Nostalgia as a medical condition?

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I probably shouldn't self-diagnose (depression doesn't exactly run in my family, though it occasionally/sporadically mopes), but I think that there's undoubtedly smoke here:

http://www.charminghealth.com/applicability/nostalgia.htm

The case for: nothing usually gets me in a blue mood more quickly than reminiscing about times past, and I think my mind wanders to this topic inordinately often whenever I ought to be enjoying my "alone time." Also, I don't have any evidence to accept the possibility that my past was happier, more fulfilling or more emotionally stable than my present condition. (I used to be one of those nervous kids, of course.) Plus a lot of the triggers are unspeakably trivial things that I don't actually remember having an overwhelming affinity for (though obviously there's some): restaurants/stores/movie theaters that closed a decade ago, my sisters' dance recitals, my first (shitty) car.

The case against: the possibility that it actually is depression, and it stems from other dissatisfactions in the here and now, mostly career/money-related.

Is this just a post-adolescents' disease? Do you get over it? I can't imagine it actually gets worse because, eventually, these mundane memories fade away, et al.

― Eric H. (Eric H.), Wednesday, 21 December 2005 03:36 (twenty years ago)

(And, obviously, I'm not intending to position myself as any sort of case study in this. I don't lie all day in bed immobilized by memories. I do, in fact, feed myself.)

― Eric H. (Eric H.), Wednesday, 21 December 2005 03:46 (twenty years ago)

i went through this for a short period

― cutty (mcutt), Wednesday, 21 December 2005 03:51 (twenty years ago)

(Plus, I'm actually not talking about "nostalgia" as it's referred to in this medical context -- which actually seems to be related more to an overwhelming sense of geographical-psychic displacement. I'd move to expand that definition, though...)

x-post -- how long did it last?

― Eric H. (Eric H.), Wednesday, 21 December 2005 03:52 (twenty years ago)

just a couple of months, i didn't think it was depression at the time but maybe a form psychic/esp shit that i was not able to process or understand fully.

for the most part, i'm not a depressed person and do not take any medication besides marijuana.

― cutty (mcutt), Wednesday, 21 December 2005 03:58 (twenty years ago)

I've actually had this too; it didn't feel exactly 'healthy' but a little obsessive, cloying.

― remy (x Jeremy), Wednesday, 21 December 2005 04:04 (twenty years ago)

Proustism.

― remy (x Jeremy), Wednesday, 21 December 2005 04:04 (twenty years ago)

Haha... yeah, that was sort of the first thing thing that popped into my mind when I started writing about this: I'm turning into MP.

― Eric H. (Eric H.), Wednesday, 21 December 2005 04:13 (twenty years ago)

Transmutation of emotion

Transmutation from one sphere into another first requires a reduction - reduce a matter to its principal components, which eliminates the inertia of its outer form, thus making it easier to transmute the matter by force of will. Once the matter has been transmuted, it re-forms by natural processes, taking a new course.

First, detatch the emotion from its cause and all associations, let it be a pure emotion with no associations. Then transmute it. Once it's been reduced to a pure feeling then it can be further reduced to simply a feeling without any properties. After this it is easy to transmute by force of will. To gain skill at this, play with it, transmute emotions arbitrarily and you will quickly master it.

The mind is the transition from one form to another - it is the way, not the destination - it is a medium of movement and change.

― Glum Chum's Chum, Wednesday, 21 December 2005 04:34 (twenty years ago)

My nostalgia culminated in me posting a lot of photos of myself (ca. 1985-1995, with various constellations of long-lost friends) all around my apartment one night last September. When I woke up in the morning I was like "what the fuck is this?" and I ripped many of them down before anybody could see.

― remy (x Jeremy), Wednesday, 21 December 2005 04:37 (twenty years ago)

(xpost to GCC)

Yeah… no kidding… I'm a fucking first-order psychic alchemist.

― remy (x Jeremy), Wednesday, 21 December 2005 04:38 (twenty years ago)

this is my life, essentially.

― u saved me (dubplatestyle), Wednesday, 21 December 2005 04:39 (twenty years ago)

Yeah… no kidding… I'm a fucking first-order psychic alchemist.

There you have it, Eric. Confirmation that this works. Try it out and see for yourself.

― Glum Chum's Chum, Wednesday, 21 December 2005 04:44 (twenty years ago)

i was just feeling like this earlier and then i cooked up a couple cheeseburgers and presto i am healed.

