Anxious Geographies

Anxious Geographies offers a unique perspective on social anxiety, framing it as both a social and spatial phenomenon. Through a meticulous exploration using online questionnaires and interviews, the book provides a crucial examination of the intricacies of anxious lives. This book presents a critical intervention in the experience of mental health in 21st-century society and provides a compelling geographical account of the underpinnings of the anxious experience. The book pivots on the in-depth perspectives of people with social anxiety, diagnosed or "sub-clinical", but with an academic commentary that relates their experience to the medicalisation of a disrupted relational life, offering lessons for all of us in modern societies. Each chapter considers a unique aspect of social anxiety accounting for the social, spatial, temporal, relational and embodied dynamics, a geographical approach that enriches our understanding of the contexts and conditions that exacerbate and sustain anxious distress. The phenomenological descriptions herein, capture how social anxiety can profoundly alter a person's coherent, habitual and embodied sense of being in and navigating through their social and spatial worlds. Through the experiential accounts of anxious distress and by considering the social contexts in which they emerge, this book provides readers with crucial insights into the hidden lives of those living with social anxiety. This book will be of appeal to academics, researchers and postgraduate students in the fields of human geography and across the social sciences and humanities. It will also provide useful insights for academics and health professionals in social psychiatry, social psychology, counselling studies and therapeutic practice.

Louise E. Boyle is an honorary research fellow in the School of Geographical and Earth Sciences at the University of Glasgow, Scotland. She has published in Social Science and Medicine and co-edited the forthcoming Routledge Handbook on Spaces of Mental Health and Well-Being (2024).

Chapter 1 Introduction Introduction Motivation and aims A note on terminology Researching social anxiety Structure of this book Chapter 2 The medicalisation of anxious distress Introduction A 'neglected disorder' Social underpinnings of social anxiety Concluding remarks Chapter 3: Situating social anxiety Introduction Geographies of health and wellbeing Spatialities Temporalities Restrictive and disruptive temporalities Layered temporalities Embodiments Embodied meaning Embodied practices Concluding remarks Chapter 4: Temporal intensities: ruminations and anticipations Introduction Retroactivity Anticipations Ruminations Concluding remarks Chapter 5: Making sense of anxious experiences: self-diagnosis, diagnosis, and help-seeking Introduction Diagnosing the self Barriers to diagnosis and support Seeking formal diagnosis Affirmative experiences of diagnosis Negative encounters Medical and therapeutic spaces Concluding remarks Chapter 6: Spatialities of anxious experience I: Home and workplaces Introduction Home Fragmented home spaces Domestic routines Anticipatory objects Housing conditions Workspaces Concluding remarks Chapter 7: Spatialities of social anxiety II: Diminishing social worlds Introduction Friendships and family relations Difficulty and uncertainty Fewer opportunities Emotional work Loneliness and social isolation Third places Consumer spaces Public transport Concluding remarks Chapter 8: The (un)habitual geographies of social anxiety Introduction Habit The disruption of everyday life (Un)habitual geographies of social anxiety Managing time and space Spatial routes Spatial screens Moments of escape Concluding remarks Acknowledgment Chapter 9: Towards anxious geographies Reimagining social anxiety Anxious spatialities Anxious temporalities Anxious embodiments Avenues for future research Recommendations for policy and practice Unsung impacts