Childhood traumas and emotional eating: The mediating role of self-esteem, and emotion dysregulation

Emotional eating is a very multi-dimensional behavior that involves consuming food in response to emotional triggers such as stress, sadness or happiness. It is also known that this behavior can arise from stressful events in childhood. Childhood trauma can cause various psychopathologies by affecting the emotional processes of individuals throughout their lives. Traumatic life events, low self-esteem and coping with negative emotions may play a role in the development and maintenance of emotional eating behaviour, which may manifest as an emotional response. Although there are studies in the literature that consider these variables separately, there is no study that evaluates these variables as a whole. The aim of the current study is to examine the role of self-esteem and emotion dysregulation in the relationship between childhood trauma and emotional eating behaviour. The sample of the study consisted of 400 participants (260 females, 140 males) in the age group of 24-50 years (M = 42.00, SD = 6.91) residing in different provinces of Turkey. Sociodemographic information form, Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ), Difficulty in Emotion Regulation Scale (DERS), Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (RSES) were administered to the participants. In the current study, the mediating role of self-esteem and emotion dysregulation in the relationship between childhood traumas and emotional eating behavior was tested with 2 different models in SPSS 29 software with PROCESS plug-in. The results of the study revealed that childhood traumas predicted emotional eating behavior and emotion dysregulation. In addition, childhood traumas and emotional eating behavior were found to negatively predict self-esteem. In this context, it was seen that emotional eating behavior revealed emotion dysregulation. When the mediation analysis results were analyzed, it was seen that similar results emerged. The results of the current study showed that emotion dysregulation and self-esteem mediated the relationship between childhood trauma and emotional eating behaviour. Childhood traumas negatively predicted self-esteem, while low self-esteem led to emotional eating behavior. Similarly, it was found that individuals who experienced childhood traumas had emotion dysregulation and emotional eating behavior. The results of the present study highlight the importance for clinicians to assess childhood experiences, emotion regulation processes and self-esteem levels, to consider these variables together, and to provide cognitive and behavioural interventions when emotional eating is identified.