The Layered Propagation Framework: A Stratified, Relational Model of Anxiety and Therapeutic Change

This paper proposes the Layered Propagation Framework (LPF), a stratified and relational model for understanding anxiety and evaluating therapeutic change. Contra existentialist accounts that characterize anxiety as the dizziness of freedom (Kierkegaard, 1844/1980), the LPF reconceptualizes anxiety as a temporally extended, relational affect arising from over-identification with a self-representation under anticipated transformation. Drawing on phenomenological psychiatry (Ratcliffe, 2008; Fuchs, 2013), predictive processing (Clark, 2013; Friston, 2010), and clinical research on anxiety disorders (Barlow, 2002; Craske et al., 2014), the framework integrates six interacting strata—physical/biological, implicit/subconscious, conscious/cognitive, linguistic/discursive, relational, and temporal—within a critical realist architecture (Bhaskar, 1975). The paper argues that durable therapeutic change requires cross-layer propagation rather than isolated symptom modification, and provides meta-criteria for evaluating existing therapeutic modalities. A clinical vignette demonstrates the framework’s application, and a comparative table evaluates cognitive-behavioral, psychodynamic, and mindfulness-based approaches against layer-adequacy criteria.