Looking back at the past can be comforting, but selective remembering can harm mental health

February 28, 2025
Simon Bresler, LCSW, CGP

We all experience nostalgia—the bittersweet longing for times gone by. The memories of a childhood summer, an important college friendship, or a past formative relationship can bring comfort and a sense of connection to our personal history. But what happens when nostalgia becomes selective, when we remember only the good while systematically erasing the bad? This selective remembering, which I call “pathogenic nostalgia,” can trap us in cycles of depression and prevent us from moving forward in life.  

The Nature of Memory

Think of the last time you reminisced about a past relationship. Did you focus primarily on the easygoing first parts of the relationship, the thoughtful gestures this person made, and the moments of deep connection? Or did you also remember the arguments, the feelings of loneliness, and the valid reasons why the relationship ended?

If you’re like a lot of people, your nostalgic memories probably favored the positive highlights while downplaying or completely omitting the negative aspects. This is normal to some extent—our brains are wired to preserve positive emotions. But when this selective remembering becomes extreme, it transforms healthy nostalgia into something potentially harmful.

Pathogenic nostalgia is fundamentally different from healthy nostalgia. While healthy nostalgia integrates both positive and negative aspects of our past experiences, giving us a realistic view that allows for emotional processing and growth, pathogenic nostalgia creates a distorted, idealized version of the past that keeps us emotionally stuck.

This selective remembering has roots in several well-established psychological processes. From an attachment theory perspective, pathogenic nostalgia can function as a maladaptive strategy for regulating difficult emotions associated with loss and separation (Mikulincer & Shaver, 2016). When an important relationship ends, those with insecure attachment patterns might cope with distress by idealizing what was lost, defending against painful feelings of rejection or abandonment.

From a cognitive perspective, pathogenic nostalgia represents a form of biased information processing similar to what occurs in depression (Beck, 2016). Just as depressed individuals selectively attend to negative information, those experiencing pathogenic nostalgia selectively focus on positive aspects of a lost relationship or situation, preventing them from processing the reality of their current circumstances.

The concept also connects to psychoanalytic ideas about defensive idealization, where we split our perception of others into “all good” or “all bad” categories rather than integrating both positive and negative qualities (Kernberg, 2016). In pathogenic nostalgia, this splitting process results in an idealized internal representation that bears little resemblance to the complex reality of what actually occurred.

How Pathogenic Nostalgia Affects Relationships

When we experience a breakup or loss, we often engage in selective remembering of the past relationship. We might focus exclusively on the highlights and special moments while conveniently forgetting the arguments, emotional unavailability, or even the relief we felt when the relationship ended.

This selective memory creates an idealized version of the former relationship that no new connection can possibly match. We convince ourselves that what we had was uniquely special and irreplaceable, making it difficult to open ourselves to new possibilities.

This phenomenon isn’t limited to romantic relationships. Pathogenic nostalgia can develop around virtually any aspect of our past—former friendships, previous jobs, the town where we grew up, or entire chapters of our lives. And by clinging to an idealized version of the past, we prevent ourselves from fully engaging with the present and building new, potentially more fulfilling relationships and experiences.

The Depression Connection

Research suggests that pathogenic nostalgia has a strong connection to depression. This relationship appears to be bidirectional: the tendency toward selective remembering can predispose us to depression when facing losses or transitions, while the cognitive biases that come with depression can further distort our memories, amplifying the contrast between an idealized past and a seemingly empty present.

When we idealize the past, we inevitably find our present lacking. This creates a cognitive trap where we engage in:

Cognitive Comparisons

The idealized past becomes an impossible standard against which we judge our current life. This is similar to what cognitive therapists call a “comparison thinking trap,” where we focus on selected elements rather than the whole picture (Beck, 2016).

Avoidance of Grief

By idealizing lost relationships or past situations, we avoid the painful emotions associated with grief and loss. This emotional avoidance prevents complete processing of our feelings and keeps us stuck in unresolved attachment (Mikulincer & Shaver, 2016).

Identity Disruption

When our self-concept becomes tied to an idealized past that no longer exists, we experience a disruption in identity that contributes to feelings of emptiness and worthlessness. Our sense of who we are becomes fragmented when we can’t integrate our past and present experiences.

Behavioral Withdrawal

Rumination about an idealized past often leads to withdrawal from current relationships and activities. This reduces opportunities for positive experiences in the present, creating a self-reinforcing cycle that maintains depressive symptoms (Routledge et al., 2013).

This pattern appears frequently in clinical settings. People get caught in repetitive thought patterns about how great things used to be, which intensifies their feelings that the present is empty or meaningless. Breaking this cycle is often a crucial step in treating depression.

From Pathogenic Nostalgia to Healthy Remembering

If you recognize the pattern of pathogenic nostalgia in your own thinking, there are several evidence-based strategies that can help:

1. Practice integrated thinking

Challenge yourself to remember both the positive and negative aspects of past experiences. This approach is based on cognitive restructuring techniques that identify and challenge distorted thinking patterns (Beck, 2016). When a selective memory arises, ask yourself: “What am I not remembering about this situation?  What was the fuller picture that I seem to be forgetting in this moment and Why?  What don’t i want to feel?”

