Nostalgia is really interesting in that it’s inherently bittersweet. It’s nice because it grounds us in a shared timeline and focuses on mostly positive aspects of some past point in time, but it’s also sad because it means thinking back fondly on a time that will never be again.
So maybe it’s the bitter half of that bittersweet feeling that you’re subconsciously averse to? Either that or maybe your past/childhood was mostly negative or even traumatic? I’m no psychologist, so really I don’t know what I’m talking about.
Rather than jump to “trauma” here (and believe me, I say this as a person with PTSD), could you elaborate on what you mean by “fear”?
I have similar feelings and I was raised in a very controlling home. It took me years to realize the environment I grew up in wasn’t healthy, because that was my “normal”. It could be the same for you, but only you and/or a mental health professional could say for sure.
Yeah this. I have cptsd and so I’ll often want to remember and celebrate some of the beautiful parts of my past but there’s definitely this bittersweet nature there of the fear and discomfort that was present and the trauma that resulted.
Maybe because they are in the past you feel can never reach them again, like drifting away on a river, and you a scared that attempting to embrace them just means you’ll suffer an angony of separation.
Are you Google?
Eww! Lol, no I’m a bored person enjoying a federated world. I chose an analogy to convey time as a physical thing to make it relatable without presenting you with a wall of text. If I struck a chord its purely coincidence.
Interesting. I LOVE the feeling of nostalgia. It brings me back to a simpler and more peaceful time, when adult responsibilities and modern complexities didn’t exist yet. Whenever a late 90s/early 2000’s R&B song comes on, I’m automatically transported back in time and just relish in its bliss.
Fear that experiencing it again may not feel as good as you remember resulting in a forever tainted or less enjoyable memory of it than before.
This could be visiting a park your parents took you to a lot as a kid, a series you enjoyed years ago, or even just that nice restaurant you once went to with your ex.
Avoiding those experiences preserves the memory as it is and you cannot “ruin” it by trying to relive them again.
Trauma
This was my first thought. I know for me when I found myself feeling uncomfortable when an old song played on the radio or friends talked about past memories. Turns out I had a shit ton of unrecognized/unresolved trauma from my childhood that resulted in CPTSD.
Related, an article about the psychology of liminal spaces and liminality: https://www.betterhelp.com/advice/general/understanding-how-liminal-space-is-different-from-other-places/
A lot of people describe liminal spaces as nostslgic, even as “I swear I’ve seen this before” even if the location is completely foreign to them (or even fictional, like a computer rendering). But most people also say that looking at them feels eerie or gives them unease. It probably falls under the umbrella of what you’re asking and could offer some insight.
You mean feel?
Many of us fear feeling too deeply. I’d guess that is why so many of us escape into things that take us away from reality: soap operas/entertainment TV; drugs, alcohol, other addictions such as promiscuous sex that could hurt us, gambling, compulsive shopping that ruins our finances, etc. An online friend introduced me to vippassanna and sent me a wonderful poetic one-page article about it (lost it) and that helped a lot. Taoism and stoicism has similar teachings or thinking. It helps.
Trama?
Could you be blocking/repressing a painful memory from childhood that you fear remembering? If you were to remember, your ego could take a major hit. men, especially don’t want to see themselves as victims or as having bad DNA. if you saw, for example, your dad kill your baby brother and saw your mom help him cover this up, your ego would take a hit knowing you have murderer DNA. We all have murderer DNA - at least one of our ancestors did something really nasty at some point and some may’ve done extrmeley great things. We all have saints and devils in our families, but also within us. Maybe read about Carl Jung’s shadow concept.
