GThoughts and feelings must be expressed, otherwise the psyche suffers – psychoanalysts have been working with this basic idea from Sigmund Freud for a good hundred years. It is assumed that those who suppress bad experiences carry them around with them and thereby unconsciously influence their life and well-being.
Scientists have long had evidence that it can be healthy to simply forget things instead of reflecting on them down to the smallest detail. A good two decades ago, a study by British researchers published in Nature showed that traumatized test subjects benefit from consciously learning to repress. The memories of the stressful event faded more and more and disrupted the everyday lives of those affected less and less. US researchers came to a similar conclusion in a 2015 study Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin published study. The test participants were asked to remember a particularly painful situation and were divided into three groups: the first was supposed to relive the situation in as much detail as possible, the second was supposed to look at the situation from a certain distance like an outsider, and the third was supposed to distract themselves with neutral concepts.
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