Solastalgia

Are you getting tired of Covid? Have you heard others or your self ask, “When is life going to get back to ‘normal?” Or, why can’t things just be like they used to be? Or, do you feel anxious or concerned about what the ‘new normal’ might bring?
 
There’s a word for this feeling or sensation: solastalgia. And it is not just related to Covid.
 
The word solastalgia was created in 2003 by Glenn Albrecht, an environmental philosopher and professor of sustainability and environmental studies in Australia. The word solastalgia is a combination of Latin solacium (comfort, solace) and the Greek root algia (pain, suffering, grief).
 
Solastalgia, as defined by Albrecht, is a form of psychic or existential distress (emotional, mental, spiritual, physical) that people experience when the world around them is being transformed by forces beyond their control. People respond to such distress in many ways: fear or anger, despair or denial, or perhaps by finding ways to work together in order to take responsibility for doing something about it.
 
In brief, solastalgia is the sense of loss of solace and comfort in your home environment. In contrast, nostalgia is the homesickness felt when you are away from your home environment.1
 
Perhaps another pandemic we are experiencing today is not just Covid but solastalgia?
 
Other words with -algia include fibromyalgia (muscle pain), neuralgia (the pain of damaged nerves), nostalgia (the pain of homesickness)2.
 
Reference: Online Etymological Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com/
Robert Macfarlane. (2019). Underland: A deep time journey. London: Penguin.
TEDxSydney - Glenn Albrecht - Environment Change, Distress & Human Emotion Solastalgia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solastalgia
David’s Wordshop Blog: http://www.davidtickner.ca/blog
www.davidtickner.ca
 
1 Albrecht compares solastalgia to nostalgia and suggests that it is distinctive kind of nostalgia or homesickness. As described by Macfarlane, “Where the pain of nostalgia arises from moving away, the pain of solastalgia arises from staying put. Where the pain of nostalgia can be mitigated by return, the pain of solastalgia tends to be irreversible … solastalgia speaks of how a familiar place is rendered unrecognizable by climate change or corporate action” (Macfarlane, 317).
 
2 Nostalgia, from 1726, was a medical term first defined as the morbid longing to return to one’s home or native country. For example, during the American Civil War, there were reported 2588 cases of nostalgia, and 13 deaths attributed to this cause.
 
Today, nostalgia is a more benign condition. Merriam-Webster defines nostalgia as pleasure and sadness that is caused by remembering something from the past and wishing that you could experience it again; or a wistful or excessively sentimental yearning for return to some past period or irrecoverable condition.