by AntigoneRising on January 6th, 2007

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I see people say, "You are just seeking attention," all the time. What is so wrong with seeking attention?

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by tigueron on January 7th, 2007
I don't see anything wrong with seeking attention but don't lose the perspective, not everybody wants to pay you attention and in that case you'll probably seem intrusive.
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by Stableboy on January 7th, 2007
I agree with BenThereB4 in general but would add some other aspects:

What all people are seeking is a sense of belonging and wholeness: being. However, we can't "get our hands on" what this means exactly. In childhood, we learn to protect ourselves from the slights and disapproval of others by withdrawing and building a shell around "myself".

This shell succeeds at protecting us, but there's a cost: we lose at least some of our ability to experience being connected and belonging -- to family, relationships, community, humanity. The shell produces a sense of isolation.

This isolation IS painful... it's not necessarily a sharp or throbbing pain, but it's very persistent. It simply refuses to go away, and may show up just a vague sense of dissatisfaction or disturbance: a feeling that "this isn't it" -- somehow my life is not complete and whole just as it is, I "need something more". Then the mind cooks up the notion of what it needs and organizes life around trying to obtain that: money, success, sex, pleasure, etc.

Attention is in this category of things the mind THINKS will fill the emptiness left over from the "break in being" which occurs in childhood. I think of these things as being sort of like the "junk food of being" -- they provide a cheap, low-quality buzz that helps to offset the pain of separation briefly.

Of course, the problem with a temporary buzz is twofold: it's incomplete (not quite satisfying) and temporary. The moment the drug wears off we're right back where we started again: suffering from a sense of broken being.

So there isn't really anything wrong with attention seeking: it's not bad or evil, it's just one of many possible symptoms of a deeper disturbance that's asking to be resolved.
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- So is humility the opposite?
  
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  by LynfromNM on January 7th, 2007
- There isn't really an "opposite", but you could say that humility is the absence of the need for attention seeking and self-aggrandizement. The "humble person" may have some other buzz-need which is their imagined substitute for being, or they may have healed enough of the break in being to be relatively free. Then there's "pretend humble", which happens in religion a lot -- people emulating some concept of humility in order to gain something. That's just another form of cheap buzz... something they think will make them whole. I'd put Lyn in the "largely healed" category, myself. Nobody's 100% in or out there, it's a sliding scale...
  
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  by Stableboy on January 7th, 2007
- I guess with my yin-yang type of thinking there is always an opposite, but that doesn't mean one side or the other is "all positive" or "all negative"
  
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  by LynfromNM on January 7th, 2007
- I would say the notion of "opposite" is too restrictive: every concept has it's "complement", which may or may not be a coherent opposite, depending on whether it defines one pole of a spectrum. So, for example, the complement of "apple" is "everything except the apple", not "orange". The complement of "right" is "wrong", because "right" defines a pole of a value spectrum. Apple does not.
  
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  by Stableboy on January 7th, 2007
- gotcha, very good explanation.
  
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  by LynfromNM on January 7th, 2007
- I like your chain of thoughts SB. But in "seeking attention" the distinction between what is right or wrong, what is just or invalid is kinda blurred. Like you said, its a drug...more like an addiction and attention seekers do just about anything to get some, and once a method is proven to work, it is practiced without any boundaries. I'd say we ALL try and seek someone's attention all the time, feel heard, listened to but as someone said "Too much of everything/anything is bad", seeking too much attention too many times is bad in itself.
  
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  by Bunter on January 7th, 2007
- Well that's a good point. I think the distinction I'm making is that attention seeking in and of itself isn't primarily a moral values issue, but is a symptom of a specific personal identity issue. Certainly any behavior which "takes over" and tries to run the show will eventually carry one into trouble areas of other kinds. Addiction always has consequences.
  
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  by Stableboy on January 7th, 2007
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by Anonymous on January 6th, 2007
I think people believe it is vain or that the person is arrogant.

My experience with people who seek or need attention is that they are often lonely, have low self esteem, are in need of friends, needing validation or are otherwise not getting what they need in the right amounts from their parents, friends, business associates and so on.

I have certainly done things in my life to get attention. Sometimes I got a spank on the rear end, and sometimes a hug. I see it as a natural human behavior that probably everyone does. Some people (Donald Trump may be a good example) just do it in larger and not nearly as subtle ways as others.
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- Good answer.
  
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  by AntigoneRising on January 6th, 2007
- Thank you. Good question. Someone gave you a negative. I could only get you up to a +1. With your points and rank you will survive it I am sure!
  
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  by Anonymous on January 6th, 2007
- Yeah, I'll survive it. I often ask questions to stir the pot and make people think outside the bag. :) Thanks for the point.
  
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  by AntigoneRising on January 6th, 2007
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by A on February 7th, 2012
Seeking attention is not wrong, but how one goes about it may be unhealthy. Anyway, I find people who accuse other people of seeking attention in a negative tone to be hypocritical. Why bother saying that if they are supposedly not seeking attention themselves? "You are just seeking attention" sounds like something said by an attention seeker... who doesn't like the attention that somebody else is getting. Such a person may be jealous... or may be a person who likes to stir up trouble because he or she gets some sort of pleasure out of it. It could also be an excuse to discount every word the person being called an attention seeker says so that the person can feel better about being cold and possibly even bitter towards the person he or she decided to write off as an attention seeker.

I'll end this answer with this:

We, as people, are often guilty of the faults we accuse other people of having. We've all been hypocrites, I'm sure, at least once in our lives.
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by der Bingle on February 7th, 2012
With attention-seeking comes a degree of drama...and those that create drama for the sake of gaining attention are generally frowned upon.
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by machinerat on February 7th, 2012
It can simply get on other peoples' nerves when the attention-seeker has nothing constructive to add to the conversation or gathering, and is interrupting the flow so they can be the center of it all. It also shows a lack of interest in what other people are doing, yet expecting others to be interested in what the attention-seeker is doing.
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I see people say, "You are just seeking attention," all the time. What is so wrong with seeking attention?

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