Emotional Suppression as Affect-Regulation Wrong Attractor: The Inward Turn, Somatic Cost Accumulation, and the Return to Expressive Fluency

Emotional suppression — the active inhibition of emotional expression and experience — is here formally reconceptualized as a wrong attractor W_ES in the landscape of affect regulation. The healthy ground state S^0 is defined as expressive fluency: the capacity to feel, name, and express emotions proportionate to context with appropriate regulation rather than suppression. W_ES arises when suppression becomes the default regulatory strategy: each suppression provides immediate social relief while accumulating somatic and psychological cost (Gross's process model: suppression reduces expressivity but increases physiological arousal).

Nine formal propositions characterize the physiological cost asymmetry, the social signal disruption effect (suppression reduces others' positive affect), cultural and gendered norms that reinforce suppression, somatization as misrouted cost signal, and return paths through expressive writing, emotion-focused therapy, and somatic practices.