Bring Back That Magic Feeling: The Mental Health Benefits of Nostalgia

Have the opening chords of a favorite song sent you reeling back to your high school days while you were shopping? What about the unexpected scent of a long-forgotten and loved favorite family recipe wafting through a café? Did it send you back to your childhood home?

We’re all familiar with the memories and feelings of comfort, joy, longing and even sadness that associations like these can provoke. Artists have written, painted and composed music about this universally experienced concept for centuries. What you’re feeling when these longings for the past strike is called nostalgia.

For many of us, feelings of nostalgia center around family, friends and community — and important events and activities associated with them. One of those activities that has the power to forge close bonds of friendship, fun and hometown loyalty among people and communities is sports. And for the Orlando Magic and their fans, nostalgia runs deep this year as our community helps them celebrate an important milestone anniversary and reflects on how far they’ve come as a team over the years.

Keep reading to learn more about the Magic’s incredible milestone, as well as the positive influence nostalgia can have on our mental health.

Magic Memories Still in the Making

Since 1989, our Orlando Magic NBA team has helped shape our City Beautiful and continues to inspire a team spirit that unites us at a core level. Shelly Wilkes, Executive Vice President, Marketing and Social Responsibility at Orlando Magic, shares her thoughts on wrapping up the Magic’s 35^th anniversary season:

“Celebrating the Magic’s 35th anniversary with our fans and community was an incredible honor and something we don’t take for granted. As the Magic hit this milestone, it was also about the gratitude we have for the support our community provides. Life is about the moments and memories that shape all our lives, and it’s important to always remember where we’ve been, who we’ve been there with and how far we’ve come.”

She concludes, “Sports has the amazing ability to bring people together, create a rallying point around a community, generate pride, and can even take on the personality of a city. We are so proud to call Orlando our home and to represent all our great people past, present and future. It’s been 35 amazing years, and we look forward to creating even more magical memories together.”

What Is Nostalgia?

The word nostalgia means a sentimental longing for the past that evokes feelings of pleasure with sporadic tinges of sadness. Derived from the Greek words “nostos” (return) and “algos” (pain), the word goes back more than 300 years. A Swiss doctor coined the term to describe the unsettled emotional state of homesick mercenaries. While was mostly linked to depression in years past, sociology has since redefined nostalgia in a more positive light.

People often turn to nostalgia to lift their spirits when they feel sad or lonely. While anything in excess can be unhealthy — especially if you find yourself living in the past too often — once you understand how it works, nostalgia can be harnessed as an effective mental health tool to diminish sadness and encourage hope.

What Are the Mental Health Benefits of Nostalgia?

Despite the emphasis on past events, nostalgia provides fuel for the future. It triggers emotions, behaviors and goals that can positively impact the following four areas of your life:

1. Emotions: Nostalgia can result in a multitude of positive emotions, including heightened optimism and inspiration, improved self-esteem, and feelings of purpose, meaning and youthfulness. Nostalgia can also provide a restorative outlet in uncertain, stressful or overwhelming situations.
2. Behavior: Nostalgia can be an effective motivator, both inspiring you and driving you to act on that inspiration. For instance, one study found that nostalgia-induced optimism about physical health resulted in increased physical activity. Another study, after citing nostalgia as a primary coping mechanism during the COVID-19 pandemic, found that it’s also fueling a resurgence in post-pandemic leisure travel.
3. Social cognition: Nostalgia can encourage you to solve relationship issues, reconnect with friends and prioritize the important relationships in your life. Nostalgia strengthens feelings of social connectedness that are key to the human experience.
4. Creativity: Research indicates that nostalgia fosters creativity. People who took part in one study produced more creative writing prose when under the influence of nostalgia. Openness to experience determined nostalgia’s impact on their creativity levels.

At healthy levels, it’s clear that nostalgia provides a host of whole-health benefits for your body, mind and spirit. Nostalgia is also linked to higher levels of empathy and charitable behavior.

What Is the Purpose of Nostalgia?

Nostalgia rekindles our appreciation for the past and sparks hope for the future, making it a valuable mental health resource.

Research found that people reported higher nostalgia when they were told they’d be alone in the future, compared to those in the study who were told they could look forward to fulfilling relationships, making a relationship between increased nostalgia and decreased feelings of belonging likely.

Nostalgia can feel “bittersweet” because remembering our “glory days” also reminds us that they are gone. But thankfully, the pros of nostalgia tend to outweigh the cons.

How Does Nostalgia Happen?

When you’re feeling nostalgic, a lot is going on in the memory and reward systems of your brain. Nostalgia-related activity happens primarily in the hippocampus, ventral striatum and substantia nigra/ventral tegmental area. Scientists believe these systems work together to generate the feeling of nostalgia.

How to Make the Most Out of Nostalgia

To gain the most benefits from nostalgia, the more social the activity is, the better. Activities like watching an old TV show, listening to classic records, cooking family recipes and going through photo albums can be rewarding, but they can also promote loneliness if you’re doing it by yourself.

Doing these activities and others with someone else can spark conversations about memories, forge deeper connections and even find you laughing as you walk down memory lane — together. You’re also more likely to create new memories and friendships as you honor and celebrate old ones if you’re in the company of others.

The Magic of Nostalgia

As we celebrated the Orlando Magic’s 35^th anniversary, we also reflect on their contributions to encouraging a healthy lifestyle in our community. So many of us have fond memories of the Magic’s history starting from their beginnings, and we look forward to the future as we continue making magical memories as a community.

Visit us here to learn more about our sports partnerships and how we’re working together to bring wholeness to our communities.