Counselling in zero-COVID China: Affective dissonance and the regime of positivity

This study explores the frictions between state-imposed affective norms and individual emotional realities during the COVID-19 pandemic in Shanghai, focusing on the lived experiences of psychological counsellors. Based on ethnographic research, it examines how the Chinese state's promotion of positive psychology operated as a tool of affective governance, framing gratitude, hope, and optimism as civic virtues amid widespread hardship. During extended confinement, food shortages, and restricted healthcare access, counsellors encountered pervasive anxiety, depression, and anger in both their clients and themselves-emotions at odds with the state's emotionally prescriptive narratives. Trained to validate and explore "negative" emotions, counsellors responded in divergent ways: while some affirmed the state-promoted discourse of positivity as a form of coping or professional compliance, others challenged it by attending to the dissonant emotional experiences around them. The concept of affective dissonance serves as the central analytic tool in this article, revealing how emotional misalignment in this context is not merely psychological but also political and structural. For those who resisted, affirming disallowed affects became a mode of preserving self-integrity, fostering solidarity, and opening space for critique. In authoritarian settings where emotions are ideologically scripted, acknowledging dissonant affects becomes central to both therapeutic practice and political consciousness.