Someone recently asked me...

how do you suppress bad thoughts? In order to address this topic one first has to define "bad" thoughts. There are several ways to approach the concept of bad thoughts and depending on your background and values these approaches can be quite varying. I might suggest that there is a continuum of "badness" on which our thoughts might lie. There are the extreme thoughts of harm and deviancy that are essentially indisputably bad. But then there are the thoughts of yearning or pride, which while some consider bad, others might say are actually fairly good.

For the sake of this discussion, let us assume we are speaking of the indisputably bad thoughts. So how does one go about repressing such thoughts? I would say that one should not. Attempting to suppress one's thoughts is essentially volunteering to create psychological problems due to repressed emotions. Individuals spend thousands of dollars in therapy trying to uncover their repressed thoughts. People with dissociative identity disorder have suppressed their thoughts to the point of creating alternate personalities to deal with the thoughts. But people are wondering how to actively suppress bad thoughts? I would warn that this should be a practice to avoid.
Rather than suppress these thoughts, why not be as aware of them as one is able? Western culture, for years, has been creating a society of repression in regards to freethinking. So little value is placed on self-awareness and development of the true self. We are almost forced to conform to the notion that taking care of your true self first is a selfish act, when in fact it could easily be argued that the only way to truly care for others is to care for yourself first.

By being aware of bad thoughts that enter one's conscious, one is able to reflect on these thoughts and attempt to determine what it is that is causing these processes to occur. I tend to think there is an explanation for most things; if you are having negative thoughts about something, isn't it best to examine the situation and figure out why these thoughts are occurring rather than pretending they don't exist? The risk of suppressing such thoughts is too great. The only way to truly know one's self is to consciously be aware of one's thought processes - suppressing these ideas can only lead to a path of unhappiness and possible destruction.