Suppressing Emotions

​A lot of people use avoidant coping strategies like suppression, which absolutely do not work, because they take too much energy. Pushing something down that already exists in your body and your nervous system is exhausting and you can’t do it for long. After a while, the act of pushing it down and trying to suppress it is going to arouse you further, so there’s going to be a rebound. The other thing is you become more and more sensitive to what it is you’re avoiding. It looks more and more dangerous, because you never have a corrective experience of engaging this stimulus and finding out that you can deal with it. It’s kind of a terrible circular trap.