Seeking Attention

On a need we all share — and rarely dare to name

One of the recurring themes in my therapeutic work with teenagers is attention-seeking — almost always raised in a pejorative, dismissive context. Many of the young people I work with carefully conceal this need from their peers. They don’t want to be called attention-seekers.

These terms have become especially charged with the rise of social media, where people post content hoping for likes, words of appreciation, or consolation — and where there is sometimes a strange competition over who “really” deserves support and who is “just” seeking attention.

I also hear critical remarks from parents: “She’s just looking for attention.” “He’s doing it to provoke us.” “It’s all for show — we ignore it.”

But around the topic of attention, many myths and misunderstandings have grown up. I thought it might be valuable — for teenagers and adults alike — to give this subject what it deserves: some open, honest, and kind … attention.

I work as a psychotherapist using a Process Work approach, which means I try to understand human experience through the lens of awareness, curiosity, and following what is unfolding beneath the surface. I’ll draw on real examples from my practice throughout this article. All identifying details have been changed to protect my clients’ privacy.

 

Daria

In one of our sessions, sixteen-year-old Daria was fighting back tears. “I’ve come to the conclusion that I miss people,” she said. “I have three friends, but none of them ask questions when I tell them about my problems. One of them can talk with me about metaphysical things — the meaning of life, the structure of the universe — but the moment I bring up emotions, she changes the subject. The second one has a terrible situation at home. Her father is an alcoholic, her mother is mentally ill. She has no space for anyone else’s pain. And the third immediately says she has it worse and makes the whole conversation about herself. I can’t be myself at school either. Once I cried in the hallway, and a classmate came up to me and told me to stop being so attention-seeking.”

I knew Daria’s life well. That comment from a peer must have felt like a blow straight to an already aching heart.

And yet — the truth is, we all need attention. We need it the way we need oxygen, water, and food. From the very first moments of life, we seek contact with our caregivers: we make faces, we cry, we laugh when we are tickled, we hide in corners and wait to be found and greeted with delight.

Social media may be one of the most powerful mirrors of our need for attention. Platforms reward exactly what we crave — visibility, validation, response. We carefully curate how we move, how we dress, how we present ourselves, all in pursuit of likes, reactions, and followers. The number on the screen becomes a measure of worth.

We post our successes, our highlights, our best angles or dramatic photographs of cut hands. And we wait. The notification becomes a small hit of reassurance: I was seen. I matter.

What happens when attention is withheld

In the thirteenth century, the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II conducted what may be history’s most chilling experiment. He wanted to discover which language children would speak naturally, without any human influence. On his orders, newborns were taken from their mothers and placed with wet nurses who were forbidden to speak to the infants, sing to them, or play with them. They were to feed and bathe the children — nothing more.

Every child in the experiment died before reaching their first birthday.

The monk Salimbene di Adam, who documented the experiment, concluded that children simply cannot survive without what we might now call attunement: without smiles, the clapping of hands, warm words, and praise.

When we are the object of someone’s genuine attention, we learn that we matter. That our feelings, thoughts, and desires are real and worthy of notice. This need is so fundamental that in homes where physical violence is practiced, children sometimes seem to ‘prefer’ being struck over being completely ignored — because at least being hit means being seen. Between two forms of cruelty, invisibility can feel like the worse one.

In my practice I would see countless ‘cases’ of teenagers who suddenly did something dramatic: broke a window, shoplifted, started a fight. Not out of malice, but out of a desperate need to make the family system notice them.

I have known families where a teenager’s struggles were invisible until they became a crisis — where a child could have panic attacks before school each morning and no one intervened, where signs of bullying or abuse were quietly set aside, where sadness was simply not tolerated. In the psychiatric ward where I once worked, we would regularly receive young patients after suicide attempts that had followed years of being unseen.

When no one reacts to us, when we produce no ripple in anyone’s world, the sense of our own existence begins to erode. We shrink. We disappear. And this is a direct path toward apathy and the desire to give up on life altogether.

 

Erasing the need for attention

Peers who were themselves deprived of attention in childhood often learn to dismiss their own needs — and then to dismiss the needs of others. Contempt for “attention-seekers” is frequently a defence against one’s own hunger. Behind the mockery, there is almost always someone who longs, quietly and intensely, to matter to someone.

