Difficulties in interpersonal regulation of emotion in relation to disordered eating

ABSTRACT

Eating disorders (EDs) are associated with emotion regulation difficulties. However, most studies have examined intrapersonal emotion regulation difficulties and strategies without consideration of interpersonal emotion regulation (IER). Thus, it remains unknown whether intrinsic IER (i.e., how people regulate their emotions through others) is associated with disordered eating. The present study examined whether putatively maladaptive IER strategies such as reassurance seeking and venting were associated with ED cognitions, behaviors, and symptom severity. Additionally, we examined whether IER strategy use varied as a function of probable ED diagnosis. A sample of 181 college students (M_age = 20.01 years, SD = 2.18) from a large northeastern university completed self-report measures of disordered eating, IER strategies, and intrapersonal emotion regulation difficulties. As predicted, reassurance seeking was associated with most ED symptomatology and ED symptom severity except for fasting frequency. Venting was only associated with body dissatisfaction. Associations between reassurance seeking and ED symptom severity and excessive exercise frequency remained significant even after controlling for sex and intrapersonal emotion regulation strategies. Finally, participants with a probable ED diagnosis reported greater reassurance seeking but not venting compared to nonprobable ED cases. These findings highlight the important associations between IER strategy use and disordered eating, namely, reassurance seeking. Additional research is needed to examine the associations between IER strategy use and disordered eating longitudinally.

PUBLIC SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT

Emotion regulation difficulties have consistently been associated with eating disorder symptomatology; however, most studies have examined intrapersonal emotion regulation, while ignoring interpersonal emotion regulation. We found that reassurance seeking was differentially associated with eating disorder symptomatology and symptom severity. Even after controlling for sex, intrapersonal emotion regulation strategies, reassurance seeking accounted for variance in symptom severity and excessive exercise frequency.

KEYWORDS:

• eating disorders
• interpersonal emotion regulation
• eating behaviors
• reassurance seeking
• venting

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/10640266.2023.2277048

Notes

1. Reassurance seeking is a strategy used to gather information by continuing to check in with someone repeatedly (e.g., keep contacting people and requesting reassurance).

2. Venting is a strategy commonly used to rationalize one’s internal experiences and release emotional dissatisfaction (e.g., raising voice or complaining to others).

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.