― kephm (kephm), Wednesday, 21 December 2005 05:12 (twenty years ago)

This sounds suspiciously like the tremors of mortality. You are noticing that time passes and the past is irretreivable. Eventually you will use up all your time. The name of this conmdition is The Dread Simoom, also sometimes called herzen schmertzen.

― Aimless (Aimless), Wednesday, 21 December 2005 05:18 (twenty years ago)

Solution: begin to secretly believe in reincarnation. Or learn astral projection.

― Herzen Simoom, Wednesday, 21 December 2005 05:25 (twenty years ago)

there's a great passage in Dhalgren about this… something about the phenomena of time's passage constantly accelerating; a day in the present seeming like an hour on the past and with this the presumption that we die at the what seems -- experientally -- at around the age of 17 as judged from our 10-year-old selves, even if we're in our 80s.

― remy (x Jeremy), Wednesday, 21 December 2005 05:37 (twenty years ago)

Shit, when you're 1 year old 10 minutes seems like forever because it was actually still a pretty considerable amount of time in realtion to the amount of minutes you've actually lived.

― I wrote a great passage about that too, Wednesday, 21 December 2005 05:45 (twenty years ago)

What a wonderfully esoteric/esthetic thread. I don't believe that it is unusual to be emotional when reminiscing about the past. We humans tend to sterilize our past and remember just the good times and the bad or unpleasant things seem to fade into oblivion. (This particularly happens when the brain recalls a lost love of the past). I believe it's a self-protective maneuver and comes into play when we are dying and hence think we see lost loves, family members and everything is wonderful. It's hard work to apply this thinking to our current lives, yet so necessary or we'd all be committing suicide left and right, or be homicidal felons. It softens the blow of sadness, loss or other life altering cataclysmic events.

― Wiggy (Wiggy), Wednesday, 21 December 2005 05:46 (twenty years ago)

WTF, people? I'm not dying! I'm not even that close to my 30s yet.

But, yeah. This condition is both completely unavoidable and bemusing.

― Eric H. (Eric H.), Wednesday, 21 December 2005 05:51 (twenty years ago)

I don't know about trivializing the badness of the past: that's part of nostalgia's persuasiveness for me, that it contextualizes and narrativizes the absurd pointlessness, cruelty, and incomprehensibility of my early life. I'm as often reminded by 3rd-party sources (e.g. my Mom) that things weren't nearly as bad as I remember them, nor as good, strange, etc. So in my experience nostalgia occupies the same mystical space as myth, only it's told in first-person: at once absolutely inaccessible-distant and wholly at-hand-available.

― remy (x Jeremy), Wednesday, 21 December 2005 05:53 (twenty years ago)

(not implying my early life was pointless, cruel, or incomprehensible at all, but at the time that it seemed so)

― remy (x Jeremy), Wednesday, 21 December 2005 05:59 (twenty years ago)

Remy makes the point I was making elsewhere today. Even the most seemingly insignificant things in your past live on in your memory. You make your choices (or choices are made for you) and you live with the consequences. The consequences live with you. Headful of memes. Nostlagia is often reliving a past "choice" that is impossible to re-choose and, in that sense, it is pointless. But, memory is also the storehouse of experience from which we can reflect upon and learn new things about our selves and our lives today. I think nostalgia is often a sign of our selves telling our selves to THINK ABOUT THIS SHIT A LITTLE HARDER. Maybe it's your subconscious saying, "Bub, you still don't get it, do you?"

― Speaking of which, Wednesday, 21 December 2005 06:02 (twenty years ago)

welcome to my life! It sucks! Have a good day!

― kyle (akmonday), Wednesday, 21 December 2005 06:32 (twenty years ago)

Eventually, though, live goes on. It hardly has any choice.

― Casuistry (Chris P), Wednesday, 21 December 2005 06:37 (twenty years ago)

Also, so does life. And typos.

― Casuistry (Chris P), Wednesday, 21 December 2005 06:37 (twenty years ago)

There's this Madonna lyric that goes: "'don't hold onto the past,' well that's too much to ask."

― Eric H. (Eric H.), Wednesday, 21 December 2005 06:51 (twenty years ago)

I've never thought to look for life-guidance from Madonna lyrics.

― Bob Six (bobbysix), Wednesday, 21 December 2005 08:31 (twenty years ago)

three months pass...

Research suggests happiness is a false memory.

― Alba (Alba), Wednesday, 22 March 2006 15:02 (nineteen years ago)

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