Negotiating embodied space in anxiety narratives

Abstract In recent years, studies from social/cultural geography and social psychology have shown the importance of the subjective experience of space in anxiety disorders. This study investigates how lived space in anxiety is discursively negotiated in interactional narratives, with a focus on the co-construction of time, physical space and epistemic modality, and the ways in which metaphors contribute to the representation of spatial experience. The data are two case studies taken from television programmes in which a figure in the public eye is being interviewed about their experiences of anxiety. The analysis showcases two distinct kinds of lived space in anxiety, one in which the self is continually moving through a space experienced as too expansive, and another in which other people/entities are moving around the self in a space experienced as too small. Both experiences involve spatial responses that serve to bring some relief from anxiety. The analysis also has methodological implications by exemplifying how metaphors feed into spatial gestalts that are collaboratively constructed as narratives unfold in situated interaction.