A Narrative Study on Anxiety Symptoms and Diagnosis-Treatment Paths of Doctoral Students: Based on the Perspective of Emotional Sociology

As an emotional keynote embedded in modern society, anxiety concerns the broad and long academic career of doctoral students. Adopting the theory of emotional sociology as an analytical perspective, this study collected the growth narrative through in-depth interviews with doctoral students to deeply describe the anxiety symptoms of doctoral students. It identified that anxiety is an eternal force rooted in the personality structure of doctoral students, and the contradiction between unlimited imagination and limited facts in their self-identity construction. When the doctoral students are aware of the existence of the "other" and try to meet the expectations of the "other", the existential anxiety is placed in a specific moral framework, which induces the generation of moral anxiety. In addition, the social risk and competition culture have caused the individual anxiety of doctoral students to undergo social deformation, and their anxiety experience is embedded in the social structure, which makes it difficult to avoid fundamentally. In fact, the anxiety of doctoral students is not a problem that requires "self-blaming" and "self-healing", but a problem that should be shared and managed by multiple subjects. For doctoral students, they should deal with anxiety rationally, apply anxiety constructively, and accept their own limitations to set reasonable academic goals. Tutors, family members and peers of doctoral students should try their best to provide them with resources and emotional support. In addition, it is particularly necessary to provide a good institutional environment for the growth of doctoral students' academic life.