Radically open DBT: targeting emotional loneliness in Anorexia Nervosa

Abstract

This paper conceptualizes Anorexia Nervosa as a prototypical overcontrolled disorder, characterized by low receptivity and openness, low flexible control, pervasive inhibited emotional expressiveness, low emotional awareness, and low social connectedness and intimacy with others. As a result, individuals with Anorexia Nervosa often report high levels of emotional loneliness. A new evidence-based treatment, Radically Open Dialectical Behavior Therapy (RO-DBT), and its underlying neuroregulatory theory, offer a novel way of understanding how self-starvation and social signaling deficits are used as maladaptive regulation strategies to reduce negative affect. RO-DBT proposes that rather than trying to be ‘emotionally regulated’ or achieving equanimity, long-term psychological well-being is achieved by increasing social connectedness. RO-DBT skills, including body posture, gestures, and facial expressions, activate brain regions that increase social safety responses that function to automatically enhance open-minded and flexible social-signaling, which are crucial for establishing long-term intimate bonds with others and becoming part of a “tribe.”

More information

Identifiers

ORCID for Thomas Lynch: orcid.org/0000-0003-1270-6097

Catalogue record

Export record

Altmetrics