Exploring Emotion Regulation During the Journey of Eating Disorder Recovery

Deficits in emotion regulation and heightened negative affect have been

observed across eating disorder diagnoses and are hypothesized to contribute to the

maintenance of eating psychopathology. However, the extent to which emotion

regulation deficits and elevated negative affect continue to persist after the cessation

of eating psychopathology remains unclear despite the emergence of several novel

treatments that have been designed to target emotion regulation deficits and negative

affect in eating disorder populations. The purpose of this study was to determine

whether individuals in recovery from eating disorders experience emotion regulation

deficits and heightened negative affect compared to those with active eating disorders

and those without current or past eating disorders. Participants included 269

individuals with active eating disorders (AED), 58 participants in recovery from

eating disorders (RED), and 143 participants without past or present eating disorders

(COMP) who completed several online questionnaires. Results indicated that the

AED group reported significantly more emotion regulation difficulties and greater

negative affect compared to the RED and COMP groups, who did not differ form one

another with regard to emotion regulation difficulties and negative affect. These

findings support emotion regulation models of eating psychopathology and suggest

that emotion regulation deficits and negative affect may improve with recovery from

eating disorder psychopathology. Future research should examine facets of emotion

regulation and negative affect using longitudinal designs to determine the temporal

relationship between improvements in eating disorder psychopathology, emotion

regulation, and negative affect in order to inform treatment interventions.