The Fix

In most cases, solving problems related to attention-seeking does not mean curtailing the attention-seeking behavior itself. As mentioned above, some people find great success and bring great value to the world through their strengthsand those strengths happen to serve a dual purpose: validation for themselves and productivity for their organization. Millions of attention-seekers fully accept themselves as that type of person, as they should.

But sometimes attention-seekers want to tackle various aspects of the pattern. A colleague of mine, who was working on his own attention-seeking tendencies, wanted to change his behavior so that he could address his need for attention in a more honest way. His traditional approach to gaining attention was to think of a topic he could use to justify sitting down with me in the office for a few minutes. It would be any topic that fit under the heading of our mutual professional concerns. What he really wanted, though, was just to affiliate. Ultimately he concluded that coming up with a topic for the sake of affiliating was dishonest.

At his suggestion, we agreed that he would simply announce a craving to affiliate. Now he comes to me and says, ˜˜Got a minute? I need some affiliation . We smile at the shared understanding and spend a few minutes together. Starting a dialogue this way may seem inelegant, but it is honest.

A client named Jean asked her teammates to support her in a special way when she was feeling needy. Her traditional response to insecurity was to start to whine. She hated this tendency in herself. People teased her for it. It worked for her at one level, but she just didnt like what it said about her. She asked her colleagues, when they noticed she was ˜˜acting out, to assume that she was feeling insecure. Their commitment was to point out her behavior and as non-judgmentally as possible talk through what was making her insecure . She told me this kept her honest. And it seemed to work. She had very supportive coworkers.

Both of these people had a fairly healthy or mature outlook concerning their attention-seeking. I believe people do become less needy of external attention as they mature emotionally. Sometimes, however, the coaching relationships need to drill down a little deeper. When people approach me as a coach regarding their insecurity, my mission is to help them put a face on the pain.

John, an extraordinarily successful real estate agent in Manhattan, was very curious about what that face might be in his case. His challenge was that whenever he lost a sale he felt completely deflated. He said it had been getting worse as the years went by.

John and I worked together for eight sessions. He was a very hard worker. It seemed that whatever task he undertook, including addressing the insecurity that drove him, he did it marvelously. But he had such pain! Over time we built a list of key moments in his life.

Picture two young parents having their first child. The child was John. The parents were totally inexperienced with nurturing babies and raising kids . At the time of his birth the mother was an unemployed waitress and the father an apprentice electrician. When they got home from the hospital with baby Johnny, a whole new stress was introduced into their lives. They were simply unprepared to be good parents.

Baby Johnnys crying was the fathers biggest frustration. He couldnt deal with it. The sleepless nights seemed to be going on for months on end. The mother was experiencing postpartum depression and her incessantly irritable husband was thin support. For the first few years of his life, Johnny lived in a very tense household.

At night, after putting Johnny to bed, the mother would turn out the light and go watch television. Johnny would start to cry shortly thereafter. She would go into his room, pick him up, and the crying would stop. After a few months of this routine went by, the father had what he thought was a good idea. ˜˜You run to him so soon! he said. ˜˜Hes got you conditioned. Let him cry a little. Youll see; hell go to sleep. So they tried the experiment.

Johnny cried for several minutes but eventually went to sleep. The father said, ˜˜See? It worked. Although she hated the crying noise, the mother learned to accept that he would usually cry through it. As for Johnny, he had an instinctive craving and the craving was not satisfied. These very early years became a metaphor for his home life. Unmet cravings were the name of the game.

Cut to kindergarten. When Johnnys mother went to see the teacher, she was told that Johnny seemed smart, but he was very rough with the other children. He also never settled down at nap time and at story time he was a little disruptive. ˜˜Hes very busy looking for attention, the teacher said. Johnnys mother said, ˜˜Thats our Johnny.

Now cut to the parent-teacher interview in sixth grade. By this point, Johnny was the class clown. In this case, the teacher didnt really have a problem with Johnnys behavior. Sure, he was disruptive, but he was also a delightful boy. ˜˜He volunteers to sharpen pencils at recess, she said, expressing the pleasure she took from having Johnny in her class.

Johnny was growing up to be quite a nice person. He seemed affable. He was outgoing and playful. He knew just how to make his friends laugh , and he did it all the time. He was not particularly happy at home, however. He craved more time from his father. But Daddy was always out, going to peoples homes to fix their wires. And when he came home, he was tired . Johnny would watch his father watch television. He would see his father laugh at the funny shows. He would hear his parents argue. He would watch his mother running around the house dealing with his sister and brother.

Jumping way ahead now to early in Johns career, it was clear to those around him that John would be a superstar salesman . He had a unique ability to sense when customers liked him and when they didnt. When he got the feeling that he was disliked, or that the customer didnt like what he was recommending , John was able to respond quicklysometimes, it seemed, even before the customer was aware of her own opinion.

As one successful year followed another, John had lots of opportunities to explain his success and try to teach it to other people. It was subtle, but heres what he was sure of. ˜˜You have to watch peoples faces and body movements to know what they are thinking, he would say. ˜˜What ever is on their minds is revealed in their body language. And when they dont feel good, youve got to make them feel good. The trick to that is to give them what they want. If they like their idea better, you must go with their idea. If they are bored, you must not drag them through all the details. Go where the customer is! Be the customer!

