It’s Not Attention-Seeking. It’s Connection-Seeking.

It’s Not Attention-Seeking. It’s Connection-Seeking.

You know that feeling when someone dismisses your reaction with a laugh or a sigh?

When you're told you're “being dramatic” or “too sensitive” or “always making a fuss”?

And somehow, you end up questioning yourself?

Let’s pause right there.

What if it was never about attention in the way they made you believe?

What if it was about needing connection—and not knowing how to ask for it in a way they were willing to hear?

When we feel unseen, unheard, or emotionally abandoned, we reach.

And when our reaching is met with shame or ridicule, we don’t stop needing. We just get quieter.

Or louder.

Or we start to twist ourselves into someone we think is more palatable. More acceptable.

Less “too much.”

In therapy, I hear this story all the time.

From the child who was called clingy.

From the teenager labelled intense.

From the adult who still feels they have to earn their right to take up space.

But here's the truth:

Wanting to be seen, to be soothed, to be responded to — that’s not attention-seeking.

That’s being human.

Our nervous systems are wired for connection.

We regulate in relationship. We heal in relationship.

And when our pain is witnessed with compassion, it stops screaming for attention—because it no longer needs to.

If no one ever taught you that your needs were valid, I’m telling you now.

You were never too much.

You just needed more than they knew how to give.

And maybe now, you’re learning to give it to yourself—or to find others who can.

That reaching? It’s not weakness. It’s intelligence.

It’s your system saying: I matter. I need. I belong.