Difficult emotions—fear, sadness, anger, shame—are part of being human. They are informative and serve a purpose, but they are also painful to experience. We often try to manage these feelings by pushing them down or distracting ourselves until they fade. While emotion suppression can offer short-term relief, research consistently shows that it often creates more problems than it solves.
Why Suppression Doesn’t Work
Emotion suppression is like taking the batteries out of a smoke detector when a fire starts in your house. It may stop the alarm from blaring, but the fire is still spreading. Suppression quiets the signal, not the source.
Studies by James Gross and colleagues (a leading researcher on emotion regulation) show that suppression:
- Increases physiological stress (elevated heart rate, tension)
- Reduces memory and concentration
- Can intensify negative emotions later
- Impairs social connection, because others sense something is off
- Does not reduce the emotional experience itself in the long run
In short: Emotion suppression quiets the alarm but doesn’t put out the fire. To truly work with difficult emotions, we need strategies that help us understand and respond to the underlying problem—not mute it.
Adaptive Strategies for Working With Difficult Emotions
Here are two evidence-based approaches—validation and mindfulness—and exactly how to use them in real life.
- Validation: Acknowledging the Feeling Without Fueling It
Validation means acknowledging that your emotional reaction makes sense given the situation, your history, or your values. It’s a foundation of Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT), which has extensive research support for helping people manage intense emotions.
How to Use It:
- Name the emotion
- “I’m feeling really overwhelmed right now.”
- Labelling emotions reduces amygdala activity—your brain becomes less reactive.
- Identify why it makes sense
- “This is a lot to handle at once.”
- “Anyone in this situation would feel stressed.”
- Offer yourself supportive language
- “It’s okay that I feel this way. I can work with it.”
Validation doesn’t mean you like the emotion or agree with it—it simply recognizes the emotion as a normal signal. This allows your nervous system to settle enough to choose your next step instead of reacting impulsively.
- Mindfulness: Making Space for the Emotion
Mindfulness-based strategies—used in ACT, MBSR, and many CBT adaptations—help you feel emotions without getting swept away by them.
How to Use It:
- Pause and breathe
Take one slow breath. This activates the parasympathetic nervous system. - Notice where the emotion shows up in the body
- Tight chest
- Knotted stomach
- Warm face
Describe sensations neutrally, like a scientist observing.
- Create space around the feeling
Imagine the emotion as a wave: it rises, peaks, and falls. You don’t have to “fix” it—just let it move. - Return attention to the present moment
Anchor with something sensory: your feet on the ground, your breath, or a sound in the room.
Mindfulness doesn’t get rid of emotions; it helps you carry them more skillfully.
Putting It All Together
Working with difficult emotions means responding to the “fire” rather than disabling the alarm. Suppression may feel easier in the moment, but it leaves us less resilient and more overwhelmed later. Validation and mindfulness, in contrast, help us meet emotions with clarity and compassion—allowing the feelings to pass and giving us the space to act in ways we choose.
References:
Butler, E. A., Egloff, B., Wilhelm, F. H., Smith, N. C., Erickson, E. A., & Gross, J. J. (2003). The social consequences of expressive suppression. Emotion, 3(1), 48–67.
Gross, J. J. (1998). Antecedent- and response-focused emotion regulation: Divergent effects on emotion. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74(1), 224–237.
Gross, J. J. (2002). Emotion regulation: Affective, cognitive, and social consequences. Psychophysiology, 39(3), 281–291.
Roberts, N. A., Levenson, R. W., & Gross, J. J. (2008). Cardiovascular costs of emotion suppression across ethnic lines. International Journal of Psychophysiology, 70(1), 82–87.
Authored by:
Dr. Susan Sergeant is a Clinical Psychologist and an Associate Director at The Mindful Living Centre who works with adults and adolescents.
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