How to Survive Your High School Reunion

The first high school reunion I attended was held in a basement reached by a rickety elevator. After I got there, I hung out nearby to see the other arrivals. This turned out to be a mistake.

The elevator became a direct portal to my past: Who would step out next? I grew so anxious that a friend gently led me to the bar.

Rarely are we neutral about class reunions. A therapist friend told me that, every spring, she treats clients who spend entire sessions debating whether they should attend theirs in the summer.

For many of us, high school was our whole world — willingly or not. “It’s a very sensitive time of great change,” said Diana Divecha, a developmental psychologist at Yale who attended her 40th reunion a few years ago.

Research suggests that the memories we form in adolescence and early adulthood are the most vivid — a phenomenon known as the reminiscence bump. That can make reunions feel like a kind of psychological time travel, where your past identity collides with the present identity that you have spent years building, Dr. Divecha said.

I asked experts for advice on how to decide whether to go — and if you do, how to make the most of it.