Seventeen-year-old Beata came to therapy after an unsuccessful suicide attempt. She was withdrawn, almost frozen, and minimised everything that had happened to her. Over several sessions, a picture emerged: her older sister had spent years calling her an “attention whore,” humiliating her at every opportunity. As a baby, Beata had been seriously ill, and her mother’s attention had naturally focused there — leaving her sibling feeling displaced. Her father, carrying his own unresolved pain, had sought comfort outside the family. Beata’a sister was hungry for love and centrality that she had had before her younger sister was born. The atmosphere in the house was getting worse each year. Watching her family falling apart Beata came to conclusion that her needs were a burden — and eventually, that she herself was one.

The real burden was different – aloness. Everybody in the family needed support and co-operation. Genuine conversation about fear and pain. Finding out how to be together in a challenging situation.

When early relationships — especially those we depended on for survival — were not safe, our nervous systems adapt accordingly. We learn to scan constantly for danger, to freeze or fight or flee or appease rather than connect freely. We narrow our needs down to survival. And to survive, we learn to sense the other person first — their mood, their needs, the danger they might represent — before we have any room to notice our own.

Others can shame our need — and erase it. And so, in time, we learn to do the same to ourselves.

A 15-year-old Caroline shares her latest self-reflection. “When I look back at my younger self, I feel such disgust. I was so clingy! The moment a classmate showed me any interest, I’d follow her around like a puppy — pouring all my feelings, thoughts, and worries onto her. No surprise she cut me off. She had her own troubles. I must have been so exhausting.”

There’s a difference between recognizing that we’ve crossed someone’s boundaries and invested too much in them and punishing ourselves for simply needing to be loved. One is awareness. The other is neglect.

I congratulated younger Caroline for being smart enough to seek what she needed. The direction was right. All puppies need love — a mother’s warmth, a gentle tongue, nourishing food, play, and room to explore.

But Caroline’s home offered none of that. Her parents fought constantly. The air was heavy. She was expected to be good, quiet, invisible — excellent grades, no trouble, no feelings. She learned the lesson well: hide in your room, pretend not to hear the screaming. And when the pain grew unbearable, she cut her thighs to make it stop.

She needed to become even more clingy — but consciously this time. To cling to love, to self-respect, to safety, to people and places that nourish rather than drain. Her work was to become a devoted mother to the puppy inside her — and give it everything it had always deserved.

 

How we learn to seek attention

Not all attention we receive growing up is equal. Many of us learn to receive only partial or conditional attention: recognition that comes only when we perform well, only when we are visibly suffering, or only when things become genuinely dangerous.

From the moment we arrive in the world, we begin absorbing everything around us — the atmosphere of our home, the beliefs carried by those who raise us, the emotional inheritance of our families and culture. This process, known as internalization, happens largely without our awareness. Like a sponge, we take in what surrounds us.

In an ideal world, our caregivers meet our physical, emotional, and intellectual needs with consistency and warmth. They feed us, hold us, respond to our signals, keep us safe, and stimulate our minds. When children receive this kind of loving attention, they learn that they have a right to live. They also, crucially, learn to pay attention to themselves. By the time they reach adolescence and adulthood, forming and sustaining caring relationships — including a caring relationship with themselves — comes more naturally.

But ideal circumstances are rare. The reasons are countless: a caregiver’s own difficult childhood, economic pressure, illness, relationship conflict, the birth of another child, war. Culture shapes these patterns too. Some societies prize early independence — separate sleeping, self-soothing, individual achievement. Others, particularly many East Asian, African, and Latin American cultures, emphasize interdependence from the beginning: children sleep beside their parents longer, are carried more, and receive attention oriented toward relational harmony rather than individual expression.

Whatever the shape of our early experience, we learn from it. We learn what to expect from others, and what to expect from ourselves.

 

The skill of seeking attention directly

There is nothing wrong or unnatural about wanting attention. If we did not receive it in sufficient quantity or quality as children, we likely learned — quietly, invisibly — that we are not quite worth caring for. We develop strategies: some of us fight, more or less consciously, to wrestle something for ourselves from the world. Others withdraw and go hungry. Most of us do both, depending on the day.

