Women’s Perspectives on What Helped and Hindered Building Shame Resilience During an Adolescent Eating Disorder

Eating disorders (EDs) in adolescence are serious mental health disorders that commonly have noteworthy medical and mental health comorbidities (Fitzsimmons-Craft, Karam, Wilfley, 2018). Shame has been found to be a significant factor associated with EDs (Burney & Irwin, 2000; Goss & Allan, 2009; Waller, Ohanian, Meyer & Osman, 2000), yet no studies have explored what helps and hinders building shame resilience during adolescence from the perspective of the adult who lived through it. This retrospective qualitative study used the enhanced critical incident technique (Butterfield, Borgen, Maglio, & Amundson, 2009), and the sample of this study included women who received an ED diagnosis between the age of 11 and 21 (N = 10). Data analysis revealed 13 helping categories, 15 hindering categories, and 9 wish list items.