Bottling up feelings 'beneficial' after trauma
Monday, 02 Jun 2008 09:56
Talking about feelings after a traumatic event may not be beneficial in long-run
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Bottling up feelings after a traumatic experience such as a terrorist attack could be more beneficial in the long run, according to new research.
Dr Mark Seery from the University at Buffalo says encouraging people to talk about experiences may make them more likely to suffer negative mental and physical health symptoms over time.
He argues that the findings have important implications for how people should respond to a collective trauma affecting a whole community or nation.
His study investigated the mental and physical effects of the September 11th terrorist attacks on people who were exposed to the tragedy but who did not experience a direct loss of a friend or family member.
Their responses to the event were recorded immediately after the attack and during the following two years.
In an online survey respondents were given the chance to express their thoughts and feelings on September 11th and a few days afterward.
The researchers then compared people who chose to express their thoughts and feelings versus those who chose not to express.
They found that people who chose not to talk about their feelings were better off in the long run than those who chose to discuss how they felt.
When the researchers looked only at people who chose to express their thoughts and feelings and tested the length of their responses they discovered that people who expressed more were worse off than people who expressed less.
Presenting the findings, Dr Seery drew attention to the shootings at Virginia Tech University last year where some psychiatrists encouraged students to express their feelings immediately after the event.
"This perfectly exemplifies the assumption in popular culture, and even in clinical practice, that people need to talk in order to overcome a collective trauma," Dr Seery said.
"Instead, we should be telling people there is likely nothing wrong if they do not want to express their thoughts and feelings after experiencing a collective trauma. In fact, they can cope quite successfully and, according to our results, are likely to be better off than someone who does want to express his or her feelings."
The study is published in the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology.