PhronesisChronic over-giving — the stable pattern of giving beyond one's capacity, often without reciprocity, with giving as the core identity and self-worth mechanism — is here formally reconceptualized as a wrong attractor W_COG in the landscape of sustainable generosity. The healthy ground state S^0 is defined as sustainable generosity: giving from genuine abundance and genuine choice — capable of receiving, capable of declining, capable of giving without resentment accumulation.
W_COG is rigorously distinguished from compulsive rescuing (white knight architecture) and compulsive caretaking (organized around being needed); the defining feature is giving as the ontological mechanism of self-constitution. Three interlocking mechanisms maintain the basin: the worth-through-giving equation (self-worth is constituted by what one gives — stopping giving feels like ceasing to have value, making giving not optional but ontological), the receiving-incapacity loop (the chronic over-giver cannot receive without disrupting the unidirectional flow that constitutes their relational role — inability to receive maintains the depletion that drives giving), and the resentment accumulation (giving beyond capacity without reciprocity accumulates invisible resentment — the giver eventually erupts, surprising those who never knew limits were being crossed).
The generosity-depletion paradox is central: chronic over-giving depletes the resource being given — genuine sustainable generosity requires taking in as well as giving out. Nine formal propositions characterize the giving-as-identity basin, the three mechanisms, generosity-depletion paradox, developmental roots, gender dimensions, return paths, and distinction from genuine generosity.