Hyperindependence as Compulsive-Autonomy Wrong Attractor: The Attachment Wound Architecture, Help-Refusal Basin, and the Return to Interdependence

Hyperindependence — the compulsive refusal of help, connection, and vulnerability as self-protection — is here formally reconceptualized as a wrong attractor W_HI in the landscape of interdependence. The healthy ground state S^0 is defined as interdependence: the capacity to give and receive help, support, and connection while maintaining autonomous identity. W_HI is distinguished from healthy autonomy by its threat-avoidance motivation: the hyperindependent person does not prefer self-sufficiency; they experience dependence as catastrophically risky.

W_HI typically arises from attachment wounds where dependence was punished or betrayed, establishing an avoidant attachment basin that deepens through help-refusal self-concept and shame around need. Nine formal propositions characterize Bowlby and Ainsworth's avoidant attachment model as basin initialization, the metabolic cost of sustained self-sufficiency under genuine need, somatic entrenchment through polyvagal dysregulation, the distinction from adaptive independence, and return paths through earned secure attachment, vulnerability scaffolding, and trauma-informed relational therapy.