Crosswords Puzzles Breaks Off
Bad Eating Habits of Eating Disorders

Wouldn’t it be nice if there was a way that victims of eating disorders could lessen the severeness of binge urges that creep up on them? You may be surprised to learn the potential a simple crossword puzzle can have on that.

Crosswords puzzles have been use to aid with learning to develop skills like reasoning, evaluating choices and drawing conclusions. While not all individuals who use crossword use it as a study method, it is also a fun stress relieving activity that promotes motivation for the individual. People use multiple coping strategies when struggling to deal with their eating disorder however depending on the personality type that they acquire determines which mechanism works more in their favor. There are 5 personality types associated with eating disorders which are high-functioning, behaviorally dysregulated, emotional dysregulated, avoidant insecure, and lastly obsessional sensitive. To determine which personality types could highly benefit from crossword puzzles, individuals needs to understand how their dysfunctional habits operate.

As mention before there are 5 type of personalities associate with the eating disorders of bulimia and anorexia. The ones that are the high functioning type tend to have minimal personality pathology. This indicating that these types have the least negative patterns among the other types that affect the person’s adaption. Seeing that high functionable types have more positive outcomes than negative ones, these individuals may be able to adapt to new effective strategies more easily than the other personality types.

However since most often these kinds of people seem to be calm exteriorly but excessively anxious internally, determining which form of eating disorders symptoms they are likely to have is more complex.

The following personality subtype is behaviorally dysregulated. For these types of individuals, they are characterized to be impulsive, have self-damaging behavior, crave affection and acceptance, have tendencies of antisocial behavior, social anxiety and prone to suicidal gestures. They display more of binge or purging symptoms that are associate with ANBP known as Anorexia Nervosa Binging/Purging or BN also called Bulimia Nervosa. This can be expected from their impulsivity and binging and purging symptoms.

The next type is emotional dysregulated where these individuals have a desire for affection and acceptance, have histrionic tendencies, tend to be irrational at times and have angry outbursts on account of their lack of control in anger. These group of lively people have a habit of overreacting to minor events that they constantly need reassurance from others and have a dynamic mood that shifts from a normal calm state to a depressive, irritable or anxious mood fairly quickly. These types also display binging and purging symptoms when it comes to eating habits that related to ANBP and BN.

The following personality type are the avoidant insecure types that will have low self esteem that can range from devaluing their achievements or being overly dismay by their own personal shortcomings. This makes them have an inability to relax or be hypersensitive to criticism. With all of this being said, they more prone to have anorexic features related to ANR also known as anorexia nervosa restrict than binging or purging ones.

Finally, obsessional sensitive types are perfectionists. Their perfectionism tends to interfere with their ability to see the “big picture” of a situation that they may overreact to any minor events that don’t go their way. These perfectionists may also exaggerate the difficulties of a situation leading them to be indecisive of choices that they will either postponed or avoid in fear of making a mistake. Just like avoidant insecure types, they display more anorexic characteristics, restricting the amount of food they eat.

Although these personality types have different approaches in handling stress, a lot of them have overlapping characteristics that are similar. Some possible coping strategies that are used by these folks with an eating disorder are self regulation, distraction, emotional regulation, self denial, rumination, and negotiation.

In self-regulation, a person has the ability to control their behavior, emotions, and thoughts. A self regulator may try to set up goals for themselves or self talk to get tasks done as this can help self regulators in completing their daily routine and keep a consistent pattern of good habits. However these practices are easier said than done. Self regulators might enjoy such a structure routine because this give them a sense of control over their life. Self regulators can incorporate crosswords puzzles into their routine that during times they need to relieve stress during the week.

The following coping strategy is distraction. For distractors, they will find any method that will help avoid, confront or relieve them from the problem they are facing. This can either be a positive or negative effect on the distractor.

The next strategy is emotional regulation, where it tends to influence people by exerting to the experience and expression of their emotions. As a result of this, it can corresponds with changes in an individual’s eating behavior. This can affect an emotional regulator who constantly restrict their eating habits to cause them to intake more food when experiencing any negative emotions.

The upcoming strategy is self denial. Now for individuals who use self denial as a coping strategy they might look at a situation on the brighter side of things or will try to persuade themselves that they are okay even if that’s not the case. They have a tendency of avoid thinking anything negative in their life or will refrain from revealing one’s problem.

Another coping strategy that are often use is rumination. Ruminators will repetitively analyze their problems, concerns, or any type of feelings of distress. Most of the time rumination can become a maladaptive strategy however it can be beneficial when it’s use for self reflecting. If ruminators get too stuck in their thoughts then it will cause them to dwell too much on the situation than necessary.

