Anxiety & stress
Repression vs. suppression: What’s the difference?
Learn the key differences in repression and suppression, including signs, examples, emotional effects, and healthier ways to process emotions.
By Ryan DeCook, LCSW • Clinically reviewed by Caitlin Pugh, LCSW
My client shifted in his seat and looked uncomfortable as I gently pointed out a pattern I was noticing. Then, his face went blank as he changed the subject. I could tell that this was too painful for him to talk about at that moment.
Some emotions, thoughts, and memories are hard to tolerate. That can make them easy to ignore, push aside, or keep out of our awareness. Sometimes this happens on purpose. That's suppression. Sometimes it happens with no awareness at all. That's repression.
If that sounds familiar, this guide covers what repression and suppression are, how they differ, their signs, and healthier ways to process what comes up.
Key insights
1
Emotional suppression is a conscious choice to push aside or not share a feeling you're aware of — useful in short bursts, like pausing a reaction in a meeting, but it doesn't lower the intensity of the emotion, only how much of it you show.
2
Emotional repression is unconscious: the mind buries distressing thoughts, emotions, or memories — often after trauma — before you're ever aware of them. It tends to surface indirectly as memory gaps, avoidance you can't explain, emotional numbness, or physical symptoms like muscle tension and headaches.
3
Both can be worked through by building awareness — and a licensed therapist can help you approach buried or avoided emotions safely.
What is repression?
Repression is an unconscious psychological defense mechanism that protects you from overwhelming or distressing thoughts, emotions, or memories. These get pushed out of your awareness.
It’s not something that you do intentionally. The brain finds a way to bury these internal experiences that otherwise feel unbearable. Repressed memories often show up after trauma or experiencing emotions that feel like too much to handle.
Signs of repression
Here are what the signs of repressed emotions tend to look like:
- Unexplained physical symptoms: Emotions and memories that get pushed down can rise back up in the body. High blood pressure, increased heart rate, muscle tension, headaches, stomach issues, and chronic pain are some of the most common symptoms.
- Memory gaps or difficulty recalling experiences: Painful memories can be harder to recall. They may feel blocked entirely, or just take longer to come back to you.
- Difficulty managing emotions: It can be hard to notice and regulate your emotions. Less awareness creates less control.
- Avoidance behaviors: If you tend toward repression, you may report feeling less anxious or depressed, but show more avoidance than you realize. Without realizing it, you often step away from things that might cause intense emotions.
- Depression and emotional numbness: Long-term repression can increase the risk of depression. It can also show up as numbing or feeling less, especially during times of distress.
What is suppression?
Suppression also pushes away and avoids uncomfortable internal experiences, but it is a choice. Usually, you are consciously aware certain feelings or memories are coming up and you intentionally set them aside or decide to not share them.
This can help in certain situations to keep your composure or not act inappropriately, but ongoing suppressed emotions can lead to difficulties.
Signs of suppression
- Depression, anxiety, and mood swings: Suppression can make it harder to manage emotions. Suppression is linked to increased risk of depression and anxiety.
- Difficulty expressing emotions: Suppression cuts back on sharing emotions, but it doesn’t typically reduce how intense the feelings are inside.
- Avoidance: You may tend to avoid expressing your emotions or choose to avoid experiencing your difficult emotions, thoughts, or memories. This internal avoidance can look like distraction, substance use, or other compulsive behaviors.
- Physical tension or stress-related symptoms: Stress can show up as muscle tension, higher blood pressure, more cortisol (a stress hormone), and fatigue.
- Difficulty maintaining relationships: Suppression can lead to more challenges with communication and isolation. It is also linked to lower relationship satisfaction.
Why does repression occur?
There are a few reasons that the mind may unconsciously try to protect itself from distress and overwhelming emotions. These include:
- Trauma or distressing experiences: Trauma is thought to be the foundational reason for repression. When a traumatic event happens, it is so distressing that the memory gets pushed to a deep place where it’s not accessible anymore.
- Overwhelming emotions that feel difficult to process: With repression, your mind reacts to a threat before you're even aware of it. If a feeling threatens your stability or self-image, it gets pushed away. Repression is considered an evolution of that instinct to run away from danger, even though the threat is internal.
- Social or cultural conditioning around emotional expression: If your family, culture, or community treated emotions as weakness, or modeled pushing feelings down, repression may have felt like the safest way to fit in.
- Early experiences where emotions felt unsafe or invalidated: Maybe your parents were emotionally distant, or they brushed off and shut down your feelings when you showed them.
