There is a popular idea since the time of Freud that suppressing emotion leads you to experience an emotional rebound. The idea is that if you suppress or repress your emotions there are negative emotional consequences later. They will get pent up, build up inside you, and you will later emotionally “explode” with high amounts of anger, frustration, or other emotions.
Dr. Matt B describes research from the past 30 years that uncovers that this effect does not occur for emotions! Like myths about catharsis, there is not pent up emotional energy we need to release.
Suppressing thoughts makes it more difficult to not think about those thoughts (i.e., The White Bear phenomen). But such rebounds do not happen the same way for emotion. Instead, there may be other reasons we experience more of certain emotions if we try to suppress them.
bridgepsych.info has more in depth discussion (including cited research) on how suppressing emotion doesn’t lead to emotional rebound.