Lastly a different coping strategy is self negotiation. Negotiators will try to talk themselves out of doing a certain task or problem. They have the habit of bargaining with themselves about a situation that they might be avoiding or resolving. Self negotiation can become a sabotage tactic for some negotiators if they don’t have set goals for themselves and understand the results of their choices. Otherwise self negotiation can be very important for individuals as it prevent or resolve conflicts and have them carefully analyze the situation they are in to come to best possible solution they can think of.

Each coping strategy can either be beneficial or detrimental for relieving these victims eating disorder according to their personality types. For high functioning types, they can benefit from self regulation. Since high functioning types tend to still complete their daily tasks while still struggling with their eating disorder, they might have a routine that they follow to keep themselves in check. Considering that these types create a routine that help them, they lean more towards problem-focused coping. With problem-focused coping, it’s direct towards them actively changing in their environment. What they can do is include a set time to use crossword puzzle to ease one’s distress by creating relaxing environment. Most time high functioning types will overwork themselves without taking multiple breaks so by doing a crossword puzzle it can hopefully reduce that stress that might cause then to binge, purge or restrict their eating.

For behavior dysregulated, the best coping strategy are rumination and self negotiation. The reason for this is that they are quite impulsive individuals so being able to self reflect and self negotiation about a situation or problem can truly help them better improve their destructive eating habits. Seeing as how crossword puzzles can be use as a learning tool for individuals, if adaptive coping mechanisms are listed in the crosswords puzzles, these types will have to think of effective strategies to use under stress. This can help these types because when the urge to binge or purge occurs, they can remember the coping mechanisms they learn in the crossword puzzle using self negotiation to choose which strategy can work best for them at the moment.

For emotional dysregulated can gain improvement of their eating pattern through emotional regulation and distraction. Since emotional regulation tends to effect individuals by using the experience and expression of their emotion, through the use of crossword puzzle these emotional regulators alter their mood to a more positive one. Crosswords puzzle can provide motivation for the person and the person can even gain the satisfaction of completing the puzzle changing their overall mood to a more determined state. This will have these types less likely to binge or purge since they will be in a more hopeful state.

This is technically also consider as a distraction since the individuals replace their negative emotions that they are feeling by turning to crossword puzzles as a way to relieve their distress. In particular self regulation and rumination would help avoidant insecure. This would be of use to these types because they are likely to avoid situations therefore having them ruminate and self regulate their current condition can have them face their problems head on. For self regulation having them install an effective strategy in their routine can aid their poor eating patterns.

Crosswords puzzle can be a possible method that could be use for these types however not for long period time as they might start to devalue themselves and leave the puzzle if they are not able to complete it quickly. This is due to their low self esteem. Nevertheless if they are able to have the satisfaction of completing the crossword puzzle, that can boost their self esteem and possibly have them self award themselves with a snack since these individuals are likely to display more anorexic features rather than purging ones.

Lastly self negotiation and self denial assist in in improving bad eating disorder habits for the obsessional sensitive types. Self denial would be favorable to them as they can reinterpret one’s situation to a more positive one and selectively ignore the negative aspects of the situation. This might be difficult to these perfectionists as they tend to dwell on a situation longer than it needs to be. This is were self negotiation can be beneficial to them as well because it’s important they practice negotiation with themselves especially if they have a hard time making decisions.

Crossword puzzles might not be the best strategy for these individuals as they might be too focus on the puzzle that it’s possible they forget to eat or forget their other tasks around them in order to have the satisfaction of completing the puzzle for themselves.

References

Fleishman, J. A. (1984). Personality Characteristics and Coping Patterns. Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 25(2), 229–244. https://doi.org/10.2307/2136671

Martinez Serna, I., & Francisco Parra Azor , J. (2011, July). (C-189) active learning: Creating interactive crossword puzzles – UPCT. Retrieved April 4, 2023, from https://repositorio.upct.es/bitstream/handle/10317/2237/c189.pdf?sequence=1

Oosterwaal, S. A. M. (1970, January 1). Desire to eat and its relationship with emotion regulation, what does rumination has to do with it? Masterthesis Sofie. Utrecht University Student Theses Repository Home. Retrieved April 4, 2023, from https://studenttheses.uu.nl/handle/20.500.12932/35866

Thompson-Brenner, H., Eddy, K. T., Franko, D. L., Dorer, D. J., Vashchenko, M., Kass, A. E., & Herzog, D. B. (2008). A personality classification system for eating disorders: A longitudinal study. Comprehensive Psychiatry, 49(6), 551–560. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.comppsych.2008.04.002

Vann, A., Strodl, E., & Anderson, E. (2013). Thinking about internal states, a qualitative investigation into metacognitions in women with eating disorders. Journal of Eating Disorders, 1(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/2050-2974-1-22