Holding it in vs seeing it differently

Holding it in, or seeing it another way

The yellow line is a day you simply felt it. The grey line is a day you held it in. You looked fine on the outside, but the wave inside is exactly the same as the yellow one. The green line is a day you thought “Something must have come up,” and the wave itself got smaller. Seeing an event differently shrinks the wave more than pushing the feeling down.

Why?Experiments found that holding a feeling in keeps your face calm, but the feeling stays the same and your body gets even more tense. While you work hard to hold it in, you may also remember less of what happened. Seeing it another way works earlier, while you are taking in the event, before the feeling grows.

Go furtherJames Gross at Stanford University calls the first one suppression and the second one reappraisal. In a 2003 study, people who often used reappraisal had better moods and relationships, and people who often used suppression had the opposite. Sometimes you do need to hold back, but always pushing feelings down has a cost.