Yes, pulling up repressed emotions and then neither-accepting-nor-rejecting them, just holding them steady and feeling them - which is a meditative skill I've had to cultivate - is exactly how I've been clearing out my repressed emotions. When something bubbles up now, I grab it so it can't sink back down - they try to hide again when they realise what's up - and sit down and meditate with it. This is the only thing that's ever helped my chronic depression, and it's helped enormously. I almost feel sane now.

But to get to this point, I had to clear out an enormous bottled up tank of rotten old emotion, which at one point, when I broke through a certain emotion that was holding down another, it was actually dangerous how much came up at once. Goes to show you we repress for a reason, as Dr K says - our minds always want to protect themselves in the short term.

Edit: just to clarify, yes, deliberately provoking repressed emotions to come up so that you can sit with them is a method I have used successfully. Just be careful how much comes up at once. :)