Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC.
Department of Psychology, University of Utah, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT.
Fam Process. 2019 Dec;58(4):920-935. doi: 10.1111/famp.12391. Epub 2018 Sep 19.
Intense negative emotions and maladaptive behavioral strategies to reduce emotional distress occur not only in patients with various forms of psychopathology but also in their committed partners. One common strategy to reduce distress is for partners to accommodate to the symptoms of the disorder, which reduces distress short term but maintains symptoms long term. Accommodation is believed to be motivated by the partner reacting behaviorally to the patient's emotions, but the emotions of the partner in this context have yet to be examined. This pilot study examined how partner accommodation related to specific patterns of emotional coregulation between patients with binge eating disorder (BED) and their partners, before and after a couple-based intervention for BED. Vocally encoded emotional arousal was measured during couples' (n = 11) conversations about BED. As predicted, partners' emotional reactivity to patients' emotional arousal was associated with high accommodation before treatment. Thus, partners may use accommodation as a strategy to reduce both the patients' and their own distress. After treatment, partners' arousal was no longer associated with the patients' emotional arousal; instead, partners showed greater emotional stability over time, specifically when accommodation was low. Additionally, patients were less emotionally aroused after treatment. Therefore, treatment may have decreased overall emotionality of patients and altered the association between accommodation and partners' emotional reactivity. If replicated, this understanding of the emotional context associated with accommodation in BED can inform couple-based treatment by targeting specific emotional precipitants of behaviors that maintain symptoms.
强烈的负面情绪和适应不良的行为策略，以减轻情绪困扰，不仅发生在各种形式的精神病理学患者中，也发生在他们忠诚的伴侣中。减少痛苦的一种常见策略是伴侣适应障碍的症状，这在短期内减轻痛苦，但长期维持症状。人们认为适应是由伴侣对患者的情绪做出反应行为所驱动的，但在这种情况下，伴侣的情绪尚未得到检验。这项初步研究考察了在夫妻饮食失调障碍（BED）干预前后，患者和伴侣之间特定的情绪共同调节模式与伴侣适应之间的关系。在夫妻关于 BED 的对话中，测量了声音编码的情绪唤醒。正如预测的那样，治疗前，伴侣对患者情绪唤醒的情绪反应与高度适应有关。因此，伴侣可能会将适应作为一种策略，以减轻患者和他们自己的痛苦。治疗后，伴侣的唤醒不再与患者的情绪唤醒相关；相反，伴侣随着时间的推移表现出更大的情绪稳定性，特别是在适应度低的情况下。此外，患者在治疗后情绪激动程度降低。因此，治疗可能降低了患者的整体情绪，并改变了适应与伴侣情绪反应之间的关联。如果得到复制，这种对 BED 中适应相关的情绪背景的理解，可以通过针对维持症状的特定情绪诱因来为夫妻治疗提供信息。
