Expresión emocional en los trastornos de la conducta alimentaria: alexitimia y asertividad

background: alexithymia and lack of assertiveness are common characteristics eating disorders disorders (ed) and interfere in emotional expression. aim: to assess the presence ofalexithymia and assertiveness in different subtypes of ed. method: the eating attitudes test (eat-40), the eating disorders inventory (edi), the toronto alexithymia scale (tas-20) and rathus assertiveness schedule) (ras) were administered to 108 ed patients (28 anorectics, 36 with ed not otherwise specified (ednos) and 44 bulimics). results: all the subgroups scored within the pathological range of alexithymia, especially anorexics (57.1%), the highest (52.9 ± 14.3), although not statistically significant (ns). bulimics showed more difficulty to discriminate emotional signals (23.3 ± 8.7) and anorexics more thoughts oriented to external details (15.1 ± 7.1) (ns). bulimics scored negative in ras (-0.6 ± 25.8), mainly exhibiting more submissive and dependant behaviors (-2.6 ± 7.4) (ns). in bulimic (r = 0.795; p < 0.001) and ednos (r = 0.623; p < 0.001) subgroups, the lower interoceptive consciousness, the more difficulty to discriminate emotional signals were observed. the higher interpersonal distrust in anorexic (r = 0.617;p = 0.001) and ednos subgroups (r = 0.590;p < 0.001), the more difficulty to express emotions verbally; the more difficulty to discriminate emotional signals, the more deficit behaviors in bulimics (r = -0.715; p < 0.001; r = 0.707; p < 0.001) and ineffectiveness in anorexics (r = 0.593; p = 0.001) were observed. conclusions: the presence of alexithymia and lack of assertiveness in all the ed subgroups were verified. the most alexiyhimic were the anorexics and bulimics were less assertive and showed more difficulty to identify emotions and anorexics to describe them.