Neurotic Personality: Thirst For Attention, Approval, Praise

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Video: Neurotic Personality: Thirst For Attention, Approval, Praise

Video: Neurotic Personality: Thirst For Attention, Approval, Praise
Video: Neuroticism - Addressing the 10 Neurotic Needs 2024, March
Neurotic Personality: Thirst For Attention, Approval, Praise
Neurotic Personality: Thirst For Attention, Approval, Praise
Anonim

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 conditionally healthy person with some neurotic disorders. About those cases where the conditional border of health-pathology from the point of view of a specialist is not crossed.

A person thirsty for attention, at the same time very much depends on this attention, it seems to a person that he really needs it and at the same time such a person is very afraid of losing this attention, and when deprived, he experiences a storm of not the most pleasant emotions, this is anger, and irritation, and aggression, and anxiety, and jealousy - the list goes on for a long time. The breaking of the lack of recognition and approval from the outside is so acutely experienced.

I cannot call such a state happy. Is this a normal state - completely. Is it healthy? It is more difficult here, because it is not a threat to life as such, but I cannot name 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 do not know how. If you are satisfied with all or most of the way you live, if there is no determination to find out "how can it be otherwise", 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 those who would not be familiar with it, I have not met in my own life. That is why a neurotic outlook on life up to a certain point is quite natural for every person. But this state is always alarming and it is polar: states of euphoria, joy and lightness are replaced by failures in anxiety, melancholy, sadness or depression. The degree of depth of ups and downs is certainly individual - each has its own.

To want attention is not normal, or rather, perhaps it is normal, in the sense that most people live this way, but this does not lead to joy and happiness. Feeling the need for attention is difficult for an adult. It is normal for a breastfeeding baby to need attention and care. Perhaps this is normal up to three years, maximum five. Further, if the child does not know how to be integral and interesting to himself, he is doomed to seek interest in himself on the side. And literally doomed to addiction to emotional swings, and 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 was the learned model of behavior. Most likely, by asking directly, this person will tell you that this is not about him, that in this regard he is in complete order.

People in need and thirst for attention, approval and praise are usually very decent, courteous, pleasant in compliments, they can skillfully sense your own importance and will skillfully, very subtly warm it up, filling their own worth, sometimes they are very elegant and courteous, they can speak beautifully, know how to give the interlocutor pleasure both by word and by your actions, gestures, barely perceptible touches, demonstrating your participation by all possible means. And everything would be fine, only there is a small catch somewhere here.

And the catch here is that all this happens not disinterestedly, with a specific purpose, or rather a need.

Such a person needs in your approval, in your self-importance. And he builds his own behavior accordingly - solely from this need. Playing his role, such a person literally like oxygen, also needs "applause" from your side. What exactly is "applause" for each individual can vary greatly. It is enough for one to hear thanks, another will want more vivid epithets, the third will shudder to expect grateful hugs from you, the fourth will need your sweet approving smile, the fifth will hope for your kind words about himself in the circle of acquaintances. How exactly is not important, the very essence is important: you must repay such a person with your attention and approval, you must praise or at least not ignore.

Such a person feels the need for attention expressed in any way, it is important that with this attention a person is expressed a quantum of trust, 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 is doing, his appearance, or at least some kind of praise associated with him and his activities directly. For the sake of such praise, a person is ready to work, try, correspond, 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 the awareness of how he lives and what creates, and along with such awareness, perhaps, a natural desire arises not to live like that anymore. At this moment, a person is open to the new and unfamiliar.

Before that, trying to help especially out of good intentions is useless, and even out of pity, even more so. Until then, all that you can, if it is available to you, is compassion without suffering. Or in other words: to help without interfering, silently. It could also be called acceptance if it is affordable 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 if you are not affected by the neuroses of a loved one, stay. For a person in a neurotic state, this will be very useful - the presence of someone nearby who is not affected by the 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 who, in one way or another, also suffers from neurosis.

To be unaffected by someone'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 this.

Having cured a neurosis, you do not become invulnerable, you rather become disinterested in experiencing the emotions that accompanied your neurosis

No matter how long you communicate and no matter how close you are, be sure that a neurotic person will definitely bill you a decent bill one day. You can be close for 20 years, it may turn out that you could be close for many years and did not touch on any really acute topic (how it happened is another good question), but as soon as you stumble and touch something important, having deprived a person of what he is deeply thirsty for, accidentally depriving him of his attention or habitual approval - be prepared to receive a big bill in return.

