The belief that it is better not to try to block negative thoughts for psychological well-being finds counterarguments in a new study published this week in the journal Science Advances.
Researchers from the Cognitive and Brain Sciences Unit at the University of Cambridge tested on more than a hundred volunteers from around the world that repressing thoughts about negative events that worried them not only reduced their intensity, but also improved the mental health of the participants. The results also show the possibility of this ability to be trained.
People with conditions such as anxiety or depression experience distressing intrusive thoughts, which can also occur in healthy subjects. The most current psychotherapies often urge avoiding repression because the intrusions could rebound in intensity and frequency, worsening the disorders.
“From contextual therapies, and especially from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy since the 90s, techniques have been applied to eliminate the emotional effect of negative, repetitive, self-applied and intrusive thoughts. It consists of accepting those thoughts, observing them, not rejecting them, or trying to eliminate them; “just let them pass, but at the same time continue with our lives without paying more attention to them,” explains Luis Valero Aguayo, professor of Psychology at the University of Malaga.
In contrast, Zulkayda Mamat and Michael Anderson, authors of the article, hypothesized that training the suppression of unpleasant thoughts would improve the psychological health of people with certain disorders. The study was carried out in the context of the covid pandemic.
“There was already a mental health crisis, a hidden epidemic of mental health problems, and this was making it worse. So, with that backdrop, we decided to see if we could help people cope better,” Mamat says in a statement from the University of Cambridge.
They recruited 120 adults from 16 countries around the world to do so. They followed a three-day online training via the Zoom platform to suppress distressing thoughts about events they feared. Some of the participants had depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress.
Each participant was asked to think about a series of scenarios that could occur in their lives over the next two years. These were classified into three types: fears and worries that they feared might happen, hopes and dreams, and neutral and routine events. The fears had to be real worries that had repeatedly intruded on her thoughts. For each scenario, they had to provide a keyword as a reminder of the event and a central detail of the scenario. For example, if the fear was visiting a family member hospitalized for covid, the word could be “hospital” and the detail “respiration.”
Part of the training consisted of, given the keyword, stopping thinking about the event - which could be positive, negative or neutral - to which it had directed them. They were not to use distracting thoughts, but rather were to try to block out any images or thoughts that the word evoked.
After training, the researchers not only did not observe an increase in fears, but suppression reduced the memory of repressed fears. Participants reported feeling less anxiety, negative emotions, and symptoms of depression. They also found themselves thinking less about these events.
“It was very clear that the events that the participants practiced repressing were less vivid, caused less emotional anxiety, and that, overall, the participants improved in terms of their mental health,” Mamat notes in the statement. Those who benefited the most were those with high levels of anxiety and post-traumatic stress related to the pandemic and the benefit persisted after three months.
The findings challenge the current view that suppressing thoughts is generally maladaptive. Such psychotherapeutic views remain unreconciled with neurobiological evidence, the authors point out in the article.
However, some techniques in line with the new study are used clinically, such as "thought stopping", which consists of self-training to stop intrusive thoughts. This is done deliberately with the application of a small punishment, such as pulling a hair tie on the wrist or saying “no” out loud, once the thought has occurred. With practice we seek to automate the process as much as possible.
“This study could have positive perspectives by providing therapists with a more balanced understanding of negative thought suppression. It could offer additional tools to help people deal with their thoughts effectively, always taking into account the circumstances and context,” says María Cantero-García, a contracted professor of Psychology at the University of Madrid, in a comment on the study. Distance from Madrid (UDIMA).
However, the article limps on a number of methodological issues, so further research may be necessary. Valero Aguayo highlights the small sample - "There are not even 10 people per country" - and the little control of the experimental situation given its online application, which for him does not offer "much reliability to the results."