If you ever experience overwhelming emotions or reactions that make you believe you are unsafe or in a crisis, you can reach out to a crisis line such as 988.
Key differences between repression and suppression
| Repression | Suppression | |
|---|---|---|
| Awareness | Unconscious: You don't know you're pushing the thought, emotion, or memory away. | Conscious: You are aware of the unwanted thought or emotion and deliberately push it away. |
| Voluntary vs. involuntary processes | Automatic: It happens without you meaning to. | Deliberate: This requires effort and choice. |
| Access to emotions and memories | The material stays mostly out of reach, though it can surface indirectly. | The suppressed material comes back easily, often more intensely than before. |
| Effect on emotional experience | Can make you feel less distressed than you actually are. | Doesn't reduce how intense the feeling is. It only reduces how much you show it. |
| Causes and origins | Often starts young, with caregivers who weren't emotionally there for you. Over time it becomes automatic. | You learn suppression partly by watching your parents. If you experienced childhood mistreatment, you may suppress more, and find it harder to shift your mindset in healthy ways. |
| Potential mental health impact over time | Repression can feel protective at first with less distress in the moment. Over time, though, it raises the risk of nervous system strain, irregular cortisol, and physical symptoms. | Linked to more depression and anxiety, and lower life satisfaction. It works both ways: Suppressing makes symptoms worse, and worse symptoms lead to more suppressing. |
In practice, suppression can be useful in short bursts: pausing a reaction in a meeting, or setting worry aside to listen to your partner. Repression isn't something you choose, so there's no "right time" to use it. The most useful step is recognizing it's happening at all.
Repression and suppression examples
Here are a few repression examples and suppression examples, and how each one could show up in real life:
Examples of repression
- Childhood trauma that is difficult to consciously recall: An adult who was abused as a child may have no access to the memories. They may still have ongoing muscle tension, stomach issues, and headaches. They may avoid situations that resemble the abuse, without knowing why.
- Repressed fears linked to distressing experiences: Someone develops an intense fear of small, enclosed spaces — like where their trauma happened. They have no recollection of the traumatic event, just the intense fear and avoidance behaviors.
- Emotional repression after significant loss or stress: After a loved one's death, someone says they feel little grief or depression. But they have ongoing muscle tension and headaches that disrupt their sleep.
Examples of suppression
- Deliberately distracting yourself from stressful thoughts: After receiving bad news, a person turns their attention to a task to avoid thinking about it. When the distraction ends, the suppressed thoughts come back with even more intensity.
- Postponing worry to focus on responsibilities: A nurse sets her personal stress aside during a shift so she can focus on her patients. This is a choice that takes effort and does not reduce the actual intensity of the underlying emotions.
- Avoiding emotional triggers temporarily: After a breakup, someone avoids certain songs, places, or photos. They are aware of the pain, but are intentionally trying to avoid feeling and expressing the emotions.
How to deal with repression and suppression
Here are some helpful ways to deal with repression and suppression:
Journaling and emotional reflection
Writing or talking about your emotional experiences can ease the negative feelings that come with suppression. It can also support you in working through repression. It can help build awareness and is most helpful when it involves acceptance of an experience rather than just venting.
Mindfulness and meditation to increase emotional awareness
Mindfulness practices help you to be present with your feelings, thoughts, and bodily sensations without judging them, trying to change them, or pushing them away. This can help gradually reduce suppressing or avoiding your internal experiences.
Cognitive reappraisal
This means changing how you interpret situations that bring up strong emotions. Doing so can reduce the emotional impact and make you less likely to push away your emotions.
Seeking professional support through therapy
A trained therapist can help you work through the urge to push feelings and memories away. Therapy can help you build more awareness, skills, and comfort in tolerating your thoughts, emotions, and memories.
Find support for emotional processing
Repression and suppression are protective coping skills. They develop over time, often for good reason — but they come with a cost. They may serve you well in certain moments, and still, if you're noticing these patterns shaping your life in ways you don't want, it may be time to look at them more closely.
That kind of work takes time, and it's easier with support. A licensed mental health professional can help you explore your emotions and avoidance patterns safely, and build healthier ways to process what surfaces.
Headway's directory connects you with licensed therapists who accept insurance. You can search by insurance and specialty, confirm your coverage, and see a therapist's availability before you book.
This content is for general informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute clinical, legal, financial, or professional advice. All decisions should be made at the discretion of the individual or organization, in consultation with qualified clinical, legal, or other appropriate professionals.
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