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Possibly the discomfort of the injection itself could cause emotional suppression.

For example, many soldiers with PTSD also have severe back pain. A common treatment for back pain is stellate ganglion injections to block neural transmission of pain signals. They found that this back pain treatment decreased PTSD symptoms.

So they did a research study comparing placebo injections of saline solution to pain killer injections in the stellate ganglion. Guess what... the placebo worked as well as the pain medicine to suppress PTSD symptoms. Stellate ganglion injections remain an evidence based treatment for PTSD.

I was surprised this past May at the American Psychiatric Association conference in San Diego when they presented evidence that emotional pain and physical pain utilize the same neural pathways in the brain. The joke following the presentation was, feeling emotional pain, take a Tylenol! It works.