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Lack of attention/loneliness stock image concept
Do people sometimes treat you with such indifference that you wonder if you've become invisible? Are you afflicted by a craving for meaningful human interaction that goes deeper than the customary blah-blah-blah. Are you hard-pressed to remember the last time you felt truly heard, understood by and emotionally attuned to another person?
If so, perhaps you suffer what Carol, a colleague of mine, calls “attention deficit disorder.” She isn't referring to ADD, the mental malady most often ascribed to children and adults who can't sit still or stay on task. Rather, this deficit involves the absence of being attended to by others in positive and meaningful ways.
The symptoms? Loneliness, touch hunger, a feeling of insignificance or a sense of psychological invisibility. In some, it can lead to bitterness and hostility.
Hectic World
In our hectic, depersonalized world, many of us are emotionally hobbled for lack of earnest attention. Granted, some receive far too much unwanted and meaningless attention, often from devices, media and persons who want something from us. However, there are many folks who hunger for genuine, attentive contact with their fellow human beings but don't get it.
The irony is worth noting. In a global culture overflowing with relentless communication and endless messaging, real-time, fulfilling human contact and engagement is on the wane. Despite all our e-sharing, sociologists report loneliness has reached epidemic levels.
Humans have long experimented with ways to get noticed. Flashy threads, stand-out hairdos, hot cars, piercings and tattoos, talk show confessions, in-your-face postings on social media; often, these kinds of displays say, “Hey, look at me!”
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We’re not the only animals doing this, of course. Some of our brethren creatures exhibit attention-grabbing behaviors intended to attract mates or communicate dominance.
Fierce Competition
Competition for the limited supply of people's attention can be fierce these days. Most of us are so harried and hurried by the logistics of daily life and buried under the media onslaught that we pay each other little mind. Self-absorption is alive and well in our species.
Many parents are too burned out to focus on their kids. Lots of friends don't find time for each other. Many busy couples concentrate on everything but their relationship. The old, atypical and sick are too often forgotten.
While the stern and condescending among us may insist the need for attention is childish, that people should be mentally sufficient unto themselves, students of human nature know we all harbor a fundamental need to be noticed in a positive manner. What is so essential about obtaining the acknowledgment of our fellow humans?
Well, in an existential sense, attention affirms one is a unique individual, not merely a face in the crowd. And while it is painful when a person is the focus of negative attention, there is a different and, in some ways, deeper anguish associated with not being noticed at all.
I Am … I Said?
As Neil Diamond crooned in his song I Am…I Said, most of us require the notice of others in order to reassure ourselves that we are a somebody. In order to say, “I am,” many of us also need others to say, “You are.”
Obtaining that “You are” is getting tougher. Most of us are talking, texting and posting, but too few are authentically engaged. Everybody is busy, but not with each other. Everybody wants to be connected, but too few are reaching out in meaningful ways.
What is Carol's antidote? “When I need attention, I simply ask for it. Lots of people try to be coy about it, hoping someone will figure out what they want. Then they get ticked off when their friends and family don't read their minds,” she explained.
So, if you've got attention deficit disorder, instead of tattooing your eyelids, doing cartwheels in church, or dropping psychological handkerchiefs around your friends, just try asking people for what you want—a bit of their time and well-meaning interest. And, of course, offer the same in return.
As Thich Nhat Hanh told us:
“The most precious gift we can offer anyone is our attention. When mindfulness embraces those we love, they will bloom like flowers.”
