Suppressing Emotions and Borderline Personality Disorder

Many people with borderline personality disorder (BPD) will report that they spend a lot of time and energy suppressing emotions. If you have ever had an intense thought or feeling that you couldn't handle in the moment and tried to push away, you have experienced emotional suppression. Research shows that not only is it ineffective in eliminating thoughts and feelings, but it may even worsen the situation.

Suppressing Emotions 

Emotional suppression is a type of emotional regulation strategy that is used to try and make uncomfortable, overwhelming thoughts and feelings more manageable. There are many different emotion regulation strategies and some are more helpful than others.

For example, some people use meditation or mindfulness techniques to handle intense feelings, helping them relax and cope healthily. Others turn to alcohol or drugs to get rid of painful emotions. While this may work as an emotion regulation strategy in the short term, it definitely has negative long-term consequences.

Suppressing emotions, or just trying to push emotional thoughts and feelings out of your mind, is an emotion regulation strategy many people use.

Consequences

Researchers have studied what happens when you try to push away thoughts and feelings for decades. A famous 1987 study on this topic involved one group of people who were instructed to push away thoughts of a white bear.

The other group was allowed to think about anything, including thoughts about a white bear. The group who had suppressed thoughts of a white bear actually ended up having more white bear thoughts than the group that had been allowed to think freely.

This result is called the rebound effect of thought suppression. Essentially, if you try to push away a thought on some topic, you will end up having more thoughts about that topic. The same effect happens when you try to push away emotional thoughts.

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What This Means for You

If you frequently try to push away thoughts and feelings, you may be making more trouble for yourself. In fact, it's possible that this is setting up a vicious cycle: You have a painful emotion. You try to push it away. This leads to more painful emotions, which you try to push away and so on.

Some researchers believe emotional suppression may be a reason that people with psychological conditions such as BPD, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and​ obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) struggle with so many painful thoughts and emotions.

Strategies for Emotion Regulation

The solution to suppressing emotions is to learn new, healthier ways to regulate your emotions. If you have lots of techniques to rely on, you're less likely to resort to pushing those thoughts away. For example, distracting yourself from an emotion by engaging in another activity may be a more effective way to regulate your emotions.

Dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) can also be helpful. The main goals of DBT involve teaching people how to live in the moment, tolerate distress, and improve relationships. One study showed that DBT significantly improved emotional regulation after 12 months.

A Word From Verywell

If you suppress your emotions, there's a good chance you're adding even more distress to your life in the long term. It can be a hard habit to break if you've been using it to help you cope with pain. Reaching out to a licensed mental health professional can be key to helping you learn new coping strategies so you can deal with your discomfort in healthier ways.