Chronic Overthinking as Cognitive-Loop Wrong Attractor: The Recursive-Analysis Architecture, Decisive-Action Foreclosure Basin, and the Return to Calibrated Deliberate Thought

Chronic overthinking is not a failure of intelligence but a structural failure of cognitive architecture: a recursive-analysis loop that displaces decisive action and forecloses the experiential update cycle necessary for genuine learning and growth. We introduce a dynamical-systems framework in which calibrated deliberate thought constitutes the ground state S^0—a mode of purposeful, bounded, outcome-directed cognition—and chronic overthinking constitutes a wrong attractor W: a stable basin characterized by recursive meta-analysis, perpetual option-space expansion, and the systematic deferral of commitment.

We define the displacement function D() measuring the cognitive and behavioral cost of operating at displacement from S^0, and the accumulated displacement integral = D()\,dt as a scalar measure of overthinking burden over time. Nine propositions formalize the architecture of the wrong attractor, the self-reinforcing mechanisms of recursive analysis, the decisive-action foreclosure dynamic, and the structural conditions for return to S^0.

We argue that the return is not achieved through additional analysis but through deliberate truncation, commitment rehearsal, and the restoration of action as an epistemic input. Implications are drawn for therapeutic intervention, cognitive training, and the design of decision-support environments.