Chronic Disappointment as Frustrated-Expectation Wrong Attractor: The Expectation-Reality Gap, Anticipatory Defeat Architecture, and the Return to Calibrated Hope

Chronic disappointment — the persistent state of frustrated expectation — is here formally reconceptualized as a wrong attractor W_CD in the landscape of hopeful engagement. The healthy ground state S^0 is defined as calibrated hope: expectation formation grounded in realistic assessment with genuine openness to positive outcomes without structural inflation. W_CD arises through two structural variants: inflationary chronic disappointment (expectations systematically exceed reality) and anticipatory defeat (the person forecloses hoping to avoid disappointment, which itself forecloses fulfillment).

Nine formal propositions characterize the expectation-reality gap accumulation, confirmation-bias filtering, the neuroscience of prediction error and dopaminergic baseline dysregulation, the distinction from pessimism and depression, and return paths through expectation recalibration, mindful savoring, and genuine grief for foreclosed possibilities.