Compulsive Excessive Context-Giving as Comprehension-Insurance Wrong Attractor: The Backstory-Compulsion Architecture, Listener-Overwhelm Basin, and the Return to Calibrated Narrative Economy

Compulsive excessive context-giving (W_CECG) is formalized within the displacement framework as a wrong attractor organized around the persistent provision of more background information than the listener needs, can process, or has solicited. The healthy ground state S^0 is defined as calibrated narrative economy: the capacity to begin a story or explanation at the point that serves the listener's comprehension, trusting that the listener can request what they need and supplying only what is genuinely relevant to the communicative goal.

W_CECG diverges from S^0 through three sustaining mechanisms: (1) comprehension-gap-anxiety, in which the fear that the listener lacks necessary background drives pre-emptive over-explanation, producing context provision calibrated to imagined worst-case comprehension deficits rather than actual listener state; (2) omission-as-deception, in which any elided context is experienced as a form of withholding or dishonesty, creating a felt obligation to include everything that could conceivably be relevant; and (3) context-giving-as-connection, in which extensive background-sharing is experienced as intimacy-building and relational warmth, making narrative economy feel cold, distant, or withholding.

The paper formalizes the Context Paradox: more background is provided to ensure comprehension, but excessive context impairs comprehension by burying relevant information under irrelevant detail; the attempt to be understood produces misunderstanding. We define a context-relevance function R(c) for each piece of context c, show that the optimal context set C^* is a strict subset of what the compulsive context-giver provides, and define as the accumulated relevance-weighted overcontexting cost across interactions.

Developmental roots in environments where misunderstanding carried significant consequences are traced. Return paths through listener-trust practice, economy-by-editing, and entry-point experimentation are described. Nine formal propositions, three definitions, and two remarks structure the analysis.