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Summary
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A woman recognizes a persistent need for attention that leads to arguments, repeated messages, and harmful coping. Insight alone has not helped her stop damaging important relationships.
The response distinguishes understanding a pattern from changing an emotionally driven habit.
It recommends ongoing behavioral or cognitive behavioral psychotherapy to identify triggers, recognize the sequence before acting, and practice healthier alternatives with consistent support and accountability.
Question
Reader · Identity withheldI am 29, female, and have been married for two years and I struggle with a serious craving for attention. In almost every relationship or social setting, I feel obsessed with being the center of attention. I will go to great lengths to get it, and when I do not, even for a short time, I end up behaving in ways that hurt my relationships.
\nThis behavior has pushed away people I have known and cared about for years. I think it might go back to childhood. I received a lot of attention growing up, and maybe I became dependent on that kind of validation.
\nI find myself doing things just to get a reaction. I send people messages or emails just to make them respond. When they do not, I get upset, sometimes irrationally so. I have even chosen jobs like teaching, where people are more or less forced to pay attention to me.
\nBut this constant need is ruining my life. I am getting into serious arguments, completely my fault, and I have started to rely on unhealthy and even harmful ways to cope. I know this is not sustainable, and I want to change before I destroy more of my relationships and my sense of self.
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Answer
Mark Vigil Dombeck, Ph.D.You have enough insight to know that what you are doing isn’t working, but it isn’t enough to stop you from doing it. This is common, as your cravings are very likely to be highly emotional in nature, while your understanding of your issues is merely rational. Emotion almost always trumps rationality in this most imperfect world of ours. Or, at least it is a struggle for everyone to behave rationally when they are in distress.
\nClearly, it is not enough for you to merely understand your issue. Instead, you have to learn to recognize when you are about to do something self-destructive before it happens, and to then act on this insight so as to do something that will feel quite distinctly weird at first; to act in a more healthy way instead of the seductively self-destructive way. This is a hard and difficult process, very much like learning to live sober when you’re an addict. It is best done under the supervision of a skilled psychotherapist, preferably one of the cognitive-behavioral persuasion.
\nA therapist whom you work with on a regular basis is important, because you are in the habit of doing things one way, and without the regular guidance, supervision and accountability that a therapist can provide, you won’t break that habit.
\nTherapy that will benefit you best will need to be gentle but constantly there for a long period of time not unlike braces for your teeth.
\nWithout the therapist, there is no corrective pressure to push you in the right direction.
\nA behavioral therapist is important, because you need more than just understanding, compassion and good will to make changes. What you need is an engineer who will help you dissect your problem behavior, identify the complex chain of events that leads you to do self-destructive things, understand your ‘triggers’ and help you develop viable alternative behaviors.
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