The tyranny of the ideal self: Neoliberal subjectivation, emotional distress, and forms of resistance in young women [Author Accepted Manuscript]

This article explores how young women experience emotional self-demand and anxiety as effects of neoliberal subjectivation in contemporary Spain. Our inquiry is grounded in critical feminist psychology and a reflexive qualitative epistemology, foregrounding situated knowledge, power relations, and the researcher’s positionality. We analyze twelve in-depth interviews with urban women aged 22 to 28 using reflexive thematic analysis. The study was conducted in the post-pandemic period, amid high youth unemployment and growing affective precarity. Findings reveal four key themes: the internalization of an emotionally competent and high-performing “ideal self”; the silencing of emotional discomfort, often perceived as a personal failure; the pressure to display positivity and self-optimization on social media; and the emergence of subtle forms of emotional disobedience, such as saying no, crying, or refusing to perform happiness. Emotional distress is not treated solely as a clinical symptom, but as a response to cultural discourses that moralize well-being and privatize suffering. Sadness, fatigue, or vulnerability are frequently interpreted as moral deficits, rather than legitimate reactions to structural pressures. However, participants’ small acts of resistance suggest alternative ways of inhabiting emotional life. This study contributes to critical debates on affect, gender, and neoliberalism by situating emotional suffering within broader sociopolitical dynamics. It invites researchers and practitioners to rethink emotional discomfort not as an individual flaw, but as a potential space for resistance and redefinition of well-being.