Psychologist to Determine Emotional Causes of Anorexia

PhD candidate in counseling psychology at the University of Alberta Michelle Emmerling is working on a study that will hopefully shed some light into the emotional causes behind anorexia, which not only trigger it but also pave the way to relapse. Emmerling is looking for candidates, girls who had or have anorexia, in a bid to show that tackling the emotional causes is just as important as treating the disease itself.

As Emmerling sees is, physorg says, at the root of all evil might be causes like growing up in a family where communication or expression of feelings was not encouraged or was frowned upon, or even abuse, could lead to self esteem issues so grave that they later develop into anorexia. If these emotional causes are not addressed, they can lay at the basis of a relapse even years later, when presumably the patient should have been cured.

“I’m looking at whether the participants are even aware of what emotions are coming up or if they have the language to talk about their emotions. I’m looking at [the research] in terms of autobiographical memory. Are these girls able to have a kind of coherent life narrative and what are the memories from their past that they use to define the person they are today?” Emmerling says of her intentions for the study. In her own words, she wants to have patients express their pain, even if it comes from a place where words fail to describe it.

“Anorexia patients often report feeling very lost, dissociated from who they are, trapped in situations. When the stressful situation comes up again, the patients resort back to the starvation mode (restricting food intake as a coping mechanism) because it’s a way to avoid or distract themselves from having to deal with the stressful situation; it’s a maladaptive solution to real-life problems. […] I really want to be able to help and understand this [aspect of the disease] and try to make a difference for the treatments provided; not only for them, but also for other people who might suffer with this disorder down the road,” the researcher further says.

In the meantime, though, Emmerling is looking for volunteers: as noted above, girls who have or are recovering from anorexia and, most importantly, who are willing to open up and talk about their experience and emotions.