Psychological Counselling Capacity for Correction of Alexithymia in Women with Compulsive Overnutrition

The study of women suffering compulsive overnutrition has revealed that they tend to have a high general level of alexithymia characterized by difficulties with identifying and describing their feelings along with clear manifestations of external thinking and non-adaptive coping strategies, such as confrontation, distancing, and avoidance. The results of a specially organized group counselling of women with a high level of alexithymia aimed at better understanding, identification of feelings and an ability to express one’s emotions, realization of their relation to physical feelings; developing skills to understand the state and feelings of other people; surmounting non-adaptive coping strategies and acquiring adaptive ones indicate the possibility for correction activities to bring down alexithymia manifestations in women with compulsive overnutrition. It has been suggested that specially organized psychological counselling aimed at correcting alexithymia contributes to improving women’s destructive eating disorder.