Neurotic personality: craving attention, approval, praise
The thirst for attention, recognition and any manifestation of approval is always associated with a neurotic state and neurotic perception. The article will focus on a relatively healthy person with some neurotic disorders. About those cases where the conventional boundary between health and pathology, from the point of view of a specialist, is not crossed.
A person who craves attention is at the same time very dependent on this attention, it seems to the person that he really needs it, and at the same time such a person is very afraid of losing this attention, and when he loses it, he experiences a storm of not the most pleasant emotions, such as anger, irritation, and aggression. , and anxiety, and jealousy - the list goes on for a long time. The breakdown of lack of recognition and approval from the outside is so acutely experienced.
I cannot call such a state happy. Is this condition completely normal? Is it healthy? It’s more difficult here, because it’s not a threat to life as such, but I can’t call a full life from such a state, although the vast majority of people live this way. This is definitely not a pathology. This does not require treatment, and it only needs help if you are tired of it, want to learn to live differently, but don’t know how. If you are happy with everything or most of the way you live, if you don’t have the determination to find out “how it can be done differently,” then everything is in order, it is quite possible that this article is not for you.
Of course, to one degree or another, at least in part, such states are familiar to almost every person, at least I have never met anyone who was not familiar with this in my own life. That is why a neurotic view of life up to a certain point is completely natural for every person. But this state is always alarming and it is polar: states of euphoria, joy and lightness are replaced by dips into anxiety, melancholy, sadness or depression. The degree of depth of ups and downs is certainly individual - everyone has their own.
Wanting attention is not normal, or rather, perhaps it is normal, in the sense that the majority live this way, but this does not lead to joy and happiness. It is difficult for an adult to feel the need for attention. It is normal for a breastfed baby to need attention and care. Perhaps this is normal for up to three years, maximum five. Further, if a child does not know how to be holistic and interesting to himself, he is doomed to look for interest in himself on the side. And he is literally doomed to be addicted to emotional swings, and is automatically doomed to suffering.
Such a person lives in a world of unquenchable thirst for attention, care and approval. He behaves accordingly: always counting on the benefit that he needs from people. All this happens unconsciously, automatically - this turned out to be an acquired behavior model. Most likely, if you ask directly, this person will tell you that this is not about him, that in this regard everything is fine with him.
People who feel the need and thirst for attention, approval and praise are usually very decent, polite, pleasant in compliments, can skillfully sense your own importance and will skillfully, very subtly warm it up, filling their own worth, sometimes very graceful and courteous, know how to speak beautifully, know how to give pleasure to the interlocutor both in word and in your actions, gestures, subtle touches, demonstrating your participation by all possible means. And everything would be fine, but there’s a little catch here somewhere.
But the catch here is that all this happens unselfishly, with a specific goal, or rather a need.
Such a person needs your approval, to fuel his own importance. And he builds his own behavior accordingly - solely out of this need. While playing his role, such a person literally needs oxygen and also needs “applause” from you. What exactly constitutes “applause” can vary greatly for each individual person. For one, it’s enough to hear thank you, another will want brighter epithets, the third will shudder to wait for a grateful hug from you, the fourth will have enough of your sweet approving smile, the fifth will hope for your kind words about yourself among your friends. How exactly is not important, the essence itself is important: you must repay such a person with your attention and approval, you must praise him or at least not ignore him.
Such a person feels the need for attention expressed in any way, it is important that this attention expresses a quantum of trust to the person, so that he is recognized and approved, if not just like that, then at least for something. Such a person needs positive comments, praise for what he does, his appearance, or at least some kind of praise related to him and his activities directly. For the sake of such praise, a person is ready to work, try, comply, develop some kind of activity, play roles, be needed and useful.
It is useless to be angry with such people, and if you are not an expert, then trying to help is also useless.
Help for such a person can begin to occur only at the moment when an awareness of how he lives and what creates arises in him, and along with such awareness, perhaps, a natural desire arises to not live like that anymore. At this moment a person is open to the new and unfamiliar.
Before this, trying to help especially out of good intentions is useless, and even more so out of pity. Until then, all you can do, if it is available to you, is to have compassion without suffering. Or in other words: help without interfering, silently. This could also be called acceptance, if it is accessible and comfortable for you. If it’s not comfortable, go where you feel comfortable, look for your comfort, find it and don’t lose it.
