02/09/2026
Been talking recently about class reunions. These are sneaky little psychological events - they look social on the outside but internally a lot is happening. 
The psychology behind reunions of all kinds is quite interesting. I got curious as there is another class reunion coming up in my life. I was a bit surprised by my own feelings around it so I started to get curious.
1) Identity activation. Since our brains store that time as a core identity stage, old roles, feelings, self perceptions can come back quickly, even as our adult life is very different from what it was years ago.  The nervous system literally does not understand the concept of time. It just knows we feel safe or threatened. That’s why time does not heal all wounds, but I digress. 
Out brains don’t store, “who you are“ as one continuous file, rather it stores versions of you connected to time periods, environments, and social groups.
 When we see (or consider seeing ) people from that time, our nervous system can default to how we felt about ourselves back then, how safe or unsafe, we felt socially, and the role we had within that group. It’s not a logical thing at all and runs in the implicit memory system - or memory that our body and nervous system stores without us consciously thinking about it.
We have all had a lot of growth, reflection, and healing since that time - so thinking about stepping back into that time can feel very jarring to our nervous systems. I most definitely have attended past reunions with identity activation. So if you notice similar feelings about an event that you are considering attending, know that it’s not because you haven’t grown, but those earlier experiences are belonging, comparison, and figuring ourselves out were wired very deeply.  It’s like attending and feeling on some levels like our younger version of ourselves.  For some, reunions activate a very positive identity activation and feels amazing which is sort of like the other side of the proverbial coin.
Finally, there’s another layer. For many people the version of us they hold in their memory is in fact, that younger one. While we’ve lived whole chapters of life since then, many people may still picture us as we were decades ago. There’s som**hing tender, and a bit vulnerable, about stepping into a space where past and present versions of herself exists side-by-side.  How we’ve carried decades of living, learning, loving, losing, and still parts of us remember what it felt like to be young and unsure in a room full appears. There’s som**hing very human about that. 
