Increased suppression of negative and positive emotions in major depression

Fears of Negative Emotions in Relation to Fears of Happiness, Compassion,Alexithymia and Psychopathology in a Depressed Population: A Preliminary Study

“…In a recent study in a student population, Gilbert et al [21] found that fear of happiness is strongly correlated with depression. Beblo et al [9] also found that fear and suppression (inhibiting the outward signs of inner feelings) of positive and negative emotions were linked to depressive symptoms. The authors highlight the importance of not only encouraging patients to participate in enjoyable situations but actually practicing allowing one to feel pleasant emotions.…”

“…An increasing number of studies has also found that some people can have a fear of 'positive emotions', such as feeling safeness, happiness, and affiliative emotions associated with compassion [9,[20][21][22]. Arieti and Bemporad [23] suggested that some depressed patients have what they called 'a taboo on pleasure' and are fearful of positive emotions.…”

“…There is increasing evidence that fear of 'so called' negative or aversive emotions are significantly associated with psychological difficulties [4][5][6][7][8][9]. We are using the term 'negative emotions' here for ease of exposition but of course many of these emotions have positive functions, are important for healthy functioning and the avoidance of danger and harm.…”

Changes in acceptance and suppression of negative and positive emotions in patients with depressive disorders: a longitudinal study

“…They concluded that reappraisal, problem solving and acceptance are the most intensely studied adaptive regulatory strategies, while suppression, avoidance and rumination are the most intensely studied risk factors for psychopathology. However, attention has been shifting recently to the necessity of exploring different regulatory strategies (for example, acceptance and suppression) separately for negative and positive emotions [23,24].…”

“…Existing studies investigated this in groups of depressive as well as borderline personality disordered patients [23][24][25]. Despite the fact that the groups were suffering from different mental disorders, no clear differences could be found in the characteristics of their emotion regulation deficiencies.…”