Authors:

DUNN, B. D., Billotti, D., Quarmby, L., Meyer, M., Brewin, C. & DALGLEISH, T.

Reference:

Year of publication:

2007

CBU number:

6512

Abstract:

A central 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. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT: Hayes et al., 2003) considers mental health difficulties are maintained in part by attempts to escape and avoid emotion. Similarly, in other third generation cognitive therapies there is an increasing emphasis on the recognition and processing of previously denied or avoided emotion, for example in both Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT: Linehan, 1993) and Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy (Segal, Williams & Teasdale, 2001). While there has been detailed empirical examination for the '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 (n = 30 in each condition). We examined the impact of these conditions on subsequent emotional responses and memory for the trauma material. In a second study (n = 40), the association between the trait tendency to use thought or emotional suppression and how individuals responded to the trauma video when given no emotion regulation instructions was examined. 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. ReferencesHayes, S. C., Strosahl, K. D., & Wilson, K. G. (2003). Acceptance and Commitment Therapy: An Experiential Approach to Behaviour Change: Guilford Press.Linehan, M.M. (1993) Cognitive behavioural treatment of borderline personality disorder. New York: Guildford Press.Purdon, C. (1999). Thought suppression and psychopathology. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 37, 1029 - 1054.Segal, Z. V., Williams, M. G., & Teasdale, J. D. (2001). Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy for Depression: A New Approach to Preventing Relapse: Guildford Press.