Safe and Sound: Is Safeness a Specific Affective Dimension Related to Eating Disorder Behaviors?

Safeness is a warm, soothing emotional state that is often experienced in the presence of close others. Safeness is thought to be distinct from other positive emotions or the absence of negative emotions and is shown to predict mental health variables over and above other emotions. The current study investigated the unique role of safeness in relation to eating disorder symptoms.

Participants with eating disorders (n = 164) and those with no history of an eating disorder (n = 49) completed two weeks of ecological momentary assessment to measure affect and eating disorder symptoms.

Safeness emerged as an emotional state distinct from negative and positive affect among women with eating disorders. Safeness predicted the presence (vs. absence) of an eating disorder. Safeness did not predict the occurrence of eating disorder behaviors in real-time when accounting for other emotions. The first binge-eating episode within a day resulted in improvements in safeness in the following hours, but did not result in improvements in other emotions.

If replicated, our results suggest that safeness might be uniquely implicated in the maintenance of binge-eating episodes. These results highlight the potential importance of integrating interventions targeting safeness into eating disorder treatments.