Why Suppressing Emotions Doesn’t Work
From Kristalyn Salters-Pedneault, PhD, former About.com Guide
Updated April 30, 2010 About.com Health’s Disease and Condition content is reviewed by the Medical Review BoardMany people report that they spend a lot of time and energy suppressing emotions. Have you ever had a really intense thought or feeling that you just didn’t want to deal with? Did it feel like it would overwhelm you if you let it stay in your head? Did you try to just push it away or not think about it? This is called emotional suppression, and lots of research shows that not only is it ineffective in eliminating thoughts and feelings, but it may even worsen the situation.
Suppressing Emotions – A Definition
What exactly does “suppressing emotions” mean? Essentially, emotional suppression is a type of emotion regulation strategy -– these are strategies that we use to try to make uncomfortable thoughts and feelings more manageable. There are many different emotion regulation strategies, and some are more helpful than others. For example, some people turn to alcohol or drugs to get rid of painful emotions. While this may work as an emotion regulation strategy in the short term, it definitely has bad long-term consequences.
Suppressing emotions, or just trying to push emotional thoughts and feelings out of your mind, is an emotion regulation strategy many people use. And, when used from time to time, it doesn’t have dramatic negative consequences like drug or alcohol use. But, there is reason to believe that if you try to push emotions away all the time, emotional suppression could lead to problems.
The Consequences of Suppressing Emotions
Researchers have studied what happens when you try to push away thoughts and feelings for decades. A famous study on this topic was conducted by Daniel Wegner, Ph.D., and his colleagues. He examined what happened when one group of people was instructed to push away thoughts of a white bear (another group was allowed to think any thoughts, including thoughts about a white bear). He found that the group who had suppressed thoughts of a white bear actually ended up having more white bear thoughts than the group that had been allowed to thinking about anything.
Wegner called this the “rebound effect of thought suppression.” Essentially, if you try to push away a thought of some topic, you will end up having more thoughts about that topic. Many follow-up studies have been conducted that confirm Wegner’s original finding. And, studies have expanded on his finding, and shown that the same effect happens when you try to push away emotional thoughts, or when you try to push away the actual feelings.
The Rebound Effect of Suppressing Emotions – What This Means for You
So what does this research mean for you? Well, it means that if you frequently try to push away thoughts and feelings, you may be making more trouble for yourself. In fact, it is possible that this is setting up a vicious cycle: You have a painful emotion. You try to push it away. This leads to more painful emotions, which you try to push away, and so on.
Some researchers believe emotional suppression may, in part, be a reason that people with psychological conditions such as BPD, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) struggle with so many painful thoughts and emotions.
Reducing Emotional Suppression – Trying New Strategies for Emotion Regulation
The solution to the problem of suppressing emotion is to learn new, healthier ways to regulate your emotions. If you have lots of tricks you can use to regulate emotions, you are less likely to rely on suppressing emotions all the time.
For example, distracting yourself from an emotion by engaging in another activity may be a more effective way to regulate your emotions. If you add lots of new strategies like this, you will not need to use emotional suppression as much.
Need some ideas for new, healthier ways to regulate your emotions? This article below can give you some new strategies to try.
What Is Emotional Acceptance?
Often, when we have an uncomfortable feeling, such as sadness, fear or shame, our first reaction is to reject that feeling. We may tell ourselves that the feeling is a “bad feeling” that we do not want to have. Next, we may do something to try to get rid of the feeling, such as trying to push the feeling away or using drugs or alcohol to feel better.
Certainly, no one wants to walk around feeling emotional pain all of the time, but when we reject our emotions, we may actually make things worse for ourselves (see this article on problems associated with suppressing emotions). And often, emotions arise because they give us helpful information about the world. So sometimes getting rid of emotions is not the best idea.
An alternative is learning to accept your emotional experiences. Accepting means that you practice allowing your emotions to be what they are, without judging them or trying to change them. Acceptance means letting go of attempts to control your emotions and learning that emotions themselves cannot harm you (although, the things we do to try to get rid of emotions, i.e., using alcohol, can harm you).
Accepting Emotions Is Not Resigning Yourself to Pain
It is important to make the distinction between acceptance and resignation. Accepting emotions do not mean that you resign yourself to always feeling terrible or wallowing in pain. It also doesn’t mean that you hold on to painful emotions or try to push yourself to experience emotional pain. Acceptance simply means being aware of your emotions and accepting them for what they are right now.
As a metaphor for acceptance, imagine that you are a soldier who has fought a long battle with your emotions. Acceptance is the act of putting down your weapons and walking away from the fight. You are not resigning yourself to be beat up by your emotions; you are simply letting go of the struggle.
In some ways, accepting emotions means also accepting that emotions will change. When we are happy, we have to accept that it is a short-term condition: we will not always be happy. Also, when we are sad, this is a short-term condition too.
Why Accepting Emotions Is Helpful
Why is accepting emotions helpful? What is the point of trying to accept your emotions, and wouldn’t it be easier to just get rid of them? Well, no, it isn’t easy to get rid of emotions. In fact, most people with mental health issues have tried to get rid of their emotions with little success. What they have learned (and what research supports) is that it is very difficult, if not impossible, for us to just get rid of an emotion.
We have emotions for a reason, so you shouldn’t want to get rid of them completely. Emotions are part of a complex system that helps us decide what we should stay away from and what we should approach. Emotions also help us keep lasting relationships with other people. Without emotions, we would make terrible decisions all the time! Therefore, accepting emotions is helpful, because when we listen to our emotions, we can actually learn important information.
How to Practice Accepting Emotions
It is not easy to learn how to accept emotions, because they often do not feel very good and we have instincts that may tell us to avoid them. With persistent practice, though, you can learn how to be more accepting of your emotions. Mindfulness meditation, or the practice of being aware of both your internal and external experiences, can be tremendously useful as you are learning how to accept your emotions.