nostalgia

me aged around 7

Nostalgia has been coming up as a theme for a number clients, friends and also for myself recently. Then, as often happens, a friend sent me a link to an essay on this subject, which is about what neuroscience is finding out about how we remember things and how this links to emotions, good and bad. It includes the idea of ‘anemoia’ - nostalgia for a time you have never known, then explores the way in which an imagined past can be as powerful as the one we actually remember, or think we do. I’d heard about experiments with prisoners imagining doing a new sport repeatedly, then finding, when they were released, that they could do it.

To start building new neural pathways through imagination might heal some traumatic, stubborn patterns. You would think that would be a good thing of course, but I had a strange reaction to the idea I could invent a different past. Why did I feel so resistant to it, despite believing the science? Somehow, to take painful memories and imagine they had been different, felt like a betrayal. To imagine that terrible 7th birthday, or the gut-wrenching break up at 18 as going differently, better, felt like the height of dishonesty and dangerous wishful thinking. We are supposed to face things head on, be brave, deal with them. The voice of all the adults in my life telling me that I needed to be realistic, sensible, see the world as it really it. And this article is telling me I can imagine it differently, even in the past, and it will be different.

There is a deep reluctance to letting go of our old, comfortable stories. In fact, it seems that the more painful they are, the tighter we cling to them. They are ours, and we want to bear them on our backs, like armour, and not find a way out. That would be cowardly and untrue. Wouldn’t it?

I practised recalling a painful memory yesterday. Then I invented a different version. And new little brain paths, as light as a trickle of water on a window pane, or a breath of wind, were momentarily available. New electrical impulses fired; new memories that were not what happened, but could have been what happened flashed into my mind’s eye. Different feelings popped up. As I noticed them, surprised, I realised that I was not in a court of law. The truth of what happened on that day in 1982 is whatever my brain wants it to be. I can re-write it. Not just as a different story alongside the actual story, but from scratch - like going back in time and literally erasing the first one and imagining the new one. The voice of my reason is piping up as I write - there must be a flaw in this plan. It can’t be that easy can it?

I want to experiment further, and I invite you to as well. I want to let the old, sad, obsolete brain pathways die, and flood the newly discovered ones with a joyous tale and a fresh wind. Apparently, the brain doesn’t know the difference.

Read the article here

This is one of my favourite songs; Nostalgia by David Sylvian - and only this week, this live recording from 1988 popped up, and I was back in the memories. The tricksy past eh….