If you can stay close, but only without being affected by the neuroses of a loved one, stay. For a person in a neurotic state, this will be very useful - the presence next to someone who is not affected by neurosis. If you find yourself hurt from time to time, then the only solution for you is to start with yourself and deal with your neurosis. The best gift for a neurotic is the absence of someone nearby who, in one way or another, also suffers from neurosis.
To be unaffected by someone else's neurosis, you need to cure your own neurosis. A person who has patched up his own neurosis can no longer be deeply hurt by such things.
By curing a neurosis, you do not become invulnerable; rather, you become disinterested in experiencing the emotions that accompanied your neurosis.
No matter how long you communicate and no matter how close you are, rest assured that a neurotic person will definitely give you a decent bill one day. You can be around for 20 years, so it may turn out that you could have been around for many years and never touched on a single really sensitive topic (how this happened is another good question), but as soon as you stumble and touch on something important, having deprived a person of something for which he has an acute thirst, accidentally depriving him of your attention or habitual approval - be prepared to receive a large bill in return.
When a neurotic person is responded to well, when his choices and decisions are not criticized, condemned, or questioned, the person feels comfortable and safe.
As soon as such a person encounters the slightest criticism or ideas and opinions that do not feed his sense of his own correctness, importance, necessity and specialness, and perhaps even slightly undermine the value of the currency with which the neurotic pays for attention, approval and care - such a person instantly finds himself in an experience of alienation, loss, uselessness, anger, and resentment. This may manifest itself in different ways depending on the model chosen in each specific case.
Someone will behave aggressively, may start screaming, sputtering, proving something, trying to drag the blanket of such warm external attention onto themselves. Trying to re-educate you, remake you, insist on your own, trying to get an apology, forgiveness, promise, etc. from you.
Someone will cunningly try to offend, hurt and provoke the “offender” - thus trying to defeat the “enemy” and prove to himself his own betterness, importance, rightness - to prove that the enemy was wrong, which means “I’m right” and “everything is fine with me.” in order". This type of behavior is associated with a constant struggle for attention and recognition both in one’s own eyes and in the eyes of others. Such a person is doomed to endless tension and life in permanent stress, no matter how cozy and pleasant life may sometimes seem to him. This struggle, it must be said, is always virtual - the battle always takes place exclusively “in the head” of this person.
In everyday life, no one attacks such a person, no one calls for anything or forces anything - the person himself chooses from time to time to take a position of defense or attack, defending his psychological territory, in fear of losing his importance and exclusivity. To do this, such a person always specifically (but not consciously) chooses to be close to those who are able to feed his similar behavior and maintain the status quo. And these are always those who are ready to regularly play one of several roles: the role of defenders, attackers or helmsmen, feeding our hero with importance, attention and care. And this is always a mutual, unconsciously interested game aimed at feeding both parties’ own conditioning. And this game can only happen to those who are able to play this game, who are interested in it.
Such people are strongly attached to experiences of vivid emotions, the pole of which no one can ever control: sometimes these emotions are pleasant and positive, and sometimes vice versa. A person is drawn, like a drug addict, to the experience of bright things, and the essence of bright emotions is such that it is impossible to control them.
Also, a neurotic disorder is directly related to the inability to experience satisfaction and joy from simple experiences devoid of an emotional component - such experiences are boring and uninteresting to a neurotic. A neurotic is interested in drama and for this he is ready to dissemble, hold back, wait, be a hypocrite, manipulate, play along, please, be offended, endure, thus continuing his own favorite drama. theater. A theater in which he is the main character, he is the main director, he is the main spectator, and he is also the main critic. Yes, in such a perception there are many vivid emotions: a lot of pleasure and automatically a lot of suffering. But there is no place left for simple life and simple happiness in such a theater.
Neurotic disorder is directly related to the inability to experience satisfaction and joy from simple experiences: there is no place for simple life and simple happiness in the dramatic theater of a neurotic
Some people use other strategies instead of open aggression, for example, strategies of subtle manipulation and cunning. These are strategies for a quieter fight against “rivals”, strategies for guerrilla warfare for attention. There seem to be fewer emotions here, but in reality they are exactly the same, very vivid, they are just experienced a little differently - like sneezing “to yourself.” The sneeze also occurs here and the force of the sneeze is identical to a loud sneeze in the whole mouth, but this is not visible from the outside, because the sound of the sneeze itself was actively suppressed by the sneezer. Therefore, the thirst for attention and approval is quenched here a little differently: it is veiled under care, kindness, and self-sacrifice.
There are other strategies. But that's not the main thing.