In more reflective times, John knew what explained his success. He told me early in our relationship, ˜˜You know, I never ever got the attention that I wanted when I was a kidfrom either of my parents. My father was always out, or at home watching TV and drinking beer, and my mother was always taking care of my brother and sister. My sister is mentally handicapped, by the way, so she needed a lot of attention. Anyway, I did get pretty skilled at reading people. I guess it was because I was so hungry for the least glimmer of connectionanything would do. A smile, for exampleI remember just wanting a smile.

His problem, he said, was that in spite of all the interpersonal skills he had developed naturally, he could still feel the need to please . And he didnt like it. There was something bugging him underneath it all. Whenever he lost a sale, the thing that was bothering him became more intense .

Our work together was to find out what was on his mind. ˜˜What do you think it is? I asked. ˜˜Well, I know its all related. My skills come from my need to please. When I do not please someone, it hurts. I guess I fear that hurt. I guess I still hurt. But that doesnt make it go away.

Indeed. An intellectual understanding of all the links does not remove the emotional anguish. Somehow, one must deal with things from within the emotions, not from outside. So thats what we did.

˜˜John, lets look at the rejection you feel when you lose a sale. Tell me about that.

˜˜Well, it just happened recently. Its still fresh on my mind. The customer chose a facility being sold by my biggest competitor. I blew it.

˜˜How does that make you feel? ˜˜Lousy. Its like, for some reason, they didnt like me. It hurts. I asked him to close his eyes. I walked him through my preferred exercise for getting people who stay at an intellectual level to connect with their feelings. ˜˜Where in your body do you feel the hurt? I asked him.

John pointed to his chest.

˜˜What does it feel like? ˜˜It feels tight. Tightness in the chest is where a lot of people feel their rejection. ˜˜Feel it there for a short while, John. Lets go with it. I noticed that John was holding his breath , letting it go, and then holding it again. Thats what people do. They brace themselves tightly in order to keep the hurt in. ˜˜Breathe, John. Its okay. What are you feeling?

John winced. ˜˜I feel sad. Very sad. They didnt love me. I wanted that business so badly . I tried everything I knew. And I was sure they liked me. And then they said no!

John was connecting the business matter with his need to be liked or loved. For him, what he did every day was about being loved. When he sold real estate, he was selling himself.

Thats one problem faced by attention-seekers. By making their self-esteem dependent on the love of others, they set themselves up for huge pain when they dont get it. Most attention-seekers who get help ultimately learn to derive their esteem needs more from themselves. Thats where John and I were heading in this dialogue.

˜˜Breathe, John. His exhalation opened him up. Out came sobbing cries. John had been holding in pain for an awfully long time. But he only cried for ten minutes, busily managing the tissues required to protect him from being totally embarrassed. But thats okay; the process of facing ones pain is gradual. After such a cry, defenses are down, and feelings, partially spent, are exposed and accessible. It was a good moment for John to make connections between behavior and feelings. John had the opportunity to integrate his emotions into his self-understanding.

˜˜John, what does it feel like when you let it out like that? He got out a four-word answer before bursting back into tears. ˜˜I feel so small!

Another couple of minutes passed. ˜˜Tell me more. ˜˜Its like Im alone. Its an emptiness. ˜˜Can you feel that emptiness now? ˜˜Yes, its as clear as day. ˜˜Good, John. Lets rest in that emptiness for a while. In this room. Right now. Feel it. Close your eyes for me, and feel it.

He complied. ˜˜Assume that this emptiness, John, is part of you. Observe it as part of you. It is not who you are, but it is a part of you. It may be your motivation on the job. It has been with you all your life.

John sat there, slouched in his chair , quiet for several minutes. Periodically, he would wince and look as if he was about to cry. Then the wave would pass and he would be thoughtful again.

He looked at me with a resigned expression. He shook his head and said, ˜˜Its amazing. It feels like all my life I have been followed by this shadow of pain. It explains so much! Everything I have done comes from this pain. My successes were caused by it. My failures reminded me of it. I feel like Im just so simple. Its sad. Its so simple.

After a slight pause, he curled his lip, about to be playfully sarcastic . ˜˜Im just an asshole. A programmed machine. Everything looked so complicated but its all very simple. Were like cattle grazing the planet. Not much more.

Johns insights aside, he was integrating his feelings into his worldview . This was progress. He was learning to accept himself for what he was. Over time, and several more conversations, that self-acceptance made him much less vulnerable to the ups and downs of his sales career.

At one session, John wondered whether getting in touch with his emotions would cause him to lose his skills and motivation for selling. I said I couldnt be sure about the motivation, but I was positive that his skills would not diminish. His acute awareness of others thoughts and feelings was his. It may have evolved from a need for love that was never fulfilled. But it was a gift. John even volunteered, ˜˜There are two sides to every coin; my parents may have starved me, but look at where I am now.

It has been four years since John and I completed our sessions. But we still exchange e- mails . He is now the CEO of a different real estate company. He only gets involved in the ˜˜monster deals but he still gets to use his people skills as a leader. He does not consider himself an attention-seeker any more. He knows that the programming is in there, and the finely tuned acumen is always at his disposal; even the feeling of emptiness is accessible to him. But, as he puts it, ˜˜Im not so raw.