Chronic Self-Betrayal as Values-Violation Wrong Attractor: The Self-Abandonment Architecture, Integrity-Collapse Basin, and the Return to Self-Fidelity

Chronic self-betrayal — the persistent pattern of acting against one's own values, needs, and authentic knowing in order to secure approval, avoid conflict, or maintain connection — is here formally reconceptualized as a wrong attractor W_SB in the landscape of self-fidelity. The healthy ground state S^0 is defined as self-fidelity: consistent alignment between one's actions, values, and authentic knowing — not perfect moral behavior, but the capacity to remain loyal to one's own truth even under social pressure.

W_SB is rigorously distinguished from appropriate compromise, genuine value revision, mature relational accommodation, and healthy generosity. Three interlocking mechanisms maintain the basin: approval-override (whenever authentic expression or action threatens another's approval, the self-betrayer overrides their own knowing in favor of what will be accepted; the other's comfort systematically takes precedence over one's own truth; D(ξ) is generated by any act of authentic self-assertion), integrity erosion (each act of self-betrayal makes the next easier and the cost less visible; over time the self-betrayer loses contact with their own values and authentic knowing — they can no longer clearly identify what they actually think, want, or believe; the betrayal becomes invisible because the self being betrayed has become inaccessible), and resentment accumulation (suppressed self-expression accumulates as resentment toward those whose approval is being courted — the self-betrayer becomes bitter toward the very people they are sacrificing themselves for).

The Fidelity Paradox is central: chronic self-betrayal reliably produces the disconnection and inauthenticity it is organized to prevent — relationships maintained through self-betrayal are not genuine, as the other person is connected to a performance rather than a person. Nine formal propositions characterize the self-fidelity ground state, the values-violation wrong attractor, the three maintenance mechanisms, the fidelity paradox, developmental roots in self-expression-punishing environments, and return paths through IFS, ACT values clarification, and graduated authentic expression.