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Emotions into Disorder: Anxiety Disorders and the Social Meaning of Fear
Author(s) -
Esala Jennifer J.,
Del Rosso Jared
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
symbolic interaction
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.874
H-Index - 47
eISSN - 1533-8665
pISSN - 0195-6086
DOI - 10.1002/symb.450
Subject(s) - psychology , anxiety , normative , distress , feeling , norm (philosophy) , social psychology , developmental psychology , cognitive psychology , clinical psychology , philosophy , epistemology , political science , law , psychiatry
This article explores what we refer to as norm ‐ stimuli ‐ state discrepancies , which are disparities between people's physical‐emotional responses to emotional cues and the normative meanings of those cues. Drawing on forty qualitative interviews and participant observation research at support groups, we show that people with anxiety disorders describe two forms of norm‐stimuli‐state discrepancies. The first form involves discrepancies of type , in which people label fearful emotional states as deviant for being caused by the “wrong” stimuli. The second involves discrepancies of intensity , in which people label fearful states as deviant for involving feelings or displays of “too much” anxiety in response to an “appropriate” stimuli. The article further addresses the role of stimuli in prompting treatment seeking. Unexpected and intense emotional distress in combination with the falling away of external cues—which we refer to as “stimuli‐less fear”—serve as a critical juncture on the path to an anxiety disorder diagnosis.