But there is another way. And it begins with recognising the value of the need itself.

Children are natural masters at seeking attention. They cry, they charm, they tug at sleeves and call out across playgrounds: “Mum, look! Grandma, are you watching?” They do it without shame because it hasn’t yet occurred to them that needing to be seen is something to be ashamed of. We would do well to recover some of that directness.

The more clearly and directly we stand behind our need for attention, the greater the chance of actually receiving it — and the greater the sense of our own worth. Saying “I need your attention right now” is not manipulation. It is honesty. It is treating ourselves as important enough to reach out.

When I work with teenagers on this, we sometimes practise together in the session. I might play the classmate who says, with contempt: “You’re just doing it for attention.” And I respond, as if I were Daria: “Yes. I need attention. I’m crying because someone hurt me badly, and I need someone to sit with me for a moment. You don’t even have to say anything. Just be here.”

Asking directly or admitting the need involve risk. But so does asking indirectly — and at least with directness, the situation is clear. If someone cannot be present for you at this moment, that is information, not a verdict on your worth. It simply means this particular source of attention is unavailable right now. You look elsewhere. You are not diminished by a “not now.”

 

The strategies we develop

Children raised by attentive, responsive caregivers learn early that this works — that when they call out, someone comes. That when they express a need, it is heard. But most of us are not raised in such ideal conditions, and so we learn other methods: making noise, starting arguments, slamming doors, sobbing loudly, sulking, giving the silent treatment, ‘causing problems’. We learn to signal indirectly what we are too afraid, or too unsure, to say outright.

We also absorb these strategies from the environment we grow up in – if our parents or caregivers didn’t express their needs directly, or did so in roundabout ways, we simply took it as the norm.

These strategies may have worked well enough in the environment where we learned them. But when we take them out into the wider world — among peers, colleagues, strangers — they often backfire. People sense what Process Work calls a “double signal” – when we feel hurt by someone’s words we act as though it did not touch us – yet our body tells a different story. Our eyes get wet. Our fists clench. Our body turns away.

When we double signal, something feels incomplete or inconsistent. We seem to want nothing, yet we are clearly wanting something. The result is often the opposite of what we need: irritation, distance, or withdrawal from the very people we were hoping to reach.

 

The edge — what separates us from asking directly

In Process Work, we talk about an “edge” — the threshold between who we currently are and who we are in the process of becoming. Like a caterpillar that has not yet made it into a butterfly. The edge is the guard at the door, the voice that says: stay here, it is safer. And this is exactly the place where we unconsciously start double-signalling.

When it comes to seeking attention, we hit many edges. Some sound like this:

“I’m too much.” “Real strength means not needing anyone.” “No one actually wants to hear this.” “I’ll only be rejected.”, “The less visible I am, the safer I am.”, „Boys never cry”, „Girls should be quiet”.

Some of these beliefs were formed to protect us. Some preserve the culture or family system we belong to. Some are simply destructive. But they are all, in some sense, trying to keep us from the risk of being seen. And yet, being seen is precisely what we need.

The edge can be so strong that we may not even realise that we need attention. We may ignore signals from our souls and bodies just as they were once ignored or pathologised by our caregivers or the culture we grew up in.

In our work together, in sessions, we turn toward the edge itself. We identify the guards — the voices that say “people will think I’m weak” or “in our family we manage on our own” — and we explore them.

This requires a shift in how we see ourselves. We tend to think of ourselves as one unified thing — one self, one voice, one will. But we are, in fact, inhabited by many parts that interact with one another, sometimes in harmony, sometimes in conflict. The guard at the edge is one such part. It is the voice that for example says to the rest of us: don’t show what you need. No one will respond. No one will take care of you.

In the Process Work approach, we get curious about this part. Whose voice is it? Is it a man’s voice or a woman’s? Where did it come from? When did it learn its point of view? We don’t try to silence it — we interview it. And through that conversation, we begin to understand the wisdom it carries, the wound it was formed around. Slowly, those beliefs begin to loosen.

 

“Others have it worse”

Many teenagers tell me, with complete sincerity, that they do not deserve attention because someone else is suffering more. “It’s not that bad — Mia only weighs forty kilos and is on a drip, and I weigh forty-five.” “Mark has scars everywhere; I’ve only cut myself on my thighs.”

