Affiliative interactions and body and eating-related difficulties in adolescent girls: The effects of fears of compassion and feelings of social safeness

Abstract

The need to examine the associations between emotion regulation and mental health and well-being among adolescents is increasingly recognized. Adolescence is a critical time characterized by increased vulnerability towards emotional struggles and difficulties, especially related with body image and eating behaviours. Thus, it seems particularly important to analyse the processes and mechanisms underlying the relationships between several risk factors (such as the lack of early affiliative memories) and body and eating-related difficulties, in this specific developmental phase. The current study intended to examine whether early affiliative memories are significantly associated with body and eating-related difficulties (i.e., body image shame and eating psychopathology severity), and whether this association is mediated by lower feelings of social safeness and increased levels of fears of receiving compassion from others. This cross-sectional study was conducted with 231 adolescent girls from the community, aged between 12 and 18, who completed self-report measures. Data were examined through descriptive and correlational statistics, and the adequacy of the model was performed via path analysis. Path analysis results revealed that fears of receiving compassion from others and low feelings of social safeness mediated the relationship between early affiliative memories and body and eating-related difficulties. The path model accounted for the variances in the following way: 27% of feelings of social safeness; 23% of fears of receiving compassion from others; 28% of body-image shame; and 54% of eating psychopathology severity, revealing a very good fit. These findings emphasize the relevance of assessing and working on potential processes underlying the adoption of disordered body and eating attitudes and behaviours, not only but especially in female adolescents with scarce recall of early affiliative experiences with close ones.

Keywords: Adolescents; Body and eating-related difficulties; Early affiliative memories; Fear of compassion; Social safeness.