phelps.  But I am not the only one to recognize the critical value of activity. Activity theory and activity therapy are well recognized and accepted.  Activity theory posits that actions determine what we think more than the converse (Leont'ev, 1978).  Consistent with that belief, behavioral activation therapy helps patients perform activities that reverse unhealthful habits, drug abuse, and depression, among other problems (Pagoto, 2008). The basic notion is to structure your lifestyle and life space to nudge you toward doing that which will make you more healthy.

Being effective with activities, however, is more than just performing actions.  You must be very clever in what you do.  I swim, but I do not consider my swimming to be a healthful activity in the full sense of my use of the word because I do not do not swim in a manner that is fully rational, organized, comprehensive, and long-lived.  Swimming for me is more pure pleasure and relaxation.  I don't mean that there is anything wrong with using swimming the way I do.  But, for me, my real "working out" consists of the on-land cardio and weight-lifting that I do in a manner that is fully rational, organized, comprehensive, and long-lived. I simply have chosen to use swimming casually.

So think about what you are doing to be healthy.  Consider how fully rational, organized, comprehensive, and long-lived it is.  If you are serious about making significant, enduring health habit changes, you probably can profit from at least tweaking your routine to be consistent with a complete healthful activity.  If you need help to make that happen, you can refer to my Don't Rest in Peace book.  You don't have to be an Olympian to make heroic improvements in your life. 

References

Costas, B. (2016).  NBC Interview with Michael Phelps who discussed leaving and returning to swimming after having retired in 2012.

Leont'ev, A. N. (1978). Activity, consciousness, and personality. (M. J. Hall, Translator) Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Pagoto, S., Bodenlos, J., Schneider, K., Olendzki, B., Spates, R., & Ma, Y. (2008).  Initial investigation of behavioral activation therapy for co-morbid major depressive disorder and obesity.  Psychotherapy: Theory, Research, Practice, Training, Vol 45(3), Sep 2008, 410-415.

doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0013313.