The Art of Thought Suppression

“The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another.” ― William James

There has been an ongoing debate in psychotherapeutic circles over how to help people cope with intrusive negative thoughts. The cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) camp developed thought-stopping techniques to aid clients in ridding them of unwanted and anxiety-producing thoughts. The opposing view, dating back to the time of Freud and the “suppression leads to pathology” supporters, holds that trying to stop thinking troublesome thoughts by pushing them out of one’s consciousness either leads to negative psychological states or a rebound effect where the thoughts return with greater intensity. The latter view has given rise to the conventional wisdom that psychotherapy clients need to bring these negative thoughts into conscious awareness rather than avoid them.

To the surprise of many, a recent University of Cambridge study found that suppressing negative thoughts not only did not lead to a rebound effect but resulted in an increase in well-being. To push the point further, the researchers discovered that the negative events that participants were trained to suppress were “less vivid, less emotionally anxiety-inducing, than the other events and that overall, participants improved in terms of their mental health.”

As a mental health practitioner and someone who has routinely experienced and been overwhelmed by anxious thoughts, I not only applaud the study, but I also wholeheartedly support the notion that suppressing the nasty, fear-laden, anxiety-producing noise in our heads makes more sense than empowering it through overexposure.

As the Cambridge study points out, COVID-19 has created unprecedented fears and anxieties in a society that was already on the verge of a collective nervous breakdown. The idea that the key to managing the flow of negative worries associated with a life-threatening virus is to push them out of conscious attention is music to many weary ears who grew tired of hearing that they had to tackle them head-on. This seems more in line with the pragmatism of the father of American psychology, William James, who wrote, “The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.”

It’s interesting to note that the word suppress, literally “pressed down,” can mean “to conquer” and “triumph over.” This leads to a sense of achievement and mastery, much more so than the traditional view that psychological suppression is both ineffective and harmful. It is professionally rewarding to inform clients that by refining a skill they are already familiar with, they can claim victory rather than feel defeated.

In therapeutic practice with clients who are oriented toward the “keep it real” and “tackle it head-on” philosophy, I will often point out the countless thoughts they have already pushed aside with no ill side effects. If pressed, I will ask them if they remember how many red lights they had to stop at on the way to my office. In many cases, not only do they not remember how many red lights they stopped at, but they also can’t even recall stopping at all. This, I assure them, is not due to a memory deficit but the mind’s ability to filter out what it finds trivial, meaningless, or harmless.

Contrary to being pathological, this powerful mechanism is essential to living a sane life—it helps protect against information overload. When practiced as the art of what Anna Freud referred to as “motivated forgetting,” it takes the sting out of painful thoughts that continue to thrive on one’s attention—withdraw interest in the thought, and it moves on like passing traffic.

This is the power of mindfulness practice that teaches present-moment awareness and to see thoughts as momentary imaginings rather than firm reality worthy of our undivided attention. It is the essence of a life lived rather than a life thought about.

To assist my psychotherapy clients with “motivated forgetting,” I have developed the following Sanity Prayer:

Grant me the sanity to think the thoughts I have to think,

The courage to let go of the thoughts I do not need,

And the wisdom of not knowing.