"It used to be better": how focusing on the past harms the future

Recently, I was queuing at the post office, and a very old woman joined her. She found a grateful listener in the person of one of the men and told him a lot. But one thing was very memorable: “It used to be good. Everyone was afraid. They listened. "

It is difficult to share the excitement of a time when everyone was afraid, because it is easy to understand what the fears were about. However, after the phrase “It was better before”, many questions and different “yes, but” often arise. For example: in the USSR, university graduates were given work - yes, but according to the distribution you could be thrown anywhere.

But the main question is: what makes people go back in time over and over again, think that it was better there, and ignore any arguments that refute it?

Why is there a pathological fixation on the past

Dissatisfaction with current life

One of the most common reasons to look back is disappointment in the present and disbelief in the possibility of changing something.

For example, a person who considers his student years to be the best in his life is likely to yearn for his inner state. According to the feeling of freedom that he experienced, if possible, behave the way he really wants. With age, people more suppress their emotions, true desires, lose their lightness and joy of life, try to be too serious. For those who find no way to understand themselves, connect with their inner child and express themselves the way they want, the only choice is to remember the time when they gave themselves permission to behave free.

If we speak in the language of vanilla quotes from social networks, people do not love a specific period, but what they were at that time.

When experiences become unbearable for our psyche, psychological defenses come to the rescue. In this case, the idealization of the past and the devaluation of the present are triggered.

Christina Kostikova, psychologist

The reality can be quite harsh, and the past years are perceived cloudless. This works here cognitive distortionlike a pink flashback. And already from the name it is clear what it means: a person perceives the events of his life in a more positive way than when he actually experienced them. Negative thoughts and emotions are erased, leaving positive memories in memory. A person begins to perceive the past biasedly and believe that everything was better before.

Inability to adapt to new conditions

Human life is long enough, and during its time the world is changing a lot. In addition to global events, there are many small events that concern only specific people. And not all of them are easy to accept and experience. Someone does not cope with the collapse of the socialist regime, someone - with parting or going to retirement.

The inability to accept reality for what it is, and to experience their feelings about it, make a person merge anxiety into an endless mental gum about the past. In parallel, he shifts the focus to external circumstances and forgets that the responsibility for his life and personal happiness lies with him, and not in the place or time in which he lives.

Christina Kostikova

In general, during changes, people behave like those two frogs from Panteleev's fairy tale. They both end up in a pot of sour cream and life's difficulties. Only one accepts the conditions of the game, flounders to the last, until she kicks a lump of oil and jumps out. And the other is drowning in memories. This is often much easier to do. For example, why master gadgets and remain competitive in the labor market, if you can lament how wonderful it was without them. The fact that life has gone wrong is the easiest way to blame the times.

Frequent nostalgia for childhood and adolescence is associated with the unwillingness to take responsibility for one's life. This is a carefree time when problems were few and others were solving them. Maybe at this time life was not better, but definitely easier.

Most often, a person gets stuck where he sees himself able to cope with all difficulties, in a resourceful state, when everything around is arranged so that he can easily fulfill his needs. This means that a person does not have this resource in the present. More precisely, he does not feel it.

Diana Starunskaya, psychologist

Trying to escape from reality

With their own past, everything is more or less clear. But there are situations when a person idealizes an era that he simply could not get to know due to his age. You've probably seen twenty-year-olds yearning for the Soviet Union. Or people of any age, telling that now everything is not so, but earlier it was like it was under the tsar! The men were real knights. A women gave birth to 15 children in the field, and then went to know their place. And there were no divorces solely because of love, and not because this was preceded by a complicated procedure for obtaining permission from the church. And, of course, the sugar was sweeter, the grass was greener, the water was wetter, and the sausage was 2.20 each.

It is a longing for a world that never existed, for a world of illusion. A person creates his own space in his head and places it in an era or territory that seems suitable to him. But it has little to do with reality. Often it is enough to dig a little to refute his misconceptions with links to statistics and research. True, this is unlikely to help.

Each of us has a positive self-image that I am (to some extent) good. If not handsome, then at least smart. If not rich, then at least honest. When a person is faced with disappointment in himself - he could not earn, does not enjoy success with the opposite gender, - his psyche is faced with a dilemma: to recognize himself as not good enough or to consider the surrounding world.

Alexander Shakhov, psychologist

The easiest way to explain your failures is that this world is wrong. And when was it correct? And a person begins to idealize a certain period, exaggerate the positive aspects and ignore the negative ones. Or even artificially fasten the "facts" he needs to a certain era. He is sincerely mistaken, because his psyche obligingly hides from his consciousness details that contradict idealization.

How to break free from the clutches of the past

Sometimes looking at the past helps to relive some difficult moments. Illusions give a kind of deformed version of the hope that reality can be true.

When life is full of problems, and the person himself is overworked, unhappy, he does not find a resource in the present. Then the brain pulls out these resource states from past experiences, returning to joyful memories. It is impossible for a person to live in the awareness that everything is bad, always and everywhere. We need a drop of hope that life is still good, it's a pity not here and not now.

Natalia Melnik, clinical psychologist

The past is an important part of life, and, of course, it is not worth giving up on it. But, if a person is fixed in him, it badly affects the future. Because it depends on the efforts that are being made in the present. Filling life with meaning is the task of the person himself, no one will do it for him.

There is only one recipe: grow up as a person. Take responsibility for your life, and not shift it to the time of others and the reptilian conspiracy. Use the past as a source of experience and resource, not as a way to escape from problems. Boldly look into the future and make plans for it.