Let’s Not Talk About It

Like many Americans, Mark Seery watched the Virginia Tech school shooting unfold on the cable news networks in April 2007. It wasn't just the catastrophe that disturbed him—it was how some psychologists were advising the campus community to respond in the wake of the devastating tragedy. "There's a sense that's very much alive within the professional community that if people don't talk about what they're feeling, and try and suppress it that somehow it will only rebound down the road and make things worse," says Seery, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Buffalo.

That, says Seery, is one of many examples of situations in which the first response to a tragedy's psychological ramifications is to encourage victims and bystanders to talk about their emotions in the wake of the event. Letting it all out, blowing off steam and getting it off your chest are usually thought of as the healthy and appropriate way to deal with difficult and trying moments, like a school shooting, terrorist attack or other collective trauma. And that idea is constantly reinforced by a battery of television therapists who harp on the importance of sharing your feelings. But is that really the best medicine?

Seery's new research offers an alternative to that philosophy. His work suggests that those who do not reveal their feelings in the wake of a collective trauma turn out just fine, if not better, than those who do. The study, to be published in the June issue of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, followed more than 2,000 Americans across the nation as they responded to the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, finding that those who didn't share their feelings turned out just fine mentally and physically.

"If the assumption about the necessity of expression is correct, than we should expect those who are failing to share would be the ones to express more negative mental and physical health conditions," says Seery, who admits to initially expecting a different outcome: that the feeling sharers would be healthier in the long term. "I would have thought that the people who did not want to express, that they would have been worse off."

Seery used an online survey to query a national sample about their reactions to the 9/11 attacks, beginning on the day itself. (The study was limited by the fact that the results were self-reported and the participants were self-selected.) The respondents were divided into two groups: those who said they were initially unwilling to talk about their feelings, and the rest. They filled out questionnaires about their mental and physical well-being on the day of the attack, two days later, two weeks later, and then every six months for two years.

At the end of the two-year survey period, those who decided not to share their feelings reported fewer related mental and physical problems. That effect was even more pronounced among those who lived close to the tragedy.