What is the opposite of nostalgia?

[Hot Pepsi]

I was listening to the Happiness Lab podcast on the potential perils of nostalgia and it occurred to me that I’m actually more likely to remember the past as worse than it really was. But there doesn’t seem to be a word for that.

[ooh aah]

Is it aiglatson?

[Femme Folle]

Regret.

[Femme Folle]

Why not simply 'negative nostalgia'?

[Hot Pepsi]

Is it aiglatson?

Sort of. That means a longing for the future. I suppose that is a thing, especially among younger people who imagine a brighter future.

But I’m thinking more about one’s disposition about the past that doesn’t necessarily entail expecting that the future will be a whole lot better.

Regret could be part of it, but I don’t mean just thinking about stuff I did or decisions I made, but just the overall experience.

Like, to use a simple example, I can recall some trips I took to Assateague as a teenager and the salient memory is just the mosquitos, sand getting in everything and the sun burn. I know that I had a good time for other reasons, but I can’t recall conversations I had or even exactly who else was there. But I can recall the unpleasant parts more vividly.

And just as we might recall a certain era of music or film as being better, overall, than it really was because we only remember the good parts, we can make that same mistake about the less great eras and tend to just fixate on the crap because confirmation bias sets in once we’ve formed an opinion about the whole period.

I think there’s a more personal version too but it’s more complicated to explain.

[Amor de Cosmos]

Nostalgia is supposed to be an affliction. It's already a "bad thing."

[Hot Pepsi]

Why not simply 'negative nostalgia'?

That would be a good term if there isn’t already one agreed on by psychologists or historians.

[Hot Pepsi]

Nostalgia is supposed to be an affliction. It's already a "bad thing."

Not necessarily, according to the long Wikipedia article on it.

But I don’t mean the perils of remembering things as better than they really were. I mean, what is the word for remembering things as worse than they actually were.

[ooh aah]

Sort of. That means a longing for the future. I suppose that is a thing, especially among younger people who imagine a brighter future.

Wait... aiglatson is actually a word? That was meant as a joke.

[ad hoc]

There's a word nostophobia, but I'm not sure if that's exactly what you're looking for

[ad hoc]

Wait... aiglatson is actually a word? That was meant as a joke.

It's not in any dictionary that I can find, but there are a number of websites that have come up with the same joke that you did (except that for the most part they seem to take themselves very seriously to the point where it's the name of their consultancy or other similar business)

[Patrick Thistle]

Neophilia would be a love for the new (and disdain for the old) but not really what HP is describing.

'Negative memories', perhaps.

Maybe take a different analogy - blue-tinted spectacles?

[Granthamian]

Ooh Aah’s joke is simply that aiglatson is nostalgia spelt backwards. Quite good I thought Ooh Aah!

[3 Colours Red]

Nostalgia is supposed to be an affliction. It's already a "bad thing."

It does translate from Greek as "the pain of returning" - the "-algia" part should be a clue there.

The "returning" bit originally referred to homesickness but has since taken on a more general meaning of course.

[multipleman78]

I prefer the outlook of Cheese from The Wire.

"but instead of just shutting up and kicking in, you gon' stand there, crying that back in the day shit.

There ain't no back in the day. Ain't no nostalgia to this shit here. There's just the street, the game and what happens here today."

Thankfully after that wonderful pearl of wisdom from Mr. Cheese, Slim Charles makes him permanently back in the day.

[Jah Womble]

Regret, remorse, lament, compunction even.

Frustrating that there's no exact word to describe that inverse emotion - which itself may not even be an accurate recollection of what has gone.