Chronic Overcommitment as Boundary-Collapse Wrong Attractor: The Yes-Compulsion Architecture, Schedule Flooding Basin, and the Return to Deliberate Capacity

Chronic overcommitment — the compulsive accumulation of obligations beyond genuine capacity, driven by inability to refuse rather than genuine desire to engage — is here formally reconceptualized as a wrong attractor W_OC in the landscape of deliberate capacity. The healthy ground state S^0 is defined as deliberate capacity: the calibration of commitments to genuine values, energy, and time, with the capacity to say no proportionate to circumstances without anxiety.

Three distinct mechanisms drive W_OC: approval-seeking and fear of disappointing, identity investment in being needed or indispensable, and avoidance of empty time as stillness aversion. W_OC is distinguished from workaholism, which is driven by positive engagement with work, and from genuine generosity. As schedule floods and accumulated displacement Phi grows, the person becomes progressively less present to any individual commitment, inverting effort and impact.

Nine formal propositions characterize the yes-compulsion architecture, superlinear cost accumulation above capacity threshold, the indispensability trap, effort-impact inversion, physiological non-recoverability, and return paths through values-based prioritization, no-practice scaffolding, and schedule detox.