Navigated to 12. Why Am I So Nostalgic? On being a highly sensitive person

12. Why Am I So Nostalgic? On being a highly sensitive person

Dec 24, 2025
39 mins

Episode Description

Nostalgia, body image, and high sensitivity are connected—and this episode explains why.

This is for highly sensitive people who experience nostalgia as a full-body emotional event. Do you notice that when the past gets stirred, food and body stuff gets louder? Songs, places, photos, endings, and transitions don't just bring up memories, they can trigger urges to control food, reconsider our appearance, check, plan, restrict, overeat, or isolate.

In this episode, we cover:

  • Why highly sensitive nervous systems experience nostalgia as embodied memory, not just thought
  • How childhood and adolescence can leave open stress loops that keep pulling us back
  • Why food and body control can become a reliable way to contain emotional overwhelm
  • Why you can feel pulled toward a time in your life that was actually painful or unstable
  • Why longing for an old body and old coping patterns is often about unresolved emotional safety
  • What recovery looks like when the buffer is gone and emotions come back online
  • How to feel deeply without getting swallowed by it

You'll also get a practical way to work with this when it hits: how to recognize the moment nostalgia arrives, how to give your body a short, contained window to feel what's there, and how to return to the present on purpose through simple routines that re-anchor you.

Work with me

If you want support applying these ideas to your actual life (not just your notes app), I offer 1:1 coaching for binge eating recovery, intuitive eating, and body image healing. Apply here!

If this episode helps, subscribe and leave a rating or review—it's the easiest way to support the podcast and get this message out there!

See all episodes

Never lose your place, on any device

Create a free account to sync, back up, and get personal recommendations.