Singing Your Negative Body-Related Thoughts

Eating disorders are characterized by intense mental preoccupation with body shape and weight. Even in the absence of disordered eating, high levels of body dissatisfaction prospectively predict depression and low self-esteem in young women. Common intervention strategies, such as challenging the validity of negative body-related thoughts, often have limited success. Recent research suggests that accepting, rather than challenging, negative body-related thoughts may reduce body image distress by changing the relationship with those thoughts. For example, continually repeating or even singing an unwanted thought has been shown to reduce the believability and discomfort associated with that thought, through a technique known as cognitive defusion. The current study aims to extend the literature on cognitive defusion and test its effectiveness in the treatment of body dissatisfaction. In a randomized controlled trial design, 122 female restrained eaters were randomly assigned to practice either 1) verbally repeating negative body-related thoughts, 2) singing negative body-related thoughts, 3) verbally repeating body-unrelated thoughts (control), or 4) singing body-unrelated thoughts (control). The goal of this study was to determine whether singing one's negative body-related thoughts could lead to greater changes in perception of the thought, body image satisfaction, mood, and self-esteem relative to a control condition when practiced twice daily for one week.