Predicting emotional awareness from parental bonding
Another major result of our study concerns the significant relationship
between parental bonding and emotional awareness in
obese patients (see Fig. 2). In general, our finding suggests that
parental overprotection has a negative impact on the level of emotional
awareness. Overprotective parents may induce lower levels
of emotional awareness in obese women.
Our results, in a sample of obese patients, are not congruent
with those of De Panfilis et al. (2003) or Fukunishi (1998), both
of whom reported correlations between maternal care and the
abilities to self-identify and describe feelings in patients as measured
using self-report questionnaires. Our results revealed a specific
effect of parental overprotection but not maternal care.