Chronically sentimental-Is this normal?

[Igglepiggle78]

Not sure if sentimental is the correct term. I’ve always been a fairly sentimental person and have vivid memories of my childhood and teenage years. The years since then have been generally happy and aside from obviously this horrendous year, I’m fairly happy.
But I can’t stop thinking about my past, it started more and more when I hit my mid 30’s (42 now) I love to think about my teenage years (my favourite years) and the person I was then and the excitement and experiences I had. Life isn’t completely boring now, I live abroad and have travelled lots and had a good career etc, but it’s massively dull compared to the past and fairly relentless with a toddler day in, day out, as m much as I adore her.
When I hear music from my childhood/teens/twenties it affects me so strongly, I even feel it for 4/5 years ago. How can I stop doing this, does anyone else to this extent? If I could be younger again with my family at home or go back to that teenage girl out clubbing every night, I’d do it in a flash, do it all again.

I get like this too, sometimes it feels almost physical. We have a word for it in Welsh which doesn't really translate into English. This is a good explanation of it:

Hiraethis a Welsh word that is somewhat difficult to describe in English, for the reason that there is no single English word that expresses all that it does. Some words often used to try to explain it are homesickness, yearning, and longing.

However, there is more depth to hiraeth than in any of those words on their own. It seems to be a rather multi-layered word, which includes a different variety of homesickness than what is generally referred to. This kind of homesickness is like a combination of the homesickness, longing, nostalgia, and yearning, for a home that you cannot return to, no longer exists, or maybe never was. It can also include grief or sadness for who or what you have lost, losses which make your “home” not the same as the one you remember.

I'm exactly the same age as you OP, and I feel the same. We were teenagers at a great time (I feel so sorry for teens now, incidentally), especially for music. Just the other day I was reminiscing about my 6th form college days, which were immense fun, and I had a little weep about how I'll never get that time back.

I wouldn't give up the life I have now, but if I could take a little holiday in my own youth, that would be wonderful.

It doesn’t feel like that long ago although obviously was! It can almost feel like a physical yearning. I wonder what a psychologist would make of it all? I’m guessing it’s normal to some degree, but not healthy if it’s too much?
Certain memories I have, I can almost smell the perfume I was wearing, exactly how the house was and the way I felt.
I used to have a bottle of wine, sit outside, listen to tunes and really revel in it (before Dd, not much time for that at present) often it would become far too self indulgent & maudlin though.
‘The Suburbs’ by Arcade fire always captured it well and ‘Lippy kids’ by Elbow.
I also wouldn’t want to be a teen in this day and age and feel so grateful to have had the 80’s as my young childhood and the 90’s as my house music/indie/Brit pop life, such amazing times.

I’m just like this. But I think mine stems from my life not turning out like I expected. Anything that reminds me of my late teens early twenties especially make me sentimental. It’s become worse since I’m almost 50 and still single, no career, etc.

Reading this thread has made me realise I’m not very nostalgic at all. I have great memories of my family growing up and certain things I enjoyed doing but I don’t feel tethered to the past. I feel my best days are the ones I’m living right now although I accept that may change as I get older. I enjoy songs from my youth but I don’t feel sad listening to them.

I think that's a much healthier attitude tbh, Odile13.

I get like this about my children’s very early years (they’re upper primary/early secondary now). Sometimes I think about holding them as babies and find I’m in tears over the memories and strength of the emotion.

But I don’t feel like that about anything before that time and I had no idea it was so common to feel the way lots of you do on this thread! It’s actually fascinating.

