2023-09-22 10:21:37
A study found that suppressing negative thoughts may be beneficial for your mental health, contradicting the common belief that ignoring these thoughts means that they remain in our subconscious mind, affecting our behavior and well-being.
Researchers from the University of Cambridge at the Medical Research Council’s (MRC) Cognitive and Brain Sciences Unit trained 120 volunteers around the world to suppress thoughts about negative events that were worrying them.
They found that not only did these events become less vivid, but the mental health of those studied also improved.
Professor Michael Anderson said: “We are all familiar with the Freudian idea that if we repress our feelings or thoughts, these thoughts remain in our subconscious, detrimentally affecting our behavior and well-being. The primary goal of psychotherapy is to get rid of these thoughts so that the person can “From dealing with them and taking away their power. In recent years, we have been told that suppressing thoughts is intrinsically ineffective, and that it actually makes people think about thoughts more.”
When Covid-19 emerged in 2020, like many researchers, Professor Anderson wanted to see how his research could be used to help people during the pandemic.
“Because of the pandemic, we were seeing a need in society to help deal with increased anxiety,” said Dr. Zulkayda Mamat, who was at the time a PhD student in Professor Anderson’s lab and at Trinity College, Cambridge. “There was already a mental health crisis, a hidden epidemic of health problems.” mentality, and the situation was getting worse. With this background, we decided to see if we could help people cope better.”
In the study, each person was asked to think about a number of scenarios that might occur in their life over the next two years: 20 negative fears that they feared might happen, and 20 positive hopes and dreams.
In each scenario, they had to provide a keyword and key details.
Each event was evaluated on the basis of a number of points: vividness, likelihood of occurrence, when it will occur in the future, level of anxiety or joy about the event, frequency of thought, degree of current anxiety, long-term impact, and emotional intensity.
Volunteers also completed questionnaires to assess their mental health. Then, via Zoom, Dr. Mamat took each participant through a 20-minute exercise, which included 12 no-visualization trials and 12 visualization trials, in which they were asked to either think clearly, or stop thinking about an event, after being given a cue word.
At the end of the third day of practices, and three months later, the volunteers were asked again to rate each event on vividness, anxiety level and emotional intensity.
According to the study, at both points the volunteers reported that the repressed events were less vivid and less fearful. They also found themselves thinking less about these events.
According to Dr. Mamat: “It was very clear that those events that participants suppressed were less vivid, and less emotionally troubling, than other events, and that participants generally improved in terms of their mental health. But we saw the greatest effect among those participants who were trained to suppress “Suppress fearful thoughts, not neutral thoughts.”
According to the results, suppressing thoughts led to improved mental health among those suffering from PTSD.
Among those with PTSD who suppressed negative thoughts, their negative mental health scores decreased on average by 16%, while their positive mental health scores increased by approximately 10%.
Overall, those with worse mental health symptoms at the start of the study improved more after suppression training, but only if they suppressed their fears.
!function(d,s,id)var js,fjs=d.getItemsByTagName(s);[0];if(!d.getElementById(id))js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=”//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js”;fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);(document,”script”,”twitter-wjs”);”);
//},3000);
}
});
//$(window).bind(‘scroll’);
$(window).scroll(function ()
if (alreadyLoaded_facebookConnect == false)
alreadyLoaded_facebookConnect = true;
// $(window).unbind(‘scroll’);
// console.log(” scroll loaded”);
(function (d, s, id)
var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];
if (d.getElementById(id)) return;
js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id;
js.async = true;
js._https = true;
js.src = “//connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js#xfbml=1&appId=148379388602322”;
fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs);
(document, ‘script’, ‘facebook-jssdk’));
// pre_loader();
// $(window).unbind(‘mousemove’);
//setTimeout(function()
// $(‘#boxTwitter’).html(“Tweets by @tayyar_org”);
//,3000);
var scriptTag = document.createElement(“script”);
scriptTag.type = “text/javascript”
scriptTag.src = ”
scriptTag.async = true;
document.getElementsByTagName(“head”)[0].appendChild(scriptTag);
(function ()
$.getScript(” function () );
);
);
//$(window).load(function ()
// setTimeout(function()
// // add the returned content to a newly created script tag
// var se = document.createElement(‘script’);
// se.type = “text/javascript”;
// //se.async = true;
// se.text = “setTimeout(function() pre_loader(); ,5000); “;
// document.getElementsByTagName(‘body’)[0].appendChild(se);
// ,5000);
//);
1695423122
#Contrary #popular #belief #suppressing #negative #thoughts #beneficial #mental #health