September 21, 2023 – A brand new study suggests that suppressing negative thoughts can improve people's mental health.
The finding offers a substitute for traditional therapy techniques that encourage people to face their fears. It also refutes the favored belief that suppressing negative thoughts can harm people.
Researchers on the University of Cambridge asked 61 people to list future events that currently frightened them and a comparison group of 59 people to list future events that made them feel neutral. In an activity called “suppression training,” they were taught to discover thoughts about future events and stop themselves from imagining those things. The training took place in three individual video sessions.
Those who suppressed negative thoughts reported improved mental health, including individuals with signs of tension, depression or post-traumatic stress disorder Results Published within the magazine this week Scientific advances.
The authors decided to do the study after seeing the rise in mental illness in the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, noting that a typical approach to treating distressing, intrusive thoughts is for people to “not suppress their thoughts, as interventions.” “could increase again in intensity and frequency”. , which makes the disorders worse.”
Three months after training, most participants within the study reported that their suppressed fears were less vivid and caused less anxiety, leading to lower overall anxiety, fewer negative emotions, and fewer depression.
During these three months they’d not been taught to make use of the thought suppression techniques they’d learned. Nevertheless, 82% of those that took part within the research said they’d used the abilities to handle the fears they’d practiced during training within the three months between training and follow-up, and 80% said they’d used the abilities to cope with latest fears.
When researchers specifically analyzed a smaller group of individuals with signs of clinical post-traumatic stress disorder, they found that this group also benefited from suppressing negative thoughts, and the resulting mental health advantages lasted for 3 months. The group with PTSD suppressed the fears they practiced during training at an analogous rate as the general group (81%), but 100% of those within the PTSD group said they used the abilities when faced with latest fears became.
“I didn't have a single participant tell me, 'Oh, I feel bad,' or 'That was useless.'” I didn't prompt them or ask, “Did you find that helpful?” They just robotically told me how helpful they found it,” said researcher Zulkayda Mamat, PhD, in a Press releaseone person commented on how isolated they felt in the course of the pandemic. “She said this study came at exactly the time she needed it because she had all these negative thoughts, all these worries and fears about the future, and it really, really helped her.”