I suppose it wouldn't be that surprising. Mindfulness for instance teaches you to "let go" of thoughts - which is really just a gentle form of suppression. CBT encourages you to redirect existing negative thoughts in a positive/constructive direction - ultimately steering you away from or undermining the original negative thought - but does not encourage you to do a deep dive on it. Not to mention that Freud was a quack who was more prone to speculation than to science, so if traditional psychotherapy is based on his work then it is likely built on sand.
Taken to the opposite extreme, I think it's in some sense obvious that some degree of suppression is actually good for you, precisely because ruminating for long periods of time is clearly bad for you.
From a neurological point of view, why should we see reiterating negative thoughts as any different from reinforcement learning? If we revisit these negative topics, are we not strengthening their presence in our minds?
That said this study does not sound like it proves that suppressing negative thoughts works over a long period of time. The original theory posits that these suppressed thoughts might cause problems even years later when the latest this was followed up was a period of three months. So grains of salt etc.
Taken to the opposite extreme, I think it's in some sense obvious that some degree of suppression is actually good for you, precisely because ruminating for long periods of time is clearly bad for you.
From a neurological point of view, why should we see reiterating negative thoughts as any different from reinforcement learning? If we revisit these negative topics, are we not strengthening their presence in our minds?
That said this study does not sound like it proves that suppressing negative thoughts works over a long period of time. The original theory posits that these suppressed thoughts might cause problems even years later when the latest this was followed up was a period of three months. So grains of salt etc.