Hypervigilance as Threat-Scanning Wrong Attractor: A Displacement Framework Analysis

This paper applies the Displacement Framework to hypervigilance, analysing it as a wrong-attractor state in which the threat-detection system is miscalibrated to treat baseline safety as insufficient. Using displacement cost D(ξ), accumulated displacement Φ, and basin geometry, we demonstrate how threat-scanning becomes self-sustaining because scanning generates physiological arousal that confirms danger, deepening the basin.

The displacement cost of relaxing vigilance is elevated because the system has been shaped to treat relaxation as itself dangerous. Nine formal propositions characterise calibration failure after trauma, the arousal-confirmation loop, somatic and relational costs, and return paths through nervous system regulation and titrated exposure. Published as part of The Phronesis Issues preprint series.