I’m relieved to have moved away from my past. I had quite a sad early life (not abuse, but distance, disconnection, loneliness, mentally ill mum). I love my adult life and current life so much more and am grateful every day but sometimes that does slip into a kind of nostalgia for right now, which I realise makes no sense

I having been feeling like this for my childhood recently. It seems particularly strong at the moment I wonder if it because my world is much smaller now? (Seeing less people, working from home)

I completely resonate with this. My mum and dad still live in the house I lived in from about 12 to 19 when I got married. It holds so many memories and every time I drive down to their house I see the road that I walked up and down going to school the chapel I went to every Sunday and during lent and made my first communion confirmed got married ! I see the park where I hung about drinking when
I shouldn't have been and boys ! I miss it all I wonder where it all went it passed so quickly. My mum and dad are elderly now and I can see my mum in her garden taking care of it and my dad pottering about with his car on a sunny day. Just wish you go back even for one day

@notheragain41

Happy to help ha. Do you ever get really sentimental about buildings? I really wish I had a time machine and could just walk through my old houses, look through the window and watch if that makes sense?! I always make sure I take lots of photos of our home etc. I love looking at old photos of cities/towns I've lived in and watching "period" programmes set in 80s/90s/00s etc! Loving the noughties programme on bbc2 at the moment.

Yes! I get sentimental about former workplaces too. Would just love to be able to go in and have a look round but it isn’t possible.

Just to chip in with a different perspective. I’m a massive fan of 90s music. For me it’s so evocative and I can remember words to hundreds fo songs. Not even ones I loved, just whatever was on the radio.
But. I don’t hanker after the past. I’m very much focused on the future. What’s going to happen, what I’m going to do. What can I create and so on. I’ve never felt I wanted to go back. Aren’t people funny!

Oh this is me OP. I can get very absorbed in this sort of thinking and I know it’s not healthy so I do actively avoid triggers for it. I sometimes feel overwhelmed by a longing to return to a particular point in time and an almost panicky realization that it can never happen. I can never dance in a nightclub in the 90s with my friends. I can never hold my children as newborns. I can never do the job I did in my 20s that made me feel on top of the world and successful. All gone. That’s not to say there aren’t pleasures now. I just seem to appreciate things long after the moment.

Doubtless I’ll one day look back at today and wish I could live it again.

I’m envious actually, as my childhood and teenage years were abusive so any happy memories are tainted. What I am nostalgic for is my years of studying (I have 2 degrees) during my twenties, and the overseas development projects in Africa I was involved in. I miss the time when I was a single independent adult who had no dependants.

It’s a case of rose coloured glasses to a certain extent, obviously, as I always wanted to be married and have a family eventually and I wouldn’t have wanted to be single at my age, but I still look back with fondness at those days when I was a young adult and I still have friends from those days.

I miss the time when I was a single independent adult who had no dependents

Oh yes, this. I wouldn’t change anything, love having children, but definitely miss that freedom to go anywhere and do anything at the drop of a hat! Not answerable to anyone but myself.

I used to be terribly nostalgic, but I’ve actually got better recently, in my mid 30s. I now think of memories a bit like jewels that make up a part of me and who I am. I don’t see them as ‘gone’ I see them as resources I can draw on any time I like, if that makes any sense at all?
Sometimes I might feel unconfident about something for example, so I’ll take myself back in my mind to how I felt in my mid 20s when the world was going my way. That was me then and I am still that same person now. I yse the memory to lift myself in the present.

If you’ll excuse me getting totally waffly for a moment, I’ve come to see life as a patchwork quilt, getting ever more beautiful as the patches are added. We don’t lose those experiences once they are finished, they stay with us and remain part of what makes us. The lessons we learn and the emotions we feel.
It makes me motivated to make my present ‘patch’ as lovely as I can, to add to my collection.

So many insightful comments here, thank you all! I find is so interesting.
I also have the panicky moments when I think about certain moments never being able to happen again and the loss of not being able to go back so I try to put my memories into the bracket of being a happy comfort to me.
I recently had if a lot about life before Dd, even though I obviously adore her, I was much freer then and travelled lots more and life was a different type of excitement.
I sometimes find myself saying to my dp ‘Remember when we..’ I love looking back at memories we have