Emotional Avoidance as Experience-Refusal Wrong Attractor: The Suppression Paradox, Avoidance Spirals, and the Return to Affective Presence

This paper applies the Displacement Framework to emotional avoidance, analysing it as a wrong-attractor state in which the displacement cost of experiencing certain emotions is elevated beyond tolerance, generating systematic experience-refusal. Using displacement cost D(ξ), accumulated displacement Φ, and basin geometry, we formalise Wegner's suppression paradox as the primary basin-deepening mechanism: suppression attempts ironically increase accessibility of the suppressed experience.

Nine propositions characterise the suppression paradox, avoidance spirals, somatic displacement, and return paths through ACT acceptance and emotion-focused therapy. Published as part of The Phronesis Issues preprint series.