Can suppressing negative thoughts be good for you?

I was quoted in the news section (see attached) in the current edition of The New Psychotherapist, UKCP’s members magazine. The magazine is published three times a year, and aims to spotlight the benefits of psychotherapy and how it can transform lives by unlocking potential. The stated aim of the magazine is to show psychotherapy ‘in action in the real world’ and the challenges facing the profession today. The quote picked up on comments I gave to the Financial Times (FT), about a University of Cambridge study that sought to demonstrate that the suppression of negative thoughts might have positive effects on mental health. Researchers at the Medical Research Council (MRC) Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit trained 120 volunteers worldwide to suppress thoughts about negative events that worried them, and found that not only did these become less vivid, but that the participants’ mental health also improved. The study was essentially asking whether inhibitory control was critical in overcoming trauma in experiences for participants, was this from an innate ability or something that was learnt – and hence could be taught.

Sometimes I wonder if thought suppression might potentially have more substance to it than at first glance. For, if counselling and psychotherapy (and specifically the cognitive aspects of the integrative ways of working) is to bring about inner transformation and, as a consequence, less dysfunctional behaviour by focusing, selective perception, memory and recall, then perhaps thought suppression might also bring about improved behaviour by the lessening of the harmful effects of toxic rumination. This might indeed be from learned behaviour, and therefore, inhibitory control may actually have a bigger role to play in bringing about inner transformation and higher functioning. Thought suppression could be seen as a form of extinction learning, not from exposure therapy, but perhaps from learning to suppress nasty thoughts.

For more on this subject see my previous post on the FT article.

Noel Bell is a UKCP accredited psychotherapist based in London and can be contacted on 07852407140.