Just think about that for a moment.

How we give, and how we receive attention is not something that is automatically easy. We have to learn how to do it well and most of us struggle with this at times in our lives.

Some people have difficulty relating intimately – to give or receive attention with complete trust and with trust in themselves. This could be for a number of reasons and often relates back to problems earlier in life. For others it may be simply a lack of experience, practice or guidance which means they struggle to know just how best to give and/or receive attention.

Our Innate Need for Attention

Need fulfilment and good parenting mean attention, acceptance, appreciation, affection and allowing (people/our children to be their unique selves). We all have these needs all through our lives beginning in early life when we are entirely dependent (like almost all other species on the planet for that matter) on our parents to meet these needs.

Later in life when we move away from the (hopefully) nurturing and caring environment provided by our parents and out into the big bad world, we look for these needs to be fulfilled by a partner.

In the case that we did not receive enough attention in early life (from our parents), this creates a bottomless pit, an unfillable yearning for that missing attention. It is bottomless because we will find that trying to patch up that yearning with a future relationship (e.g. a partner) is doomed to failure until we can go back into the past and confront what we are missing at its source.

Even if we did receive good attention in our early years, in a stable and nurturing environment, we may still have work to do to learn how to give and/or receive attention.

The Perfect Partner

Despite what the romantic movies will tell us, unfortunately no person can ever be enough to satisfy the full breadth of our human potential. Sorry, I know. Bummer.

Looking for a partner to replace the attention you got previously from your parents (whether lacking or not) is flawed – because as an adult you need to find most of your needs fulfilment within yourself.

It is a given of life and the universe that we are a part of that nothing is permanently and finally satisfying. Nor should it be. Despite this fact, many of us believe that somewhere there is someone out there for us that will be permanently satisfying – the perfect partner. Such a belief, and the restless, desperate seeking that follows from it, can become deeply disheartening and self-defeating.

This reality is not to be taken as sad, but simply that, reality. It can instead be embraced and then something wonderful happens – because transient though life is, it also offers endless possibilities. Tragic though it may seem that we cannot possibly truly derive all of our needs 100% from any other single person (not even close), we are then led to back ourselves which is where the true fulfilment should be anyway.

If we embrace reality with all its impermanence and frustration and without fear then we find that what we really want is a partner who walks beside us in the world, not one who we wish to be perfect and burden with our expectations and fears.

From this point of view, moderate need fulfilment, becomes ideal. This works very well between two loving, trusting, secure adults, each sharing a path through life and there as a loving partner and witness for the other. ‘Moderate’ in a very healthy relationship is then the key word for the giving and receiving of attention. A nonstop flow of attention would be quite annoying in any case, even to an infant.

Genuine love from another adult does more than just satisfy us in the present moment. It can also help mend some of the hurt from the past and give us a more stable base looking forward into the future. Those who love us understand us and are available to us with an attention, appreciation, acceptance and affection we can feel. They make room for us to be who we are.

The Healthy Ego vs The Neurotic Ego

Where we should look to be in order to be happy, secure, fulfilled and healthy is to become the healthiest possible version of who we uniquely are. This means nurturing the Healthy Ego and having zero tolerance for the Neurotic Ego.

The Healthy Ego is our inner adult. It is the part of us that can observe self, situations and persons, assess them and respond rationally and objectively. We do not let go of this aspect of our ego but build on it. It assists us in relationships by making us responsible and sensible in our choices and commitments.

The Neurotic Ego, on the other hand, is the part of us that is compulsively driven or stymied by fear or desire, feeding arrogance, entitlement, attachment and the need to control other people. Sometimes the neurotic ego is self-negating and makes us feel we are victims of others.

Staying healthy (and therefore nurturing the healthy ego) takes discipline, work and patience. The neurotic ego wants to follow the path of least resistance. Our task is to dismantle this ego and take away it’s power, otherwise it will frighten intimacy away and menace our self-esteem.

How Mindfulness Can Help

Mindfulness is Attention.

Mindfulness brings us to what is in the here and now. It releases us from our mental habit of entertaining ourselves with ego-based fears, desires, expectations, evaluations, attachments, biases, defenses and so on.

We notice what happens in our minds and simply take it in as information. We then can act in a calm, rational way, relating to what is happening rather than becoming possessed by it. In this way, mindfulness does not help us escape from reality or any of the stresses with which we are faced, but rather to see things clearly without the destructive overlays of ego.

This is obviously not always easy because we have had centuries of allowing our neurotic egos to influence our realities. Moving away from this is a challenge which takes courage. Courageous because it is trusting that we have it in us to hold and tolerate our feelings, however intense they are, to grant them hospitality no matter how frightening they seem, to live alongside them. We then discover a strength within us that is the equivalent of self-discovery. From that self-esteem comes effective relating with others.

