The actual research is wild. Every time you push down a feeling, your brain has to choose between suppressing that emotion and recording what’s happening around you. It picks the suppression. The memory doesn’t get saved.
A 2000 Stanford study confirmed this: people told to hide their emotions while watching a film remembered far fewer details than people who just reacted naturally. Suppressing emotions uses up mental energy, and that leaves less brain power for saving new memories.
Brain scans show why. A 2012 study found that suppression quiets the hippocampus (your brain’s memory-recording center) right when it should be saving information. The two brain regions that normally team up to lock in memories stop talking to each other.
Over time it gets worse. Suppression keeps cortisol (the stress hormone) elevated, and cortisol shrinks the hippocampus. Chronically stressed people can lose 10 to 15% of its volume. Just three weeks of high cortisol can shrink the tiny connection points between brain cells by about 20%. The good news: studies show this shrinkage can partially reverse once stress levels drop. Not necessarily permanent.
A Finnish study of 1,137 older adults tracked over roughly a decade found that habitual emotion suppressors had nearly 5x the risk of developing dementia, even after controlling for genetics, smoking, obesity, and education.
There’s a better way to handle emotions that doesn’t cost you your memory. It’s called cognitive reappraisal: instead of bottling the feeling, you reframe what’s causing it. (“This meeting isn’t a threat, it’s practice.”) A 2003 Stanford/UC Berkeley study found reappraisers had more positive emotion, better relationships, and higher wellbeing. Suppressors got the opposite on every measure. And reappraisal carries zero memory cost.
The difference comes down to timing. Suppression kicks in after the emotion has already fired, so your brain is fighting its own response while simultaneously trying to record the moment. Reappraisal changes how you interpret the situation before the emotion fully activates. Same event, same person, but your hippocampus stays free to do its actual job: recording your life.
@Patriotic_Maria @tsalison80@itsrosesm regardless of your politics this is one of the most down to earth level headed things i’ve read. if everyone acted like this the entire world would be okay regardless of what was happening. i’m guilty of the opposite aswell, we all are… but you’re doing gods work👍
@GitReal1960@Gregory99327937@0x69bandO@IndianaGPA so did the guy who put her in that situation. i feel somewhat bad for her because im sure he was using her as a driver but she's actually retarded for doing it.
@twan317@MattTugger@0x69bandO@IndianaGPA did you actually just ask what’s the difference between tires and windows? i think that might genuinely be the most retarded sentence i’ve ever seen typed out and then posted
@Mappy6984 good fucking lord i broke my leg clean in half both bones at the shin but they drugged me up and it still hurt so bad but jesus christ thinking about this makes me just cringe up my entire body she should be knocked out
@Dkmoney120@rowdyamerican69@DefiantLs we deported 170 american citizens in the last 6 months? you have to answer this or you’re admitting you’re a retard btw
@DefiantLs so smug and retarded it actually hurts to watch. these people will be fucked if the civil war they want to happen ever actually does… these are the frontline soldiers
@5tillfree@faustianwigger@AutismCapital it got the only non jewish person named arrested in a country that lets rapists and murderers go free because they aren’t even actual citizens😁👍
I'm glad to see people standing up for those of us with neurological disabilities. But where was the support when I got called racist because my autistic hyperfixation was lurking for opps in their hood and my stim was fingerfucking the binary trigger when I caught them niggas?