'The body is a battleground for unwanted and unexpressed emotions': exploring eating disorders and the role of emotional intelligence.

'The body is a battleground for unwanted and unexpressed emotions': exploring eating disorders and the role of emotional intelligence. Eat Disord. 2018 Sep 20;:1-22 Authors: Foye U, Hazlett DE, Irving P Abstract Emotional difficulties have been observed in individuals with eating disorders across awide range of studies, including poor interoceptive awareness, confusion of emotionalstates and difficulties with emotional language. Literature has linked these difficultieswith emotional functioning as being an important factor related to the core aetiology ofeating disorders, however limited knowledge exists to how this impacts on professionalability to engage patients within treatment as a result of such dysfunction. Using aqualitative design this paper explores how facets of Emotional intelligence (EI) arerelated to the experience of an eating disorder. The study sampled a total of 32participants with either a professional background working with eating disorders (n=25)or participants with personal lived experience (n=5), with a number of the participants(n=13) identified as having dual roles. The findings of the study show that aspects of EIsuch as emotional regulation and lack of an emotional language are considered to beat the core of the onset and maintenance of these disorders. Additional aspects ofemotional awareness and expression were found to be related to treatmentdisengagement and difficulties. Building on previous literatur...
Source: Eating Disorders - Category: Eating Disorders & Weight Management Authors: Tags: Eat Disord Source Type: research