Repression meaning in psychology

Share on Pinterest Repressed emotions refer to Say you and your partner have a fight and decide to Suppression can sometimes be a good short-term solution, as long as you make sure to address those emotions sooner rather than later. Repressed emotions, on the other hand, don’t get a chance to be processed. But that doesn’t mean they simply disappear. Instead, they might show up as a range of psychological or physical symptoms. Emotional repression often relates to childhood experiences. Much of what children learn about behavior and So, you’ll probably feel pretty comfortable expressing your emotions if your caregivers: • frequently talked about their feelings • encouraged you to share how experiences made you feel • normalized your positive and negative emotional experiences • didn’t judge or criticize your emotional expressions Adults with repressed emotions often feel out of touch or disconnected from their feelings because they had a different childhood experience. For example, you might be more likely to repress emotions if your caregivers: • rarely showed emotion or talked about their feelings • shamed or punished you for expressing your emotions • told you your emotions were wrong or denied your experience If showing your feelings in childhood led to distressing or painful outcomes, you probably learned it was much safer to avoid this entirely. As an adult, you might continue to bury strong emotions without realizing what you’re doing. You might also notice you tend...

Repressed Meaning Lots of people are interested in the concept of repression in psychology. But, this term has different meanings. This article covers a specific form of repression that has implications for your health. We also cover some techniques for responding to repression. Repress Definition Repression involves hiding or blocking negative feelings and thoughts to keep a positive self-image (1). Repression occurs in different ways. Here are a couple of examples: • Worrying how people see you and telling them 'I'm fine' while fighting to hide negative emotions. • Avoiding discussions with other people about their psychological difficulties to maintain a positive exterior. We can think of repression as a coping style. 'Repressors' experience minimal distress but high physical (physiological) arousal (e.g., racing heart, feeling 'on-edge') (2). In this way, the link between the body and brain gets disconnected. People who repress are mentally on-guard for internal 'threats' (negative thoughts, feelings, physical sensations). Once detected, these threats are avoided through various thinking strategies (3). Some link repression to health problems ranging from heart disease to cancer (4, 5, 6). These consequences suggest the need to reduce repressive coping. Repress synonym Several psychological concepts link to repression. For example, issues involving self-image concerns, such as Definition of Repressive Other meanings of repression exist. Sigmund Freud used the term abou...

Key points • People’s habitual way of dealing with anger falls into one of two sets of patterns—externalising it or internalising it. • As people who repress anger divert their anger toward themselves, they often suffer from depression, anxiety, and somatisation. • When a person represses anger, they may find that many of their other desirable feelings also get numbed out. Anger is a natural emotion and has to be processed in one way or the other. Normally, people’s habitual way of dealing with anger falls into one of two sets of patterns—externalising it or internalising it. When these patterns are held in a rigid way or used excessively, there can be detrimental health consequences. Internalised anger is also known as repressed anger, and it can take different forms. In this article, we will discuss what causes people to repress anger. When people think of anger, externalised forms of anger often come to mind—someone shouting, hitting something, or acting in an aggressive way. Therefore, many people mistakenly equate anger with Externalised anger is not always unhealthy. Healthy expression of anger can help us set boundaries, assert our rights and protect ourselves. People who do not internalise or repress their anger know it when they feel it. Once they have expressed their anger, either through speech or behaviours, the feeling leaves their system. It does not get stuck in the body, remain stuck, or fester. For people who repress their anger, however, the opposite happ...

Section snippets The debate about repressed memories and traumatic forgetting So far, several contrasting theoretical explanations have been proposed based on studies aiming to understand how memory works when people deal with traumatic experiences. However, the origins of the memory wars can partially be traced back to different subfields in psychology that argue in favour or against the notion of repressed memory (e.g., Dodier, 2019). According to the psychodynamic approach, the concept of repressed memories is rooted in Sigmund Freud’s (1893); Breuer & Freud (1895) Does the debate continue? Some scholars have argued that the memory wars have declined (e.g., Barden, 2016; McHugh, 2003). However, recent evidence suggests that the memory wars continue today—that scientists and practitioners often do not agree on the concept of repressed memories or dissociative amnesia. For example, Patihis et al. (2014) found that there was belief in repressed memories in a significant percentage of both practitioners and the public. Several additional lines of evidence point towards the conclusion Data collection The study was preregistered on the Open Science Framework: https://osf.io/a7k63. We searched publications on Scopus and Web of Science (WoS), the two largest databases of peer-reviewed publications (Guz & Rushchitsky, 2009). Both searches were conducted on February 07, 2022. In line with Dodier (2019), for the search carried out on WoS we used a three-step process. We first cond...

Rationalization is a defense mechanism in which people justify difficult or unacceptable feelings with seemingly logical reasons and explanations. For example, a student who is rejected from her dream college may explain that she’s happy to be attending a school that’s less competitive and more welcoming. Or after a The concept of Many instances of rationalization can be relatively harmless. Producing a rationale that makes yourself feel better, even if it’s not completely honest, is sometimes a helpful coping strategy. But rationalization can harm mental health if it becomes a frequent pattern or prevents someone from moving forward in life, personally or professionally. In these instances, it can be valuable to make the A therapist can help a patient acknowledge and accept difficult truths, overcome patterns that hold them back, take responsibility for past mistakes so they don’t happen again, and forge stronger relationships. Accepting the truth leads to the possibility of change and growth. The idea of sour grapes is said to derive from one of Aesop’s fables, The Fox and the Grapes, in which a fox repeatedly jumps toward a branch on a tree, trying to eat a bunch of grapes just out of reach. He eventually gives up and says, “I am sure the grapes are sour.” A “sweet lemons” rationalization in that situation would be something like, “There will be juicer grapes in the next orchard.” A therapist may observe instances in which a person consistently offers seemingly confusin...

Emotions are part of who we are; however, many of us have a difficult relationship with negative emotions. We consider them uncomfortable and problematic. As a species, we are primed to avoid pain and suffering to ensure our survival. Cue: enter ‘emotional repression.’ Emotional repression is all about avoiding emotional suffering. It is a coping style used to hide and push away negative emotions. Emotional repression can be thought of as a defense mechanism, where people defend themselves from the negatives and focus instead on the positive aspects of who they are (Garssen, 2007). It differs from emotional suppression, which is a one-off act of avoiding negative emotions, rather than a habitual coping strategy (Garssen, 2007). Before you continue reading, we thought you might like to This Article Contains: • • • • • • • Why Do People Repress Their Emotions? Emotional repression can occur due to growing up in an environment where little or no room was given to experience and express emotions. Societal narratives and family myths may have dictated that emotions are wrong, shameful, or a sign of weakness. We may have been raised by primary caregivers who never expressed or displayed As children, we internalize the messages we hear and learn that having negative emotions and acknowledging them is not a good thing. Furthermore, not having someone model how to express and cope with emotions may lead to the development of coping strategies that focus on avoiding and inhibiting n...