It’s another edge. And if we followed this logic to its conclusion, no one would ever deserve support. Someone lost one leg in an accident, but someone else lost two. Someone has cancer of the stomach; someone else has bone metastases. The list is endless — because it is not based on any rational principle. It is simply the internalization of a belief that we are not quite worth caring for.

Think of a garden full of flowers. Each one needs water. A gardener who focused all attention on one corner would watch the rest wither. The need for support does not work on a ranking system. It is not “either/or.” You and she and he and they — all of us deserve care. Whether it is a cut finger or a broken heart, everyone has a right to be listened to, to be held, to receive a kind word. Suffering is never a competition.

There are, of course, moments when we need a firm hand — when life demands that we take hold of ourselves, face a crisis, and move forward despite our wounds. But that kind of movement does not come from the belief that we are unworthy of support. It comes from the opposite: from believing, “I deserve to get out of this hole. I have more in me than this.” These two starting points — self-dismissal and self-worth — have an entirely different quality, and we feel the difference in our bodies. One contracts us; the other opens us and puts wind in our sails.

 

What we need and what we get

Even when attention is given generously, there is often a mismatch between the kind of attention offered and the kind that is needed. Adults — and parents in particular — tend to default to giving advice: solutions, encouragement, a push to be stronger. It is much harder, and less instinctive, to simply sit with someone in their pain and listen without trying to fix anything. And yet, that is very often exactly what a young person needs.

Sixteen-year-old Maya had been diagnosed on the autistic spectrum. After long, overstimulating days at school, she would come home and cry. Her mother, wanting to help, responded with practical suggestions and encouragement to push through. But in one family session, Maya gathered the courage to tell her mother the truth: she did not need advice. She did not need solutions. She needed her mother to sit beside her, hold her hand, and simply be there.

Something shifted in that room. Maya’s mother heard her — really heard her. And in learning a new way to be present for her daughter, she also began to reconnect with something in herself.

Learning to name not just that we need attention, but what form that attention should take, is a profound act of self-awareness — and courage. The need shifts from moment to moment. Sometimes we need someone to listen. Sometimes we need advice or money. Sometimes we need someone to meet our energy and help us move. The clearer we can be about which we need, the greater the chance that we will receive it.

 

The skill of receiving attention

Seeking attention is one skill. Receiving it is another — and it is equally something we must learn.

When attention comes our way, it is worth pausing to ask: is this what I actually need right now? Am I letting it in? Because receiving attention is not passive. It requires believing, on some level, that we are worth it. Without that belief, attention slides off us. We get stuck on the edge and remain hungry no matter how much arrives. And over time, the people around us can become exhausted trying to fill what feels like a bottomless cup.

Ola had been seriously ill since early childhood. Her father, feeling helpless in the face of her illness, had responded to her tears not by turning toward her but by turning toward himself — screaming about how worried he was, how much he was suffering. Her pain became about him. Growing up in that environment, Ola internalised a devastating belief: that she was a burden. That life would have been easier for everyone without her. She learned to treat her inner world as unimportant, and she carried that lesson into adulthood. When she came to see me, she could describe deeply painful events in the same flat tone one might use to read a weather forecast. My genuine interest in her feelings was dismissed by her. I had to stop her many times to bring in my empathetic reactions and let them slowly sink into her spirit.

The skill of receiving attention includes the art of gratitude. When we are newborns, receiving attention is effortless and transparent: we smile, we light up, and that joy becomes its own reward for the person caring for us. A loop of connection forms naturally.

As we grow older, we need to develop a more conscious appreciation for the moments when we are truly seen. It is worth telling a friend: “I love how you listened just now. That was exactly what I needed.” This does two things at once — it teaches the other person what matters to you, and it acknowledges that their presence is something of value. Attention, given and received well, deserves to be named.

Relearning to receive attention, after years of this kind of adaptation, is slow and sometimes frightening work. But it is possible.

 

The skill of giving attention

Giving attention is a beautiful skill — and one we go on learning throughout our lives. Really listening. Asking the right question at the right moment. Being fully present without an agenda. Playing, spending time, holding space for another person’s experience without immediately making it about our own.