In this article I wanted to remind you, to draw your attention for a couple of moments to how a neurotic lives his life. How do you live your life when you don’t feel fulfilled, when you feel the need for attention, approval and praise from others and need constant replenishment of this.
Introduce you to pause for a moment. Right now. And they looked at themselves from the outside. And we thought for a second.
We thought and paid attention to ourselves. You need to start with yourself
, everyone just needs to understand themselves and their own parasitic patterns of behavior.
If you experience such a need, not even constantly, but from time to time, don’t wait for manna from heaven, don’t count on chance and don’t put it on the back burner - look for a specialist who is right for you and start working on yourself. literally everyone
needs it .
Of course, you can help yourself get out of such virtual swings here. It's not easy, but it's possible. Without help, this happens an order of magnitude slower. Therefore, I consider the opportunity to interact with a good specialist to be more reasonable and constructive.
You need to normalize both the background against which you perceive yourself, and normalize your own image, self-image, deprive it of the highest peaks and deep troughs: “you are not great and not terrible - you are simple and ordinary.”
You need to get used to, reconcile and love your own ordinariness. And I repeat, only a very good specialist, of whom there are not many, can help with this. In answer to a possible silent question, I consider myself to be a good specialist.
Without deep, real humility with one’s simplicity and ordinariness, there is no talk of anything more. This is the very basis - the basis of a simple, harmonious, happy life. Without this, you can’t even begin to look for satisfaction either in money, or in your favorite job, or in family, or in relationships, or in children - everything will pass by, it will literally be doomed to failure, but this will not become clear to you right away. And without starting right now, you will continue to delay the moment, hoping for a better opportunity, for more favorable circumstances, but essentially waiting for gangrene.
So don't delay. Start with yourself. And decide not tomorrow, but right today: Start paying attention to your psychological health, your own spiritual harmony, either on your own or with the help of a specialist who is right for you.
Try to listen to yourself, start working on yourself.
Why is it important to recognize histrionic personality disorder?
Regardless of whether we are talking about colleagues, friends, relatives or loved ones, it is very important to recognize histrionic personality disorder in a person. This way you can help your relationship by making both your life and that person's life easier. For example, imagine that your boss suffers from histrionic personality disorder. He has sudden mood swings and has a nasty habit of turning small mistakes on your part into huge mistakes.
He also cannot concentrate on his responsibilities, so he delegates his work to you. If you didn't know he had histrionic personality disorder, your boss would most likely drive you crazy. However, now that you are aware of his problem, you can learn to adapt and cooperate.
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Key words:1Profiling
Addressing the audience
Basically, addressing an audience means using the word “you.” In this case, the reader feels that the author of the article is addressing him specifically. Such a headline design attracts attention, because the brain of each of us is aimed at solving emerging problems, which is part of the ancient mechanisms of the self-preservation instinct.
Therefore, if the reader is part of the target audience for which the article and headline were created, he will feel that what is written specifically concerns him.
This also applies to human selfishness: when you appeal to human desires, needs and emotions, you are answering the basic question that arises in the minds of the audience: “What can I find here for myself?”
Now let's see how this rule can be applied:
Or even like this:
Blend in with the crowd
Let's say you plan to find out more information about your competitors. To do this, you need to sneak into your competitor's office to peek at a couple of files on the secretary's desk or count the number of trucks to send products to customers. It's very easy to do. Observe the cleaning lady in your own office, forced day after day to perform routine cleaning tasks, picking up paper under tables, emptying bins, wiping dust on tables. Or the actions of the courier, who has been “hanging around” at the reception for an hour now, waiting for the treasured letter from one of the managers. And then it turns out that he was on the “wrong” floor. To blend in with the crowd, you must feel like you are part of the mass, engaged in your own thoughts and activities. Imagine that you are in this place every day, do not look around and do not change the pace of your walk. Use low-contrast and soft clothing items, and slouch slightly. Hold in your hands something small and inconspicuous in the form of a rolled up plastic bag.
Astonishment
An unexpected message in the title of an article always attracts attention, as the human brain is tuned to new information. If we compare expected pleasant events and unexpected ones, then in the second case the part of the brain responsible for pleasure is activated to a greater extent.
Therefore, one of the surest linguistic ways to attract attention in headlines is to surprise the reader. New information stimulates and grabs our attention better than what we already know, even if it is information on topics that interest us. Therefore, people subconsciously prefer new experiences to those already learned.
Here are examples of extraordinary, surprising headlines:
And further:
- 5 Simple Formulas for Creating an Attractive Headline
