Narrating anxiety as “ordinary”: digital self-healing diaries and the normalization of anxiety on Chinese social media

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.