OBJECTIVE

1. Students will be able to learn about the Relationship between nostalgia and coping
during difficult times.
2. How to support or retreat in different Situations
3. What is the meaning of Nostalgia?
4. The Different situations which students need to cope up and show there courage.
5. Different Methods used by different people of diverse society and communities to
cope up situations which can help students.
 INTRODUCTION
The Discussion begins with The definition of Nostalgia is:
“a sentimental longing or wistful affection for a period in the past.”

What does having nostalgia mean?

Nostalgia, that longing feeling for the past when things seemed better, easier, and
more fun. It's the feeling behind countless number one hits. It's what's resurrecting old
TV shows and being capitalized on by politicians. We all know the feeling.

nostalgia has been shown to be positively correlated with adaptive coping strategies such
as seeking emotional support and turning to religion. Experimental studies have also
demonstrated that engaging in nostalgic remembering increases positive affect and
positive self-regard, heightens interpersonal connectivity and results in a higher sense of
personal meaning.

However, a distinction must be made between the use of nostalgia as a healthy coping
mechanism and its effects in people with impaired capacities to regulate affect.
Nostalgia-proneness has been found to be correlated with Neuroticism from the Big Five
Personality Index, a trait generally associated with a range of mental health disorders. In
complicated grief, obsession with loss of the idealized past worsens depression. An
over-obsession with the past may also result in negative outcomes for migrants, leading
to a failure to adjust to new surroundings, increased feelings of isolation, and other
threats to psychological well-being.

Lets learn about the various Aspects and topics of importance in the upcoming Pages.
 Action Plan
The relationship between nostalgia and coping during difficult times was explored in 2
empirical studies. In the first, 80 undergraduates, 60 women and 20 men, completed the
Nostalgia Inventory, a measure of nostalgia proneness, the COPE Inventory, a
dispositional measure of strategies for coping with stressful events, and the Childhood
Survey, a survey of impressions of childhood experiences. Nostalgia proneness correlated
with use of adaptive coping, including emotional social support, expressing emotions,
turning to religion, and suppressing competing activities, and did not correlate with
escapist or avoidance strategies, including denial, behavioral disengagement, and
substance abuse. Nostalgia proneness was related positively to favorable emotional and
behavioral childhood experiences and did not correlate with adverse experiences.
Favorable impressions of childhood correlated positively with adaptive coping strategies
and inversely with dysfunctional ones, whereas unfavorable childhood experiences
correlated positively with dysfunctional coping. Regression analyses suggested that the
relationship between nostalgia proneness and certain coping strategies may be mediated
in part by childhood experiences. In a second study, 100 undergraduates, 86 women and
14 men, completed the Nostalgia Inventory, recalled autobiographical memories that
illustrated how childhood is either special or similar to their present life, and rated their
likely use of strategies in dealing with 2 hypothetical problems. Nostalgia proneness
correlated with emotional and instrumental social coping and with the goal-directed
strategies of planning, taking action, and positive reframing. Further research is
recommended to explore the role of childhood memories in coping and to identify
mechanisms that mediate the relationship between nostalgia and coping.

Suggestions for the above Abstract:

● Some of the memories that we come to recall from our childhood helps us to cope
up with the situation mostly because, The childish thinking helped us to keep away
from the stress which was going around us.
● A child's mind is free from the Complexities that we have to deal with recently,
And those experiences help us to think that once upon a time we had some good
days.
 QUESTIONNAIRES
This are the various questions that helped me to get a clear understanding of the topic.
And it’s a topic that I’m always keen to investigate more deeply, which is what I’m doing
today with the inspiring writer and photographer, Andra Stefan of Amsterdamming.

1. Do you have a recollection of the first time you experienced the feeling of
nostalgia?

I did not know what nostalgia meant until my early twenties when my boyfriend at that
time lent me a book with this name. Before starting the book, I looked the word up in the
dictionary. I remember having a revelation. Everything I liked most was there, in that
definition. Nostalgia could just have well been my middle name.

Even before knowing there was a name for this feeling, I had an impressive collection of
nostalgic moments. The earliest of them are linked to my summer holidays in the Danube
Delta.

