Can Suppressing Emotions Cause Memory Loss?

We all face daily experiences that challenge the ability to control our emotions. Whether your kids seem determined to drive you crazy, or maybe your boss is making your day far more difficult than it needs to be, emotions can become intense and difficult to manage.

The resulting stress can bring on a strong urge to blow off steam or unleash a stream of rage. But as a caring parent and a loyal employee, you take a deep breath and think about the upcoming weekend or your next vacation. You manage to suppress these intense emotions, avoiding a potential major conflict. You may even feel good about exhibiting grace under fire.

This mastery over your emotions is a good thing, right?

Yes, and no.

Acting out in anger is certainly not a sign of optimum mental health or self-control, and it can have negative effects on social functioning.

However, some research has indicated that continually suppressing one’s emotions appears to be associated with an increased risk of developing dementia, according to the Alzheimer’s Association.

What are suppressed emotions?

We all have distressing thoughts or feelings from time to time. Often, we flush them from our consciousness to comfort the mind and maintain composure.

Whether we recognize it or not, we are suppressing our emotions with this thought purification exercise. Suppressed emotions can best be defined as actively ushering bad sentiments or memories from your mind.

In many cases, this type of suppression may seem appropriate and beneficial. For example, you may become enraged because someone cut you off in traffic, only to learn a short time later that the driver was rushing a heart attack victim to the hospital.

So, you throttle back your emotions with the realization that you may have done the same thing in a similar situation.

But research suggests that continually suppressing emotions may not be a totally healthy coping mechanism. It can increase stress levels, which have long been associated with a higher risk of heart disease and hypertension. People who constantly suppress emotions may also find themselves feeling numb or disconnected from others.

A Finnish population-based study involving 1,137 people, mostly elderly, asked participants to describe how they usually respond to adverse events in life. Individuals who reportedly suppressed their emotions from others had approximately five times higher risk of developing dementia when compared to those who didn’t suppress their emotions.

How to regulate your emotions without suppressing them

So, what should we do with our emotions? The key is understanding emotional regulation, which differs from emotional suppression.

We have a complex system of emotions. Some are better at effectively controlling them than others. Those who do it well are able to modulate intense feelings so that they’re not intolerable to the point where they are either suppressed or uncontrollably expressed.

This can be accomplished through a wide range of approaches, including creating space in our psyches for our emotions by learning to insert a pause between what triggers the emotion and our response.

Practicing self-compassion and mindfulness are also important techniques.

It’s also important to note that while you shouldn’t necessarily be fearful of people and events that bring on negative emotions, you don’t have to repeatedly place yourself in situations that fuel them.

Regulating emotions takes practice, but most people can learn to be successful at it. The better we understand how our emotional system functions, the better we can be at managing our emotions in a healthy manner.