Write your story

Writing a memoir, whether about yourself or another family member, can be a wonderful way to bring positivity to nostalgia. Both an emotion and a thought process, research has shown that nostalgia has many positive aspects, from helping us deal with stress and anxiety to deepening our connections to people and places and helping to build stability.

“Any change, good or bad, is very stressful. So what nostalgia enables you to do both emotionally and cognitively is keep track of what has remained stable, giving you some sense of continuity,” explains Krystine Batcho, professor of psychology at Le Moyne College, New York, who has been researching nostalgia since 1994.

This can be true of adverse or unhappy memories too. “When nostalgia is used in a healthy way,” she writes, for , “its something extreme like a new culture or less extreme like a new job, it can buy you a little emotional time because it gives you the sense of security to say, ‘I know I can do this.’ Then you can plan your future.”