The older I get, the more I believe it is about quality rather than quantity. One moment of genuine, undivided attention can mean more than hours of distracted presence.

I often hear from teenagers about a frustrating dynamic with friends: they share something meaningful, and the friend immediately redirects the conversation to themselves. The moment passes. The need goes unmet. It is tempting to simply write that friend off. But I often encourage teenagers to try something first: to tell the friend directly what they need. “Can you stay with me for a moment before we talk about you?” People can surprise us. Giving a friend the chance to learn how to be present for you is an act of generosity — and if they genuinely cannot or will not, then at least you know.

Equally important is knowing our own limits. We will not always have the space to be fully present for someone else. What matters is that we say so honestly. “I wish I had more for you right now, but I’m depleted. Can we come back to this a little later?” That kind of honesty is itself a form of care — for the other person, and for ourselves.

It is never too late to make a difference. One observant adult can help a teenager understand that they are somebody — that someone sees their potential. Children who grow up neglected can become self-directed, flourishing adults because a teacher noticed their gift, or a friend’s parent sat down and really listened at the right moment. A few drops of nourishing water can give a seed the strength to push through hard ground.

And if you are the teenager reading this: your need for attention is not a flaw. It is not drama. It is not something to be ashamed of. It is one of the most human things about you. You deserve to be seen.

 

It is never too late to change

Even when we grow up in environments where emotional directness was impossible — where feelings were rarely named, where needs were rarely acknowledged — change is possible. Some teenagers become quiet pioneers within their own families, finding the courage to break patterns that may have been passed down across generations.

Seventeen-year-old Mary found the courage, in a family therapy session, to tell her mother what she had never been able to say: how much she still needed her attention. Her mother had always prided herself on raising an independent daughter — by twelve, Mary was cooking her own meals and managing her own schedule. But in that session, Mary broke down and said out loud: she had felt invisible. She still wanted to be held sometimes. Even one shared meal a week would make a difference.

Her mother listened. She was open enough to hear something new: that her daughter’s independence, while something to be proud of, had come at a cost. That she had been missing a language — the language of closeness and care. And sitting in that room, she began to learn it.

 

Paying attention to yourself

Our inner world asks for attention constantly. Our physiological needs are masters of attention — hunger and thirst make themselves known, clearly and persistently, until they are met. Our feelings, dreams, and impulses speak to us constantly through images, bodily sensations, and quiet insistences. When we listen to them, we are affirming their importance.

Just as we can dismiss the needs of others, we can dismiss parts of ourselves. We might be attuned to our sadness but blind to our growing strength. We might celebrate our confidence while quietly ignoring our vulnerability. What we overlook in the world around us, we often overlook within ourselves too.

For as long as Zuzia could remember, her parents had been locked in conflict. Her father controlled the household money, doling out barely enough for necessities and publicly humiliating her mother over her obesity. Her mother retaliated with contempt. Zuzia was nearly invisible to them, or she was the repository of their mutual grievances.

Hungry for love and for being seen, she clung to any boy who showed her the slightest interest. Outside of relationships, she spent hours scrolling through social media, waiting for messages. She was genuinely talented, but her potential went untouched. In her relationships, she would give herself away entirely, terrified of losing the attention she had found. If a boyfriend didn’t reply to a message immediately, she would spiral into rage and panic, sending message after message. She could not tolerate him looking at another girl.

Zuzia was searching for the kind of attention a loving parent gives an infant — eyes lit up with delight, an immediate response to every cry. It was the right direction. But placing that entire need on a teenage boyfriend meant she was doomed to constant frustration.

A large part of our work together was about Zuzia learning to be that attentive presence for herself: to notice her own needs, to comfort herself when she was sad, to encourage herself toward her artistic gifts, to recognise when something felt wrong and to say so. We also worked on building a wider circle of support — friends, mentors, people who could genuinely show up for her. Her parents refused to join the therapy, so we also began making a plan for her eventual independence.

This is what self-attention looks like in practice. Not self-absorption, but self-care. Learning to be a good parent to yourself.

