Anxiety as Predictive Alarm and Angst as Severance: A Loop-Based Model of Construct Formation and Emotional Disconnection

This paper proposes a mechanistic model distinguishing anxiety from angst within a

loop-based framework of emotional regulation. Anxiety is defined as a predictive alarm

system, signalling the potential reactivation of learned thought–feeling loops associated with

prior destabilisation. Angst, by contrast, is conceptualised as a structural state of

severance: functional disconnection from both primary emotional experience and

context-sensitive evaluation, arising after sustained dominance of regulatory strategies

termed here the Construct. The model integrates conditioning, attachment learning, and

self-reinforcing loop dynamics, while introducing a precise distinction between signal

(anxiety) and state (angst). The Construct is not a pathological entity but a rational adaptive

response to an environment in which certain feelings were made costly. Its long-term cost is

the severance it produces. Implications for behavioural repetition, intergenerational

transmission, and intervention are discussed. The framework is grounded in the evaluation

framework and Transmission Origin Diagnostics (Madsen, 2026a; 2026b) and extends the

structural model of social anxiety (Madsen, 2026c).