YOU ARE NOT ALONE - A companion online community discussion board for The Mental Illness Happy Hour podcast with Paul Gilmartin

I'm starting to feel like a lot of my compulsive activities (standup comedy, lying, sex) are not addictions in themselves so much as symptoms of a more overarching addiction to attention. Is that even a thing?

It's like I started my life as the "golden child" to my parents and then all of a sudden they started seeing me as an adult and switched gears to me having to earn the adulation that they just gave automatically. It might be that I was achieving before, but being a kid is easier. It might be that my threshold (the addiction term is "tolerance" but that doesn't seem to fit here) for positive attention was somehow raised and now I can't get enough.

I'm sure I'm not the only person who feels this way*.



*though it would be PRETTY COOL if I was.

That makes sense to me.

I recently had to acknowledge my own attention seeking tendencies I also use humor and also realized I'd make jokes in conversations as a way to control & make myself more comfortable.

Whatever it is, it's awesome to be able to recognize, so you/we/etc. can take in the info & move forward.