When they react to a neurotic well, when they do not criticize, do not condemn, do not question his choices and decisions, the person feels comfortable and safe.

As soon as such a person meets with the slightest criticism or with ideas and opinions that do not feed his sense of his own correctness, importance, need and peculiarity, 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 the experience of alienation, loss, uselessness, anger, resentment. This can manifest itself in different ways depending on the model chosen in each particular case.

Someone will behave aggressively, may start screaming, splashing saliva, trying to prove something, trying to drag the blanket of such warm external attention to themselves. Trying to reeducate you, remake you, insist on your own, trying to get you to apologize, forgiveness, promises, etc.

Someone will cunningly try to hurt, hurt and provoke the “offender” - thus trying to defeat the “enemy” and prove to himself his own best, importance, rightness - to prove that the enemy was wrong, which means “I’m right” and “everything is with me in order". This way of behavior is associated with a constant struggle for attention and recognition, both in their own eyes and in the eyes of others. Such a person is doomed to endless stress and life in permanent stress, no matter how sometimes life seems to him comfortable and pleasant. The struggle, I must say, this 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 and does not force anything - a person chooses from time to time to get into a position of defense or attack, defending his psychological territory, in fear of losing his importance and exclusivity. For this, such a person always deliberately (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 who feed 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 happen only with those who are able to play this game, who are interested in it.

Such people are strongly attached to the experience 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 experiencing bright, and the essence of bright emotions is such that it is impossible to control their pole.

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, under-talk, wait, hypocrite, manipulate, play along, please, take offense, endure, thus continuing his own favorite drama. theater. A theater in which the main character is he, the main director is he, the main spectator is he, and he is the main critic too. 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 for a 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: in the growth of life and simple happiness in the drama theater of the neurotic there is no place

Someone, instead of open aggression, uses other strategies, for example, strategies of subtle manipulation and cunning. These are strategies for a quieter fight against "rivals", strategies for guerrilla warfare for attention. Emotions here seem to be less, but in reality they are and are exactly the same, very bright, just experienced a little differently - like a sneeze "to myself". A sneeze occurs here and the force of a sneeze is identical to a loud sneeze in the whole mouth, but from the outside it is not visible, because the sound of the sneeze itself was actively suppressed by the sneeze. Therefore, the thirst for attention and approval is quenched here a little differently: it is veiled under care, kindness, self-sacrifice.

There are other strategies as well. But that's not the point.

In this article I would like 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 do not feel fulfilled, when you need attention, approval and praise from the outside and you need constant nourishment of this.

Introduce so that you pause for a moment. Right now. And they looked at themselves from the side. And they thought for a second

We thought about it and drew attention to ourselves. You need to start with yourself, everyone just needs to deal with themselves and with their own parasitic patterns of behavior. If you feel such a need not even all the time, but from time to time - do not wait for manna from heaven, do not count on it by chance and do not put it on the back burner - look for a specialist who is right for you and start working on yourself. This is not an easy step, but it needs it at some point. literally everyone.

Of course, you can help yourself to get out of such a virtual swing here. It is not easy, but 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 on which you perceive yourself, and bring back your own image, the idea of yourself, to deprive it of high peaks and deep depressions: "you are not great and not terrible - you are simple and ordinary."

You need to get along, reconcile and love your own ordinariness. And I repeat, only a very good specialist, of whom there are not many, can help with this. Answering a possible dumb question - I consider myself a good specialist.

Without deep, real humility with its simplicity and ordinariness - about b OThere is no more speech. This is the very foundation - the foundation of a simple, harmonious, happy life. Without this, you can not even begin to look for satisfaction either in money, or in your favorite job, not in your family, or in relationships, or in children - everything will be bypassed, it will literally be doomed to failure, but you can see this will not be immediately apparent. And without starting right now, you will continue to delay the moment, hoping for a better chance, for more favorable circumstances, but in fact waiting for gangrene.

Therefore, do not delay. Start with yourself. And make up your mind not tomorrow, but 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.

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