General Discussion 201 7 link between emotions and physical discomfort. Participants found it “vague” to indicate whether a body part felt good or not, and they had no idea how this exercise could help them. One even said, “my stomach never feels right, what does it matter?” Literature indicates that emotional eaters have poor emotion regulation skills and unbeneficial coping strategies [17-19]. Emotional literacy is the container term for selfawareness, regulation of one’s own emotions, but it is also about being able to be empathetic and having sufficient social [25-26]. Emotional eaters score high on alexithymia (emotion blindness) [20-21]. They have difficulty describing and distinguishing emotions [22]. Emotional eaters do not see or adequately understand their own mental distress. They have little knowledge of, and understanding of, their own ‘pathology’. Emotional eaters have lower interoceptive awareness [21-23]. As a result, they have a limited idea of what is happening in their own bodies: they lack “the ability to identify, access, understand, and respond appropriately to the patterns of internal signals” [24]. In summary of the findings from Chapters 4, 5 and 6, in line with the existing literature, it could be posited that emotional eaters do poorly on emotional literacy and probably also on health literacy. Emotional literacy in relation to virtual coaching Is it even possible to help people with low emotional literacy with virtual coaching? Our own results with the target group points towards an affirmative answer, but the literature is ambiguous about it [27]. Limited work has been published on the relationship self-management and emotional literacy in online mental health services, but a picture is emerging about selfmanagement of one’s own condition. Lorigh & Holman [11] argue that there is always some form of management: “Unless one is totally ignorant of healthful behaviours it is impossible not to manage one’s health.” According to Paterson patients have shifting perspectives on their illness [28]. And so do emotional eaters when they consider their own behaviour [29-30]. Even though we have gained the impression that emotional eaters can be considered capable of self-management-based help and support, it is important that we continue to support and improve this mechanism. Using a virtual coach could start an awareness-raising process [31]. The emotional eater will get to know her emotions better, learn to recognise
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