Imagine a most isolated place, with no roads to drive, a land of water, reed, and willows,
a paradise for birds and fish, an unfavorable place to make a living. This is the place
where we would go every summer to stay in the house of our hosts, the Tarasov family.
Life in the Danube Delta was rudimentary and days never seemed to end. My father
would go fishing with Mr. Tarasov, my mother would cook with Mrs. Tarasov, my sister
and I would play with the other children from the village, in the unbearable heat and the
dust of Romanian summers. Daily activities included waving hands at the crew on ships
heading to the sea, picking ripe fruits from the trees, chasing fireflies. At night, we would
stare at the Milky Way, so clear and flawless in the darkness.

Leaving the Danube Delta and going back home was the hardest thing to do. I was
inconsolable. I would spend the rest of the year reminiscing about the days spent by the
Danube and anticipating the next time I would be there. These are my first records of
longing. An acute sense of displacement, of being somewhere when somewhere else was
where I wanted to be. These are also the most intense memories I have to date.

2. Where do you think the feeling comes from? What is at its root for you?
I think nostalgia comes from our need for belonging. This is an essential human need.
There are moments in our lives – in certain places, with certain people, or when we’re
alone – when we feel connected to ourselves and everything around us. Remembering
these moments feels like coming home. They bring us to the safe place where we belong.
We reconnect to them – and to us – by means of nostalgia.

But memories are life in the past tense and some argue it is both pointless and harmful to
pay attention to a time that no longer exists. I believe differently. Reactivating special
fragments of the past does not make the present and the future less appealing; on the
contrary, it is the very structure of memories, the seducing mix of visuals, sounds, smells,
textures even, that invites us to look at the world in a more intimate way, as if to create
new moments worth remembering. It enables us with an intensity of perception and a
rejection of everything ordinary.

I also think nostalgia comes from a true appreciation of life. When we realize just how
temporary everything is, we want to hold on to what we consider our best moments. And
it is these moments that fill us with gratitude for being alive, able to experience such an
intensity of emotions.

“These are my first records of longing. An acute sense of displacement, of being

somewhere when somewhere else was where I wanted to be.”

5. I read that the word “nostalgia” was coined by a Swiss medical student in the
1600s after studying Swiss mercenaries fighting in “foreign lowlands.” It was
originally viewed as a disease, as a sort of extreme form of homesickness. I think this
connection of nostalgia to one’s homeland is interesting, and I’m curious how living
abroad has affected your relationship with nostalgia, if at all?

It does sound like a disease: anemia, neuralgia, nostalgia…

Jokes aside, there really is a strong connection between nostalgia and one’s homeland. It
is what I was saying in the beginning, that nostalgia comes from the need of belonging.
And where does one feel more at home than… home? Distance, whether in space or time,
is a fuel for nostalgic feelings. I felt this myself, after moving to the Netherlands. I might
not have felt so strongly about my Romanian memories had I not left Romania. Less
access to the places where memories are located leaves room for more nostalgia.
But that is about my Romanian nostalgia. Has moving abroad influenced other aspects of
it? I know I have always cherished special moments and recorded them by means of
words and photography. As for the sense of longing, I think I was born with it. And yet, it
is only in more recent years, perhaps the last five years or so, that I’ve become so
infatuated with the world inside my head. Perhaps living in Amsterdam, the city where
everything works, has allowed for more introspection, more focus on the delicate aspects
of life. Now I feel it is up to me to bring this inner world to the surface and try to give it
some permanence. Or it will be as if it never happened.

Thank you, Andra, for sharing with us.

 SOME SUPPORTING STUDIES

Study 1: This study was designed to firstly confirm whether a relationship exists between
nostalgia and rumination since previous studies have not investigated this, and to further
explore whether the relationship between nostalgia and depression could be mediated by
rumination.

Study 2: The results of the previous study suggested that rumination is involved in the
relationship between nostalgia and depression. However, whether or not nostalgia
functions so as to improve mood or to worsen it in the case of ruminators remains
unclear. While previous studies have found that nostalgic remembering generally has
positive affective results, it is possible that the bias towards negative thoughts inherent in
rumination may lead to negative affective outcomes. Thus the second study

Conclusions

Previous studies have established that people in a depressed mood are strongly attracted
to nostalgic remembering and that engaging in it increases positive affect. The current
studies tend to confirm these findings, with the majority of participants demonstrating
positive affective outcomes in both self-perceived effects of listening to nostalgic music
and in implicit mood measures. However, the results also demonstrate that this is not true
of all people.
 BIBLIOGRAPHY
The references which are used to create this projects are mentioned below:

1. www.sciencedirect.com
2. Pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
3. www.elizabethsensky.com