Introduction

Research has found that suppressing negative thoughts can be good for your mental health, countering the common belief that ignoring these thoughts means they remain in our subconscious, affecting our behavior and well-being.

The Study

Researchers from the University of Cambridge, part of the Medical Research Council’s (MRC) Cognitive and Brain Sciences Unit, trained 120 volunteers around the world to suppress thoughts about negative events that were bothering them.

They found that not only did these events become less vivid, but the subjects’ mental health also improved.

Understanding Thought Suppression

Professor Michael Anderson said: “We are all familiar with Freud’s idea that if we suppress our feelings or thoughts, these thoughts remain in our subconscious, having a detrimental effect on our behavior and well-being. The main goal of psychotherapy is to get rid of these thoughts.” thoughts so that a person can “move on to fight them and deprive them of their power. In recent years we have been told that thought suppression is inherently ineffective and that it actually makes people think about thoughts more.”

The Impact of Covid-19

When Covid-19 emerged in 2020, Professor Anderson, like many researchers, wanted to see how his research could be used to help people during the pandemic.

“Because of the pandemic, we saw a need in society to help cope with increased anxiety,” said Dr Zuqaida Mamat, who was a PhD student in Professor Anderson’s lab and at Trinity College, Cambridge at the time. “This has happened before. There is a mental health crisis, a hidden epidemic of health problems, mentality, and the situation was getting worse. Against this backdrop, we decided to see if we could help people cope better.”

The Study Methodology

The study asked each person to think about a series of scenarios that could happen in their life over the next two years: 20 negative fears they were afraid would happen and 20 positive hopes and dreams.

In each scenario, they had to provide a keyword and key details.

Each event was rated on a number of items: vividness, likelihood of occurring when it occurs in the future, level of anxiety or joy about the event, frequency of thoughts, degree of current anxiety, long-term impact, and emotional intensity.

Volunteers also completed questionnaires to assess their mental health. Using Zoom, Dr. Mamat then put each participant through a 20-minute exercise that included 12 trials without visualization and 12 trials with visualization, in which they were asked to either think clearly or stop thinking about an event after they were given a cue word.

At the end of the third day of training and three months later, volunteers were again asked to rate each event for vividness, anxiety level, and emotional intensity.

In both cases, volunteers reported that the repressed events were less vivid and less frightening, according to the study. They also began to think less about these events.

The Positive Effects of Thought Suppression

According to Dr. Mamata: “It was very clear that those events that participants repressed were less vivid and less emotionally disturbing than other events, and that participants generally improved their mental health. But we saw the greatest effect among those that participants , who were trained to suppress “Suppress fearful thoughts, not neutral thoughts.”

Thought suppression led to improved mental health among those suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, according to the results.

Among people with PTSD who suppressed negative thoughts, their negative mental health ratings decreased by an average of 16%, while their positive mental health ratings increased by about 10%.

Overall, those who had worse mental health symptoms at the start of the study improved better after suppression training, but only if they suppressed their fears.

Conclusion

The study demonstrates that suppressing negative thoughts can have a positive impact on mental health. Contrary to popular belief, thought suppression does not lead to these thoughts lingering in the subconscious, but rather helps individuals reduce the vividness and emotional intensity of these thoughts. This research offers potential strategies for individuals struggling with anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder.

Source

Source: Independent