Perceived ability to express emotions openly as a child and its relationship with emotional eating, attachment style and BMI in Adulthood

Imagine a young girl who is in need of comfort from her mother but when she seeks it, her mother admonishes the child.  The young girl retreats sobbing to her room where she calms herself by rocking with her teddy and sucking on some chocolate until it melts in her mouth.  Now all-grown-up she reaches for hre favourite ice-creamwhen upset or feeling unloved by her partner. Emotional eating has been found to be related to experiences of abuse and neglect.  Emotional non-expression has been found to be related to emotional eating tendencies and in student populations emotional abuse during childhood has been rleated to disordered eating  and also that obese students  are more likely to regulate their emotions by eating compared to their normal weight counterparts. This study looked at the relationship between emotional expression as a child and its relationship to BMI and Emotional Eating in 100 Facebook users of a health promoting TV programme.  Low preceived emotional expression in childhood was related to higher levels of anxious emotional eating in adulthood when current adult attachment was controlled for.  Insecure attachment style was related to all types of emotional eating.