The terms are really opposites in the strict grammatical sense. But I can focus on some aspect of my trauma and completely repress other aspects at the same time. And it is not until that repression is dragged into the light that my focus can expand. So my answer is that they are the opposites and also complimentary.

Think and Find.

Focus and Repress.

I agree with Thor that when repress finds think, then the thought expands.

Boxing and barroom brawl.

Here's to an interesting discussion!

"Mult-purposing" is my trademark in my science and engineering career. I often put my tools to purposes the designers never thought of. Sewing tools often find their way to my construction/environmental job sites and vice versa, throughout my job-hoppy life. It gets messy when my engineering tools get mixed up with my psychotherapy tools, buttttttaaaaaa. . . I what I is and I ain't what I ain't. Purist, I ain't.

Back in the bad ol' days when I repressed all the way to trauma induced amnesia, focus was somewhere between difficult and impossible for my hyper ass. All these decades later, as my ability to focus continues to improve, I wonder more and more if the big diff is how I am using the base skill set.

Just wondering. . . Maybe. Maybe just drooling in the corner. To think. . . Normal people have to invest allot of hard earned bucks to drool as hard over their whiskey as much as I drool over a bit of free psychobabble.

I am dealing with a lot of repressed anger at the moment. I did some mediation classes via zoom recently and thought they had helped but they have stopped doing them. I struggle to practice it on my own as it was nice to have someone guiding you through it. Anyway, my anger is bubbling again ( the source is my childhood and how I was neglected etc). I am much more positive now but I still struggle with this horrible rage that. It is repressed as I do not act on it, is there any possible way to get it out in a good healthy way??
I recently watched a film called Ordinary People were the kid at the end lets it out in therapy. That seems reasonable but I currently don't have that outlet.

So I guess my point is mediation etc helps but I do not have a solution for repressed anger

NothernSoul - The way to get out what you repressed is to get someone to guide you through the process. That generally is therapy. Drugs can help the symptoms but it is like a poison and you will not be truly better until you excise that poison. You need someone to help you focus on it and removing it. It is a sad miserable experience and it is not a single event but a long multitude of experiences. I have been trying to excise my demons and the therapist has been working on this for 10 months now and I fear we have barely begun.

So focus to remove the regression, to become healthy.

Hm-m-m-m. . . Ya gots me chewing, NorthernSoul. . .

The very first and most enduring emotion out of my own amnesia therapy was repressed rage. My rage was immense and out of control for a very long time. Reducing ^it^ to *simple* anger was a massive undertaking. Channeling was my most effective tool for that task; fight training, in particular. I have a bit of real world experience in exploring the diffs between fight training and barroom brawling.

It's been a while since I've allowed my anger to escalate to rage, but channeling remains my most effective anger management tool. In this context, would "Focus" be a fair synonym for "Channeling?"

For what it's worth
Meditation is, I believe, impossible for me when I am angry. Guided meditation is all too likely to end up with gurus who have more orifices than nature ever intended. Inside my own skin, I need to vent my anger before I'm good for much of anything.