Why We Reach for Nostalgia in Times of Crisis

Ever since the coronavirus lockdown began, I’ve been longing for my past. For some reason, I pine for the days when I would call a friend on her landline and get a busy signal, or inexplicably hid behind my precarious swivel chair the moment my crush logged on to AIM, the AOL messaging service. Even things in recent history that I thought were awful only a few months ago — failing to avoid “Avengers: Endgame” spoilers, or the White Claw seltzer shortage — now pale in comparison to the ongoing trauma of … all of this.

Things just seemed easier in the Before Times, when we weren’t sheltering in place, losing our jobs or potentially exposing ourselves to a virus that has killed over 140,000 Americans. But in times of trauma and overwhelming stress, it’s a natural instinct to feel nostalgic and rely on those feelings for comfort and a sense of normalcy, said Valentina Stoycheva, a clinical psychologist specializing in traumatic stress and the author of “The Unconscious: Theory, Research, and Clinical Implications.”

“Trauma takes away our gray areas. It divides our timeline into a before and an after,” Dr. Stoycheva said. “And while it has the danger of creating this longing for the before, when things were maybe safer, and when we were unaware of all of this and protected by our naïveté, there’s also something about nostalgic behaviors — fashion, clothes, movies, music — that serve as a transitional object.”

Transitional objects, much like a small child’s baby blanket or a toddler’s favorite stuffed animal, can help people transitioning from one stage of life to the next, or help them navigate specific stressors. “It increases your ability to self-soothe during a stressful time,” Dr. Stoycheva said. In this case, nostalgia serves as a kind of emotional pacifier, helping us to become accustomed to a new reality that is jarring, stressful and traumatic.

“Anything that can help you calm yourself down, feel more soothed, feel more grounded, is very useful,” Dr. Stoycheva said. “So if you watch a movie and remember who you watched it with as a kid, and maybe connect with that person and you reach out to them instead of just drowning in isolation, that can be really helpful.”

In a study published this year in the journal Frontiers, researchers found that nostalgia can help to combat feelings of loneliness, and a study published in 2013 in the journal Social and Personality Psychology Compass, suggested that nostalgia can even double as a resource for psychological health and overall well-being.