Emotional Numbness as Affect-Shutdown Wrong Attractor: Dissociative Blunting, the Cost of Feeling Nothing, and the Return to Calibrated Affect

This paper applies the Displacement Framework to emotional numbness, analysing it as a wrong-attractor state distinct from alexithymia and anhedonia: numbness is an active shutdown of affective processing in response to overwhelming displacement cost. Using displacement cost D(ξ), accumulated displacement Φ, and basin geometry, we formalise the bilateral valence foreclosure of numbness — the shutdown forecloses positive affect alongside negative, generating secondary accumulated displacement Φ_numb.

Nine propositions characterise the overwhelm threshold, protective dissociation, somatic displacement under affect-shutdown, relational costs, and return paths through titrated affect exposure and somatic therapy. Published as part of The Phronesis Issues preprint series.