Why you should have a cup of concrete - and harden up

Keeping a lid on your emotions has long been thought to be bad for you, but scientists now think it could help to stop negativity from taking over. Photo / Getty Images

Burying negative feelings has long been thought to be bad for our minds, but new scientific research shows this might not be the case.

Keeping a stiff upper lip and suppressing negative thoughts is good for mental health, a Cambridge study has found.

It has previously been suggested that burying bad feelings deep in one’s psyche is unhealthy and simply pushes them into our subconscious, where they wreak havoc.

But analysis of 120 people trained to suppress their thoughts found the modern approach of addressing trauma and problems can be worse than burying them internally.

University of Cambridge researchers at the Medical Research Council (MRC) Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit gave 20-minute Zoom session training sessions to participants worldwide.

People in 16 countries were asked to think about 20 different fears and worries they thought might happen, 20 hopes and dreams, and 36 humdrum scenarios.

Data show those told explicitly to not think about the events, or to distract themselves from thinking about them, thought about their events less vividly and improved their mental health.

Mental health improvement

Dr Zulkayda Mamat, study author from Cambridge University, said the suppression approach “very clearly” made the events of concern seem less anxiety-inducing.

“Participants improved in terms of their mental health but we saw the biggest effect among those participants who were given practice at suppressing fearful, rather than neutral, thoughts,” she said.

Prof Michael Anderson, co-author of the study, added: “What we found runs counter to the accepted narrative.

“We’re all familiar with the Freudian idea that if we suppress our feelings or thoughts, then these thoughts remain in our unconscious, influencing our behaviour and well-being perniciously.

“The whole point of psychotherapy is to dredge up these thoughts so one can deal with them and rob them of their power.

“In more recent years, we’ve been told that suppressing thoughts is intrinsically ineffective and that it actually causes people to think the thought more – it’s the classic idea of ‘don’t think about a pink elephant’.”

Study ‘challenges consensus’

According to the findings, suppressing thoughts even improved mental health among those with likely post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Among those with PTSD who suppressed negative thoughts, their negative mental health scores fell on average by 16 per cent, whereas positive mental health scores increased by almost 10 per cent.

The scientists said there was a trend where people with worse mental health symptoms at the start of the study improved more after suppression training.

The researchers also reported that one participant was so impressed by the technique that she taught her daughter and her own mother how to do it.

María Cantero-García, psychology lecturer at the Universidad a Distancia de Madrid (UDIMA), who was not involved with the research, said: “This study challenges a widely accepted consensus in the therapeutic community that suppressing negative thoughts is harmful.

“While the idea that suppression is counterproductive has been dogma, this research suggests that the reality may be more nuanced, highlighting that it does not always lead to negative outcomes.”

The study is published in Science Advances.