Mental health conditions can alter how we perceive attention;
Hey, Dan here. I wanted to do a blog on how the need of and reciept of attention can alter when we are undergoing an mental health condition or effect
This is for the benefit of some of our users for anyone who may have similar traits, and for others to understand how the need for attention can be altered when someone is experiencing trauma. This most commonly comes forward as a person not telling the truth
It is okay, I assure you it is okay, mental health pulls us in many ways, but what we need you to understand is that we at SAPUK are all volunteers and we hold a duty of care, whatever you say to us we have to log to a degree, so it is important that we respectfully recurve the truth
The below blog will give you an insight on how we experience this and how you can understand and resolve this if you feel you have this behaviour, it is not you as a person internally it is a mental health condition.
Mentally for us at SAPUK it can be extremely difficult for us to support someone when they aren’t telling us the truth, we are going to be bringing things in place that if we suspect an attention disorder is within your mind and is not being resolved with us that our service will no longer be the right one for you, we are extremely busy and we work on a red light basis, we can not tolerate fabrication of the truth, especially because we are just volunteers, we take our time away from our families to support you
What is an attention disorder?
For adults, this seeking behaviour is the conscious or unconscious need to become the centre of attention, or to gain validation or sympathy or admiration in some way
It can be expressed vocally or physically; it is where a person will say or do something with the end goal of getting attention from a person or group.
- Exaggerating stories to gain praise or sympathy
- Being controversial to provoke a reaction
- Pretending to be unable to do something, to then engage with another
The causes of this behaviour can stem from anywhere within adverse childhood experiences or adult trauma but some of the causes in adults are, jealousy, low self-esteem, loneliness.
It can also be caused by a personality disorder such as, Histrionic – Borderline – Narcissistic – personality disorder’ – I will explain these in a later blog.
Having a low self-esteem can encourage you to need attention as it brings back the balance of the lost attention that you don’t give to yourself. Having a low self-esteem has a negative effect on you, both mentally and physically, but it is with the right support within reach to get back, I will release something soon on building this back up;
Loneliness can also encourage this behaviour as a person may feel socially isolated so needs the communication from another person, within our service many may feel they have to be suicidal to gain access but this is not the case, we will continue to support but we will support the most vulnerable as a priority, of course
Personality disorders also make it extremely difficult for a person to understand their behaviours and when they are seeking validation and behaving in ways that they need not, by alarming other people that they aren’t okay when they are. If you believe you may have a personality disorder, please discuss this with one of the team members as it will ensure the correct support is given, and furthermore to your doctors.
When experiencing trauma and neglect or if you have experienced both of these at a young age it can make the attention seeking addictive as it has never been given freely before. It can make building relationships difficult in the future which is why I am writing this, so that these unhealthy behaviours can be resolved for you within SAPUK and not fed onto future relationships;
Here at SAPUK we are an extremely open and transparent service, you do not need to fabricate the truth in order to engage in our support, so we kindly as volunteers ask you to resolve this before entering our chat service. You can resolve this with us too we just need you too see that this is a mental health condition and resolve these behaviours, so that we can help you properly.
This is not directed at any sole person it is a recurrent behaviour that has been seen since our services began in 2016.
If you require extensive support, we need the truth;
Respectfully, thank you for reading
Dan x