Chapter 7 202 them, to name them, and to realise that she can influence them. Literature argues that it is important for emotional eaters to develop better emotion regulation skills [32]. Promoting awareness This process of awareness can be driven by virtual coaching. For example, the group that recognized itself in the situation ‘after giving in to craving’: a large part of the participants rejected the ‘validation’ and believed that the bad behaviour (giving in to cravings) should not be rewarded. After all, what she had done was bad. Validation conflicts here with the behaviour. Yet, according to the philosophy of dialectics, applying validation is precisely the path to acceptance. It is a constant and iterative process of validation. This leads to awareness and then to a different view, and results in a different view of one’s own behaviour [33-35], with ideally behavioural change. “Validation helps clients tolerate the extreme difficulty of change” [p.166, 36]. Offering and commissioning exercises online and providing coaching for this hard-toreach target group has proved possible. They were positive about the exercises. The participants were able to independently gain more insight into their own emotions, and work on emotion regulation skills. The emotional eater’s own thinking capacity is addressed and stimulated, leading to advancing insight. Exercises fueling awareness The typical problem-situations for emotional eaters, i.e., tipping points for offering appropriate emotion regulation exercises, may be in line with those of the coaching strategies. Both the Opposite Action (acting opposite to emotion-driven behavioural urges [35, 37-38], the Body Scan [39-41], and Positive Reframing [42-43] can fuel the process of awareness. The mentioned exercises were presented to participants in Chapter 6. Providing coaching and subsequently appropriate exercises, can also potentially distract from the problem situation [44-45] this action then replaces another action, namely giving in to cravings. Dialectical coaching validates existing emotions, but then prompts action right away. Two sides of an issue Dialectical coaching strategy seems successful with emotional eaters as this coaching was appreciated by a high proportion of participants. Dialectical coaching strategy helps
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjY0ODMw