Acceptance Commitment Therapy would tell you that the digging was just as bad as the covering up because they're both control strategies. Control strategies can

Acceptance Commitment Therapy would tell you that the digging was just as bad as the covering up because they're both control strategies. Control strategies can work sometimes, but when they don't the result is a feedback loop of struggle. The solution is to accept (or expand) the emotion and give it space to exist without fusing with it. This will not necessarily make the emotion go away, but through practice one can keep them from steering the ship, as it were. I cannot yet speak to the efficacy of ACT, but because I had a similar relationship with my thoughts and emotions my therapist recommended a few books to me and I'm still working my way through The Happiness Trap.