Rather than recalling and focusing on fearful thoughts, it might sometimes be useful to avoid these imaginings to boost our well-being and avoid symptoms of mental health conditions like depression or PTSD
By Carissa Wong
20 September 2023
It might sometimes be better to suppress anxiety-inducing thoughts
AleksandarNakic/E+/Getty Images
Clearing the mind of fearful thoughts, rather than processing them, may sometimes be good for our mental health.
In the late 1980s, scientists found that people who were first asked to avoid thinking about white bears, and later to think about them, had more thoughts about the animals than people who were only asked to think about white bears. This led to the common belief that blocking out unwanted thoughts ironically causes them to reoccur more often.
As a result, some forms of therapy aim to boost mental health by guiding people to recall and explore difficult experiences rather than suppress them.
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Now, Zulkayda Mamat and Michael Anderson at the University of Cambridge have found that some forms of thought suppression can actually be helpful.
“When you avoid a thought by doing or thinking of something else, yes, you tend to attract that thought again,” says Mamat. “But we found that suppressing thoughts by making sure your mind is without any thought – for example by imagining a blank space or imagining pushing that thought out of your mind – can be beneficial.”