Compulsive Self-Denial as Deserving-Refusal Wrong Attractor: The Deserving-Threshold Architecture, Moral-Identity Basin, and the Virtue Paradox

Compulsive self-denial — the chronic pattern of systematically denying oneself pleasures, comforts, rest, and legitimate needs as a virtue, producing chronic depletion while generating a felt sense of moral righteousness — is here formally reconceptualized as a wrong attractor W_CSD in the landscape of appropriate self-nourishment. The healthy ground state S^0 is defined as appropriate self-nourishment: the capacity to identify and provide for one's genuine needs and pleasures without chronic self-prohibiting — exercising appropriate restraint in genuine excess contexts but not applying ascetic discipline to ordinary need-fulfillment as a moral practice.

W_CSD is rigorously distinguished from genuine asceticism chosen freely, healthy delayed gratification, appropriate self-discipline, and legitimate prioritization of others' needs in specific contexts. Three interlocking mechanisms maintain the basin: deserving threshold architecture (the compulsive self-denier carries an internal deserving monitor that sets the threshold for legitimate self-nourishment impossibly high; D(ξ) is generated by any self-nourishment that has not been earned by this standard), self-denial as moral identity (the systematic refusal of comfort and pleasure is experienced as virtue; the identity organized around not-needing and not-taking makes receiving care or comfort feel like weakness or selfishness), and depletion-righteousness loop (chronic self-denial produces depletion; depletion generates a felt sense of having suffered sufficiently to deserve something; the temporary relief confirms the system and the loop tightens with each cycle).

The Virtue Paradox is central: compulsive self-denial reliably produces the moral failure it is organized to prevent — the chronic depletion generated by self-denial degrades the capacity for genuine generosity, presence, and contribution, making the self-denier progressively less able to give what they refuse to receive. Nine formal propositions characterize the appropriate self-nourishment ground state, the deserving-refusal wrong attractor, the three maintenance mechanisms, the virtue paradox, developmental roots in environments where needs were burdens, and return paths through IFS work, graduated self-permission practice, self-compassion, schema therapy, and somatic approaches.