Pérez-Peña Marbella, Notermans Jessica, Petit Jeanne, Van der Gucht Katleen, Philippot Pierre
Psychological Sciences Research Institute, University of Louvain, 1348 Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium.
Leuven Mindfulness Centre, University of Leuven, 3000 Leuven, Belgium.
Psychol Belg. 2024 Aug 12;64(1):108-128. doi: 10.5334/pb.1295. eCollection 2024.
Paying attention to body sensations has been associated with many positive outcomes such as increased subjective well-being, enhanced emotion regulation, and reduced symptom reports. Furthermore, body awareness has an important therapeutic utility in the treatment of various psychological ailments. Despite its importance in mental health, there is very little research on body awareness during adolescence and young adulthood - important developmental periods characterized by bodily changes and the development of one's relationship to one's body. Therefore, the present qualitative study sought to explore how body awareness is understood, experienced, and described by adolescents and young adults. Four online focus groups were conducted with young people between the ages of 14 and 24 ( = 20). Thematic analyses revealed a multidimensional and highly contextualized understanding and experience of body awareness in this age group. In general, young people reported mainly attending to intense and unpleasant body sensations with a particular attitude (e.g., accepting or avoidant) depending on the type of sensation, leading to a variety of cognitive, emotional, and behavioral reactions to these sensations. These processes were embedded in an underlying schema of beliefs about body awareness and an overarching physical and socio-cultural context. Results further revealed a more nuanced experience and understanding of body awareness in women and in young adults. The present findings can be used as a foundation for the development of body awareness theoretical frameworks and self-report instruments for youth and can aid the generating of hypotheses for future research on body awareness in this age group.
关注身体感觉与许多积极结果相关，如主观幸福感增强、情绪调节能力提高以及症状报告减少。此外，身体意识在各种心理疾病的治疗中具有重要的治疗效用。尽管其在心理健康中很重要，但关于青少年和青年期（以身体变化以及个体与身体关系的发展为特征的重要发育阶段）的身体意识的研究却非常少。因此，本定性研究旨在探索青少年和青年如何理解、体验和描述身体意识。对14至24岁的年轻人（ = 20）进行了四个在线焦点小组访谈。主题分析揭示了该年龄组对身体意识的多维度且高度情境化的理解和体验。总体而言，年轻人报告主要关注强烈且不愉快的身体感觉，并根据感觉类型采取特定态度（如接受或回避），从而对这些感觉产生各种认知、情感和行为反应。这些过程嵌入在关于身体意识的潜在信念模式以及总体的身体和社会文化背景之中。结果还揭示了女性和青年对身体意识更细微的体验和理解。本研究结果可作为开发针对青少年的身体意识理论框架和自我报告工具的基础，并有助于为该年龄组未来关于身体意识的研究生成假设。
