Eating Disorders and Emotion Regulation: Looking at the Spectrum from Overcontrolling to Dysregulation

Individuals with eating disorders (EDs) frequently report emotional dysfunctions in their relationships and experience more severe difficult-to-control emotions than their healthy peers. Research suggests that difficulties in emotion regulation (i.e. managing the onset, duration, and intensity of emotions) influence the risk and maintenance of EDs, as well as reinforcing eating psychopathology generally. Recently, researchers and clinics have focused their attention also to the overcontrol of the emotions, that are linked to emotional loneliness, interpersonal difficulties, and rigid hyper-perfectionism. Responses to emotions could be considered as a continuum from an overcontrolling of emotions – showing a detachment or an inhibition from their emotional self – to a dysregulating of emotions, with an under-control of their emotional self and with impulsive behaviours. Indeed, restraint behaviours (even restraint eating) seem to rise from self-inhibition, allowing patients to overcome their difficulties in understanding others and self-emotions. As on the opposite of the spectrum, emotional under-control with dysregulation could be the trigger moment of the experienced loss of control. Binge/purging behaviours seem to appease a dysfunctional understanding or management of emotions, as well as fasting and underweight at the opposite side. Eating psychopathology has been recurrently linked to the emotional domain, with several explanatory models proposed but a clear definition of the relationships is lacking. Thus, more evidence is needed to understand patients' cognitive and behavioural responses to their emotions to improve specific intervention protocols for treating eating psychopathology.

The goal of this Research Topic is therefore to highlight research into emotional regulation in individuals with eating disorders. We welcome contributions shedding light on new paradigms, approaches, and data from basic research, as well as clinical and intervention studies in developmental psychopathology, psychiatry, neuroscience, and clinical psychology. This Research Topic aims to highlight new interdisciplinary research and create new knowledge regarding emotion regulation in EDs that can be used in clinical settings.

Appropriate contributions will include research articles, clinical trial, case reports as well as population-based studies, overviews, reviews, and meta-analysis. We especially welcome manuscripts addressing the following:

• Original hypotheses that can shed light on the relationship between ED psychopathology and emotion regulation
• Instruments designed to screen and diagnose emotional regulation and recognition in individuals with EDs
• Treatment strategies for emotional overcontrol or dysregulation in individuals with EDs
• Neurobiological and psychological mechanisms underlying developmental processes which contribute to the relationships between ED and emotion regulation.