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.