First off, I don't think you need triggers for your post. You aren't mentioning anything specific, just a feeling.

I have thought about this attention-seeking idea a lot. First off, using suicide as emotional blackmail or abuse isn't always the case. It's specifically emotional abuse when it's used to manipulate or blackmail. As in "if you don't stay with me, I'll kill myself." or "if you don't love me, I'll harm/kill myself." That is emotional abuse and manipulation.

Similarly, attention seeking behavior is "no one ever listens to me" "no one ever offers me help." It's these specific pity-party comments, that typically aren't true, that are attention seeking and manipulative.

When I self-harmed or was suicidal, it was not for attention. It was to ease my own pain. So feeling that way is not necessarily a cry for help. Similarly, that made for TV movie was wrong in saying that the anorexic teen wouldn't stop because she wouldn't get attention. That whole movie sounds wrong so please don't base your life on that. Anorexia is often about gaining control over one's life through the intake or lack of intake of food. It is not about attention-seeking.

Similarly, your depression is not because you don't get attention. You are not seeking attention by being depressed. And similarly, your isolation is not an effort to have people seek you out. When I isolate, I don't do so thinking that others will miss me. I know for a fact they don't. They don't even think of me. People with depression often isolate because of their anxiety, not to gain attention but because they are afraid of it.

Then there is the other part of this: if someone is seriously suicidal or ready to self-harm, isn't that WORTH our attention? Like writing someone who is suicidal off as just seeking attention, I mean, for God's sake! I mean ideation is one thing, but if you're talking about someone who is literally in the throughs of an attempt, yeah, yes, hell yes, they deserve our attention to save their life.

I get so tired of people calling people in pain attention seekers when the fact is that they are seeking attention because they need it. Because they need help. Think of all the people who commit suicide and then later on everyone says "well we had no idea they were depressed, they never said anything." It's such BS.

So, I'm not sure you were asking for support or advice or whatever, but whoever is saying you're just looking for attention is a jerkwad, IMO.

Seesaw