How do warmth, safeness and connectedness-related memories and experiences explain disordered eating?

Abstract

Literature suggested that the recall of early positive experiences have a major impact on the promotion of feelings of connectedness and social safeness, and seems to protect individuals against psychopathology. Recent research has also demonstrated that the absence of these positive rearing memories play a key role on disordered eating-related behaviours. The impact of early affiliative memories on disordered eating do not seem to be direct, and the mechanisms underlying this relationship are scarcely investigated.The present study aimed to clarify how memories of warmth and safeness explain the adoption of disordered eating attitudes, and tested the mediator role of social safeness, external shame and appearance-focused social comparison on aforementioned relationship, in a sample of 277 young women.The tested model explained 36% of eating psychopathology's variance and presented an excellent fit. Path analysis results indicated that the impact of rearing memories on eating psychopathology was fully mediated through the mechanisms of social safeness, external shame and appearance-focused social comparison. Specifically, these findings suggested that the extent to which positive rearing memories are associated with lower levels of disordered eating attitudes is influenced by the current feelings of social safeness and connectedness, which in turn are totally carried by decreased feelings of external shame and by lower endorsement on unfavourable comparison based on physical appearance with proximal targets (peers).These results seem to offer important insights for research and clinical work on body image and eating-related difficulties, suggesting the relevance of promoting warm and safe interactions with others.3

Bulimic symptoms in a sample of college women: disentangling the roles of body size, body shame and negative urgency

“…Under such circumstances, therapeutic interventions could help women with greater body size and negative urgency cope more effectively with the consequences of body checking by enhancing their decentering abilities to attenuate body shame as well as reduce their attempts to control or avoid the body shame experience [51]. Furthermore, given the role of fear of compassion in fueling body shame, an effective preventative and therapeutic intervention could also involve enhancing self-compassion in the context of being at variance from the cultural thin-ideal, as well as facilitate strategies to promote warm and supportive relationships with others [52,53]. Finally, it is important to recognize that effective emotion regulation also involves focusing on actually preventing a negative emotional experience taking place [28].…”

Potential contributing roles of early affiliative memories, social safeness and body appreciation to adolescents’ well-being

“…Studies using adult samples have also stated the association between the recall of early memories of warmth and safeness and current social safeness. Specifically, several studies conducted in samples of Portuguese adults found that social safeness mediates the associations of early positive memories with disordered eating symptoms (Oliveira et al, 2017), with shame, appearance-based social comparisons and disordered eating (Ferreira et al, 2018) and, finally, with symptoms of depression (Matos et al, 2015).…”

The Role of Social Safeness and Self-compassion in Mental Health Problems: A Model Based on Gilbert Theory of Emotion Regulation Systems

“…It has been found that social safeness is positively correlated with mental health-related variables such as selfesteem (Kelly et al, 2012), secure attachment (Kelly et al, 2012;Satici, Uysal, Yilmaz, & Deniz, 2015), life satisfaction (Satici et al, 2015), physical and psychological wellbeing (Marta-Simões, Tylka, & Ferreira, 2020), self-reassurance (Marta-Simões, Ferreira, & Mendes, 2017), perceived social support (Kelly & Dupasquier, 2016), and body appreciation, as an aspect of positive body image (Marta-Simões & Ferreira, 2020a,b). Also, social safeness is negatively correlated with some dysfunctional characteristics and mental health problems, such as self-criticism, insecure attachment (Kelly et al, 2012), shame (Marta-Simões, Ferreira, & Mendes, 2017;Silva, Ferreira, Mendes, & Marta-Simões, 2019), avoidant, paranoid, and borderline personality traits (Kelly et al, 2012), eating disorder symptoms (Ferreira, Silva, Mendes, & Trindade, 2018;Mendes, Ferreira, & Trindade, 2019;Dias, Ferreira, & Trindade, 2020), depressive symptoms (Matos, Pinto-Gouveia, & Duarte, 2015;Alavi, Asghari Moghadam, Rahiminezhad & Farahani, 2017;Kelly et al, 2012), anxiety, cyclothymia, dysthymia, and irritability (Gilbert et al, 2009).…”