text: Introduction 
  
  Why do some persons engage in paradoxical behaviors, such 
  as extreme food restriction (up to starvation) and non-suicidal 
  self-injuries (NSSIs)? These and other pathological behaviors 
  are transversal to various psychopathological conditions. Self- 
  destructive actions including self-harm have been associated 
  with post-traumatic stress disorder (Moeller et al. 2001, Yehuda 
  2002, Weiss et al. 2015, Zelkowitz et al. 2023), eating disor- 
  ders (Sagiv and Gvion 2020), and borderline personality disorder 
  (Reichl and Kaesset, 2021). Whether paradoxical behaviors as NSSI 
  have a common origin across such and other conditions remains 
  to be systematically tested, which is particularly challenging 
  as—in most cases—they can only be assessed using retrospec- 
  tive measures, rather than measured during their occurrence or 
  induced experimentally. Although they are typically associated 
  with some form of psychopathology, they are not exclusive to 