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Is emotional suppression a helpful or unhelpful form of affect regulation when processing traumatic material?
Authors:
DUNN, B.D., DALGLEISH, T. & Brewin, C.
Reference:
British Association for Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapies Annual Conference, Warwick (talk given in symposium)
Year of publication:
2006
CBU number:
6390
Abstract:
A commonly held belief across a range of therapies is that the suppression of felt and expressed emotions is unhelpful and may inadvertently exacerbate rather than reduce negative affect. For example, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT: Hayes et al., 2003) conceptualizes the maintenance of mental health difficulties as in part resulting from unhealthy attempts to escape and avoid emotion. Similarly, the recognition and willingness to experience previously avoided or denied emotion is also believed to be central to therapeutic progress in a range of third generation cognitive therapies, including Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT: Linehan, 1993) and Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy (Segal, Williams & Teasdale, 2001). While there is reasonable empirical support for the negative 'rebound' consequences of thought suppression (Wegner, 1997) in healthy and clinical populations (for a review see Purdon, 1999), the assumption that emotional suppression is potentially counter-productive has yet to be empirically validated in detail. This presentation will describe recent studies from our laboratory examining the consequences of suppressing felt and expressed emotional responses to traumatic material. Our methodology involved asking healthy participants to watch a video trauma induction of the real life aftermath of road traffic accidents, either under emotional suppression, acceptance or control conditions. We examined the impact of these conditions on subsequent emotional responses and memory for the trauma material. In addition, the relationship between the trait tendency to use thought or emotional suppression and how individuals responded to the trauma video was examined in the control group. How well the findings from these studies support the commonly held therapist belief that it is helpful to discourage clients suppressing unwanted affect will be discussed and tentative clinical implications considered.
