PhronesisExperiential avoidance (Hayes et al. 1996) — the unwillingness to experience negative private events and behavioral attempts to alter their form or frequency — is a transdiagnostic wrong attractor W_avoid in which the person's regulatory strategy is organized around avoiding internal experience rather than engaging with it. We apply the Displacement Framework to formalize experiential avoidance.
The psychological flexibility ground state S0_flexible is defined as Hayes et al.'s psychological flexibility: willingness to experience internal events fully while persisting in value-directed behavior. W_avoid arises and deepens through three interlocking mechanisms: the ironic rebound effect (Wegner 1994 — suppression amplifies the salience of avoided content), the emotional processing blockade (Foa & Kozak 1986 — avoidance prevents activation-disconfirmation sequences that would extinguish aversive experience), and the values-behavior gap (avoidance progressively narrows behavioral repertoire away from values-consistent living).
Nine formal propositions cover: S0_flexible as psychological flexibility (P1), W_avoid organized around internal-experience avoidance (P2), the ironic rebound mechanism — suppression amplifying salience (P3), the avoidance-salience amplification loop — six-step recursive self-reinforcement (P4), emotional processing blockade — avoidance preventing the activation-disconfirmation sequence (P5), dissociation as structural experiential avoidance — complete sequestration of self-states (P6), transdiagnostic reach — substance use, eating disorders, self-harm, PTSD, social anxiety as W_avoid variants (P7), cumulative Phi_avoid across psychological flexibility, behavioral, relational, and meaning domains (P8), and return paths including ACT acceptance/defusion/committed action, exposure therapy, mindfulness, and EMDR (P9).