Letting go of ego means letting go of fear and grasping, making more mindful attention an excellent approach for healthy relating.

Similarly, we take what a partner does as information without having to censure or blame. In doing this, we put space around an event rather than crowding it with our own beliefs, fears and judgements.

A healthy relationship is one where there are more and more such spacious moments.

Note: In practice, this is not always as easy as it sounds. Mindfulness does not mean silence, nor does it mean the lack of feeling, the lack of an opinion or the lack of strength, challenge or even disagreement. It means the lack of ego bias. It means relating as a caring, loving and attentive adult, without judgement, fear or imposition. It means genuine attention. The right attention – to the here and now without any excess baggage brought along at all.

The good news is, mindfulness is inherent in human nature. We were built to pay attention to reality. Indeed, paying attention is a survival technique.

Over the years though, we learn to escape and take refuge in illusory sanctuaries built by an ego frightened of reality. We notice that it is easier to believe what will make us feel better, and we feel entitled to expect that others will be what we need them to be.

In order to be whole, complete, self-assured, secure and fulfilled, it is this habit of giving in to our neurotic ego, to our fears and doubts, to the inner voice that assumes, expects, fears and lurches from one worry to the next, that hides from owning our doubts and fears and instead looks to blame others. It is this neurotic ego that we need to combat.

Our Changing Needs for Attention

We do not outgrow our early needs. Rather they become less overwhelming, and we find less primitive ways to fulfil them. An infant may need to be cradled and carried, while an adult may be satisfied with a supportive remark, a kindly glance or a cup of tea (my favourite).

Sometimes a lifelong need can be fulfilled by just such little moments of mindful love. However we still need to be cradled at times. If our emotional needs were fulfilled by our parents, we emerge from childhood with a trust that others can give us what we need. We can then receive attention from others without distress or compulsion.

Parenting Attention

A parent with adult consciousness will not only take care of their child but show their child how to take care of themselves (and encourage them and give them the space to do so).

What is found in the healthy style of parenting is also found in healthy adult relating. In healthy intimate relationships, we do not seek more than 25 percent of our nurturance from a partner; we learn to find the rest within ourselves.

Likewise a good coach or teacher is one who teaches practitioners to take ownership of their own progress and learning rather than to develop too much dependency on the teacher.

Thus parent, partner and teacher point us toward our own inner parent, inner partner and inner teacher.

The Right Amount Of Attention

Attention means engaged focus. It means listening, hearing, seeing and understanding as well as sensitivity to another persons needs and feelings.

It is possible to give too much attention. Watching someone’s every move, even if it comes from a desire to protect, is not attention but intrusion or surveillance. In truly loving attention, you are noticed, not scrutinised. Overprotectiveness toward you is a rejection of your power (and thus of you). Likewise if you do too much for a person, even if you think you are helping, you are taking away the possibility to allow them to do things for themselves.

Attunement is mirrored attentiveness from one person to another. Attentiveness means noticing and hearing words, feelings and experience and giving the other person enough space to freely express themselves without judgement.

Listening and hearing are two separate things. For true attention take place, listening is not enough.

In a moment of authentic attention, we feel that we are deeply and truly understood in what we say or do and in who we are, with nothing left out. Likewise we can attune to others. We cannot attune if we assume certain feelings are right and others wrong.

What has failed to find attunement stays within us and can becomes a source of shame. Faulty attunement in early life can lead to a fear of standing up for ourselves, a lack of confidence or can keep us from trusting others.

The right amount of attention (attuned attention) creates an ever-widening zone of trust and safety. This is the way to build trust. Attention is the core of mindfulness. It means bringing something or someone into focus so it is (or they are) no longer blurred by the projections of ego.

A parent or partner that has gotten to know you in a superficial way may only be meeting up with his or her beliefs about you. Those beliefs, or biases can endure for years, preventing the person from taking in the kind of information that would reveal the real you.

The real you is an abundant potential, not a list of traits, and intimacy can only happen when you are always expanding in others’ hearts, not pigeonholed in their minds. We are ever changing, ever growing and ever learning. Our capacity to learn and evolve is incredible, so to be reduced to a certain fixed description is simply not accurate.

The desire for attention is not a desire for an audience but for a listener. Attention means focusing on you with respect, not with contempt, competition, pre-judgement or ridicule.

When others give you attention they also confront you directly when they are displeased, harbouring no secret anger or grudges. But if their attention is genuine, they will do so with respect and a sincere desire to keep the lines of communication open.

The right amount of attention means being there, empowering and enabling, listening and hearing, understanding and empathising, trusting and believing – without prejudgement or any of the other shackles of the ego.

This kind of attention is perfectly simple and also perfectly natural, but it is not at all easy, because we have to let go of our own ego-based constraints and these are not always apparent even to ourselves – especially to ourselves.