Emotional Inf lexibility 133
Essentially, they needlessly breed negative thoughts and
bring about anxious or even depressive mood states. Both
also decrease your problem-solving abilities, sap your moti-
vation, and make your friends and family less willing to lend
you support. By increasing your awareness and mindfulness
of triggers or cues that lead to worry and rumination, you
may be able to reduce the consequences of repetitive nega-
tive thinking.
SUPPR ESSION
Have you ever tried not to think about something?
Perhaps you had a bad day at work and you wanted to avoid
any thoughts or feelings associated with the day. Or maybe
you witnessed a horrific accident that you don’t ever want to
think about again. If so, you may have utilized an emotion
regulation strategy known as suppression. Suppression refers
to a conscious attempt to stop thinking about a particular
thought, situation, or event. Suppression has been shown to
increase not only physiological reactivity (via the sympa-
thetic nervous system, which controls the fight- or- f light
response) but anxiety itself. Indeed, studies have shown that
when subjects were specifically asked to suppress thoughts
about anxiety- producing situations, not only did their
thoughts not go away, but they reported feeling more anxious
(Roemer and Borkovec 1994). Other research has shown
that repeated suppression of emotionally evocative thoughts
might make managing future anxiety- related thoughts more
difficult (Wenzlaff and Wegner 2000). This is because long-
term use of suppression as an emotion regulation strategy
hinders your ability to learn how to appropriately manage
and cope with your emotions over time.