2. Enhance memory specificity

Our tendency toward pathogenic nostalgia often involves overgeneralized memories that lack specific details. Memory specificity training can help counter this by encouraging more detailed recall of specific episodes rather than generalized impressions.

Try recalling a specific day from the period you’re nostalgic about, including sensory details, challenges faced, and the full range of emotions experienced. This practice helps transform vague, idealized memories into more balanced, realistic recollections.

3. Develop mentalizing capacity

Mentalizing involves understanding the full range of thoughts, feelings, and motivations present in yourself and others during remembered experiences (Fonagy & Allison, 2014). When recalling a past relationship, try to reflect on what you were actually feeling in specific moments (not just what you wish you felt), and consider what the other person might have been experiencing as well.

4. Cautiously investigate photographs and mementos, if at all.

Our digital memories and relationship keepsakes often represent highlights rather than the full experience.  If we investigate our photos and videos too soon after entering or exiting a difficult chapter in our life, we are likely to fall into pathogenic nostalgic traps.  Thus, it’s essential to recognize that the smiling photos don’t show the arguments, chronic stress reactions, or feelings of frustration or loneliness that were also essential parts of the memory. So when/if you go back to these memories, use them as prompts for an investigation of what wasn’t seen, rather than evidence that the past was idyllic.

5. Seek external perspectives

Friends or family members who shared your past experiences might remember aspects you’ve filtered out. Sometimes hearing your friends perspective on that time period, “Don’t you remember how stressed you were?” can be illuminating. External perspectives can provide valuable reality checks that challenge our selective memories.

6. Practice acceptance and mindful nostalgia

Acceptance-based approaches can help us acknowledge the full range of emotions associated with past experiences. When nostalgic feelings arise, observe them with curiosity rather than getting swept away. Notice which aspects of the past you’re focusing on and which you’re ignoring. Research by Wildschut, Sedikides, and Cordaro (2011) suggests that this mindful awareness can transform nostalgia into a resource for well-being rather than a source of distress.

7. Engage in meaning-making

Instead of comparing present experiences unfavorably to idealized memories, focus on deriving meaning from both past and present experiences. How have your past experiences, including the difficult ones, contributed to who you are today? What aspects of today might you feel nostalgic about in the future? Sedikides and Wildschut (2018) found that finding meaning in nostalgia can transform it from a source of distress to a resource for psychological resilience.

The Goal: Integrated Memories and Epistemic Trust

The goal isn’t to stop feeling nostalgic or to focus only on negative memories. Rather, it’s to develop what psychologists call “integrated memories”—recollections that acknowledge both the joys and sorrows, the pleasures and pains of our experiences.

With integrated memories, we can appreciate our past without being trapped by it. We can learn from previous relationships without idealizing them. We can value where we’ve been while still being open to where we’re going.

A key concept related to this integration process is “epistemic trust,” which refers to our openness to accepting new information as trustworthy, personally relevant, and worth incorporating into what we already know (Fonagy & Allison, 2014). Pathogenic nostalgia often involves a form of epistemic rigidity—we trust our idealized memories more than new information that might contradict them. As we develop more integrated memories, we also develop more flexible epistemic trust, becoming more open to learning from new experiences rather than measuring everything against an idealized past.

This has profound implications for our psychological development. Every time we process a loss or transition by integrating both its positive and negative aspects, we strengthen our capacity for mentalization—the ability to understand our own and others’ mental states. This enhanced mentalization, in turn, improves our capacity for secure attachment and emotional self-regulation.

When we remember our past realistically, with all its complexity, we free ourselves to fully engage with our present. That’s when nostalgia becomes a healthy part of our emotional lives rather than a pathogenic force.

Nostalgia, at its best, reminds us of who we’ve been and what we’ve valued throughout our lives. By ensuring our nostalgic reflections embrace the full spectrum of our experiences—both the Instagram-worthy moments and the difficult realities—we transform potential pathogenic nostalgia into a resource for psychological health and personal growth (Routledge et al., 2013).

References and Further Reading

Beck, A. T. (2016). Cognitive therapy: Basics and beyond (2nd ed.). Guilford Press.

Fonagy, P., & Allison, E. (2014). The role of mentalizing and epistemic trust in the therapeutic relationship. Psychotherapy, 51(3), 372-380.

Kernberg, O. F. (2016). What is personality? Journal of Personality Disorders, 30(2), 145-156.

Mikulincer, M., & Shaver, P. R. (2016). Attachment in adulthood: Structure, dynamics, and change (2nd ed.). Guilford Press.

Routledge, C., Wildschut, T., Sedikides, C., & Juhl, J. (2013). Nostalgia as a resource for psychological health and well-being. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 7(11), 808-818.

Sedikides, C., & Wildschut, T. (2018). Finding meaning in nostalgia. Review of General Psychology, 22(1), 48-61.

Wildschut, T., Sedikides, C., & Cordaro, F. (2011). Self-regulatory interplay between negative and positive emotions: The case of loneliness and nostalgia. In I. Nyklicek, A. Vingerhoets, & M. Zeelenberg (Eds.), Emotion regulation and well-being (pp. 67-83). Springer.