There is something even deeper here. I experienced it myself while developing a friendship with a colleague from another country. One afternoon, working in my garden, I noticed I was having an imaginary conversation with her — telling her about changes I was going through, challenges I was sitting with. When I eventually overcame my own shyness — my own inner voice saying I’m not that interesting — and shared this with her, she was moved. She felt deeply seen. What surprised me was this: when I gave genuine attention to my own inner life and treated it as worth sharing, she felt it. Making myself matter made her feel that she mattered too.

 

Attention as a way of being

So far, we have spoken of attention mainly as something that flows between people. But this exchange happens far beyond the human realm.

We give attention to our animals, and they give it back. We tend to plants, walk in nature, watch the sky. Attention, in this broader sense, is not merely a social skill. It is a way of inhabiting the world.

Arnold Mindell, the founder of Process Work, spoke of deep democracy: the practice of listening to all aspects of our experience with the same openness we would ideally offer to every voice in a room. Not silencing the inconvenient parts. Not favouring the ones that feel acceptable. Keeping genuine curiosity toward all of it.

Mindell observed that the unconscious does not stay silent — it speaks to us continuously, through our dreams, through symptoms in the body, through disturbances in our relationships, through unexpected events that arrive uninvited and refuse to be ignored. Each of these is a signal, a message carrying meaning if we are willing to slow down and receive it.

Lisa, eighteen years old, comes to the session stressed before final exams. Whatever she does, she says, she doesn’t feel ready. It’s never enough. I’m listening, but I’m also aware of the larger context. A recurring theme in our work together is Lisa’s inherited belief that she’s not good enough — absorbed from years of high expectations and constant disappointment from her father. Now that belief has landed squarely on her exam preparation. Then something catches my attention. As she describes the exam feeling overwhelming, her hands drop heavily onto her lap. A strong, deliberate gesture. I invite her to explore it.

In Process Work, one method for exploring a signal is to amplify it — to exaggerate it until it reveals its meaning. We stand up. We make the gesture bigger, stronger, wilder. We add sound. Lisa smiles a lot! And as we move deeper into it, something unexpected emerges: a bear attacking a fish. We become the bear. Claws, power, full commitment to the strike. As we explore the bear’s qualities together, they turn out to be remarkable. The bear’s mindset is simple: you see the fish, you catch it. No second-guessing. No asking *am I ready?* Just total focus, total presence. You need to survive, so you act. We then bring the bear into Lisa’s life. If the bear were preparing for an exam, it would open the notes, learn them, move to the next page, and keep going. At the exam, it would write whatever it can write, say whatever it can say. No hesitation. No self-doubt.

The energy in the room has shifted completely. What began as *not enough* has transformed into something instinctive, powerful, and already alive inside her — waiting in a gesture she didn’t even know she was making. Lisa’s inner bear only needed some attention.

Process Work is itself a practice of attention: a discipline of noticing what is asking to be heard. And the more we practise, the wider our listening becomes. We begin to sense that it is not only people who seek our attention. It is the whole of life — the dream that woke us at three in the morning, the persistent ache in the chest, the stranger whose words landed strangely, the sudden stillness in a forest. Everything, it turns out, is sending signals. The universe itself is seeking our attention. And if we dare to pay attention, to be curious, to stay present — we find ourselves drawn into a deeper current. Something that carries us toward greater meaning.

 

Agnieszka Olszewska – Kaczmarek

Process Worker, M.A. in Psychology

 

About the approach

Process Work is an awareness practice founded by Arnold Mindell and developed together with his students and colleagues. At its core, it is an approach built on openness and curiosity — rather than labelling experiences as ‘problems’ to be fixed, it encourages us to stay with what is happening and explore it more deeply. Through this openness, we can begin to discover the meaning behind our emotions, thoughts, reactions, relationships, dreams, and bodily signals. In my everyday practice as a psychotherapist, I find it a genuinely helpful way of supporting teenagers and adults in understanding themselves with greater awareness, compassion, and curiosity.

Acknowledgement

I would like to extend my appreciation to Suzette Payne and Dawn Menken for their valuable comments and feeedback on this article and MaryJo Radosevich for her support in editing English version of this article.

 

Photo by Victoria Danielova, https://www.pexels.com/photo/grayscale-photo-of-girl-covering-her-face-13540391/