Abstract
While existing research often treats teacher emotions as outcomes of institutional pressure, little is known about how teachers internally navigate such experiences to reconstruct their professional identities, particularly within underexplored private university contexts. This study addresses the gap by applying Dialogical Self Theory (DST) to investigate how Chinese EFL teachers in a private university negotiated emotionally charged professional episodes through internal dialogue. Adopting a narrative inquiry design, data were collected from narrative frames, semi-structured interviews, informal follow-ups, documents, and observations with three EFL teachers. The findings reveal three distinct identity trajectories under evaluative pressure: regulated endurance (managing pressure while sustaining engagement), habituated compliance (normalizing dissatisfaction within institutional routines), and strategic persistence (adjusting practices while maintaining core commitments). Teachers’ ability to reposition themselves depended on how they engaged in reflective awareness, future-oriented planning, and mediation strategies. These resources did not automatically lead to identity development, but functioned differently depending on the context. Emotionally disruptive episodes acted as turning points in identity change, rather than simply as a by-product of institutional pressure. These findings foreground the institutional mediation of identity work and highlight the need for identity-sensitive support in performance-driven higher education settings.