ArticleFrontiers in psychology2026
Narrating anxiety as "ordinary": digital self-healing diaries and the normalization of anxiety on Chinese social media.
Article in Frontiers in psychology, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
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Abstract
Anxiety disorders are highly visible on Chinese social media, where users document symptoms, treatment, and everyday struggles through "self-healing diaries." Yet research has paid limited attention to how these patient-authored narratives construct the meaning of anxiety in digital settings. Drawing on thematic narrative analysis, this study examines 80 self-healing diaries posted on Xiaohongshu to explore how anxiety is narratively normalized in online self-disclosure. The analysis identifies four recurrent narrative modes: acceptance, coexistence, compromise, and opportunity. Acceptance narratives reframe anxiety as a manageable and acceptable condition; coexistence narratives embed anxiety within the routines of everyday life; compromise narratives de-exceptionalize anxiety by locating suffering within broader human and social conditions; and opportunity narratives refigure anxiety as a meaningful challenge and a possible pathway to growth. Rather than treating anxiety solely as a medical problem or an exceptional crisis, these narrative modes reposition it within an ordinary framework of self-understanding and daily life. By showing how digital self-healing diaries normalize anxiety through narrative meaning-making, this study contributes to scholarship on illness narratives, mental-health communication, and platform-mediated self-disclosure in contemporary China.
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