[INFJenNiFer]

Hello there :happy:

I'm just reading this book about an ISFJ that almost always feel nostalgic. My best friend, an ISFJ, is also very nostalgic. How about INFJs? Are you nostalgic?

I'm not a nostalgic person. I have all types of memories (wonderful, sad, angry, embarrassing, etc.), but however happy it may be, I don't wish for things to be same like before. This particular post on Typology Central kind of sums it all up:

I don't think I'm particularly nostalgic beyond the typical GenX refusal to let go of cartoons and stuff. I have some wonderful memories, but overall, now is better than the past and I'm always looking forward to the future.

But I read in the threads that a lot of INFJs are nostalgic. So...?

 

[Marvin the Dendroid]

I certainly don't feel nostalgic about things or people, but I can feel nostalgic about places - especially places of great natural beauty and particularly those where I've spent many a wonderful moment but which have later been exploited beyond recognition.

My memory is generally a very hazy device, and mainly recalls moments of beauty and meaning. Most of them I don't feel very nostalgic about, and I'm probably never gripped by nostalgia. Just gently happy, reminiscing.

 

[lavendersnow]

Not anymore than the average person. I'm future-orientated, as Ni makes us. ISFJs are past-orientated, so they're more likely to look to the past for comfort than we are.

 

[Vunar]

Just gently happy, reminiscing.

Same same.

I never want the old days to come back. I just look at past, have a few laughs and move forward to create more memories that I will look at in the future.

I have a closure with the old Cartoon Network and I leave Ed, Edd n Eddy where they belong.

"Plank says that he agrees with me"

 

[applecrumble]

I have bouts where I am really nostalgic, but like mentioned above, I don't really wish for things to be like the way they were in the past. I sometimes miss how some people in my life used to be but I don't necessarily carry that feeling and thought when I see or spend time with them physically - I've basically accepted them and/or situations for what they are now or what could be in the future.

 

[Kirjuri]

I don't have an attachment to the past per se, but I'm attuned to certain past experiences through emotions I felt during that experience. Emotional attachment makes those experiences present, so to say. That said, I have no desire to return to the past. I only reminisce in order to learn for the future.

 

[Glassland]

I have moments of nostalgia about random things in my past.
Basically just because life was easier back then.

 

[Elvish Lives]

Yes, I'm very nostalgic, but I don't understand why so many people try to paint this as a personal failing. I actually feel sorry for people who feel no psychic connections to their pasts. It's as if each moment in their lives is totally independent of all that came before. I wouldn't want to live like that. My memories aren't dead-letter artifacts in some two-dimensional space, they're living, breathing organs that sustain my very being. When my memories die, I die. That's why Alzheimer's is probably the disease I fear the most. Being anonymous to myself would be a state of perpetual fear I don't want to fathom.

 

[thebunny]

I'm incredibly nostalgic! Especially with music and places.

 

[chanteuse]

Certain sentiment from the past would appear. I could describe the sentiment with words and emotion but it never was a "wish I could be back" kind of notion.

Everything I have absorbed can be recalled to fit with something at present. However, the forward thinking knows well that the past can't be brought back or recreated; therefore, the past only serves as a reference.

The only feeling I get that may be close to nostalgia is when I talk about how whatever it is we are feeling right now would be a fond memory in the future. I am nostalgic about the present by imagining how I would recall it in the future.

 

[Fievel]

Nostalgia for me is rather paradoxical in nature, since it's not about reliving the past per se. Rather it's about trying to discern that from the past that continues to have meaning in the present and possibly the future as well. It's difficult to explain, but the past is more a departure point towards the timeless.

 

[speedy2056]

Yes, I was born at the beginning of the golden 1980's and am very nostalgic about that era!

I think there is a difference between seriously planning for the future and being nostalgic, which is just a term to describe remembering good things. Just because we are future orientated does not mean that we don't like to visit memory lane every now and again.

 

[INFJenNiFer]

Yes, I was born at the beginning of the golden 1980's and am very nostalgic about that era!

I think there is a difference between seriously planning for the future and being nostalgic, which is just a term to describe remembering good things. Just because we are future orientated does not mean that we don't like to visit memory lane every now and again.

Completely agree.

But everytime I remember the past it's always the embarrassing ones. LOL. So I rarely do it.

 

[arcanus_intus]

I don't very often, but as I have moved several times in the past number of years, I've had to go through some old stuff and that brought back some old feelings of fondness. This will sound silly, but I also felt a similar nostalgia when the last Indiana Jones movie came out (Kingdom of the Crystal Skulls) - the content of the movie really didn't matter, it was like seeing old friends again. Very similar to seeing Han Solo and Princes Leah in the newest Star Wars movie, as I grew up with them. I was also particularly interested in the TV series "That 70's show".

Like many who commented already, I don't normally look back, I'm usually forward focused. However, when I'm in a setting that forces me to look back, yeah, I get nostalgic. Not because I want to go back, but because there were some fond memories.

 

[mastervule]

Yeah a lot. Sometimes to the point of it makes me feel bad knowing that those times won't ever repeat again. Especially childhood. I love how specific scents can give you the same feeling you once had for a moment. Like when my younger brother got new deck of Yu-gi-oh cards and I felt that scent they had and felt 10 years younger haha

 

[3daydreaming]

This question was interesting to me because I have never really thought about this before.
I think that I really do dream about the future more than the past, however . . . funny because I've always felt like I was a sentimental person - but sometimes looking back is actually painful, where as, looking forward is hopeful.

In regards to my past, I honestly I don't believe that I often get very nostalgic. As terrible as it may sound, there are a lot of memories for me that simply make me grimace.
And I hate to say it, but I have come a long way since then, and really don't much like who I used to be.

To be honest, I'm not even sure I really like who I am right now all the time either - but then, there is looking forward.

Sometimes I will remember something pleasant from the past, but then an unpleasant memory will follow, and I will think to myself that I wouldn't go back for the world . . . haha

Here is the stange part, however, whenever I really get nostalgic about something, it's usually from a time period before I was ever alive.
I've always felt like I should have lived in the 1800's. I miss the dialect, the dress, the music. Even to have lived in the 1920's.
Something inside of me always feels like I have missed out for never having really experienced these years.
But when I can, I escape from the street lights and busy crowds and technology, I take take a walk in the woods, I read a book, I write, I paint - sometimes our world today loses the beauty that is found away from the screen, and I can get very nostalgic about that.

 

[Daeva]

I very rarely feel nostalgic. It's just not how I think: I rarely think of the past, never mind get stuck in it to the point of nostalgia.

Of course, this is probably a flaw of my character one way or another, but gives advantages in other ways. This is to say, I'm not judging those who are nostalgic, it's just not something I can pretend to value.