Chronic Complaining as Grievance-Rehearsal Wrong Attractor: The Venting Loop, Problem-Maintenance Architecture, and the Return to Constructive Agency

Chronic complaining — the persistent rehearsal of grievances without movement toward resolution, functioning as identity-maintenance and social bonding rather than genuine problem-solving — is here formally reconceptualized as a wrong attractor W_CC2 in the landscape of constructive agency. The healthy ground state S^0 is defined as constructive agency: the capacity to identify problems, express dissatisfaction proportionately, and direct energy toward resolution, repair, or acceptance.

Complaining serves genuine functions — social bonding, validation-seeking, emotional processing — and W_CC2 is the chronic pathological pole where complaining becomes dissociated from any resolution orientation. The venting loop sustains the attractor: research consistently shows that venting without action increases rather than decreases distress, rehearsing grievances heightens the negativity bias, and complainer identity makes resolution-orientation threatening.

Nine formal propositions characterize the venting paradox, complainer identity formation, social reinforcement of chronic complaining, the learned helplessness substrate, physiological costs of grievance rumination, the distinction from legitimate grievance expression and appropriate venting, and return paths through solution-focused redirection, acceptance-based practices, and agency activation.