What if attention seeking was never the problem? For many adults with ADHD, the desire to be seen has been treated as a flaw. Too loud. Too emotional. Too intense. Too much. Over time, those labels turn inward, shaping how people speak to themselves, build relationships, pursue work, and decide whether they are allowed to take up space at all. Darcy Michael’s Principles on Attention Seeker challenges that story at its root. Blending personal reflection with deep psychological insight, this book reframes attention seeking not as vanity or immaturity, but as communication, regulation, creativity, and survival. Through explorations of childhood, relationships, creativity, shame, productivity, internet culture, emotional intensity, and self-compassion, it offers a compassionate and honest look at what it means to live with an ADHD brain in a world that demands constant focus, restraint, and performance. This is not a clinical manual or a list of life hacks. It is a human guide for people who have spent years masking, compensating, and apologizing for who they are. Each chapter gently dismantles familiar myths about success, motivation, emotional control, and worth, replacing them with a more sustainable truth: you were never broken, you were adapting. Inside these pages, readers will find: A powerful reframing of attention seeking as necessity, not neediness Insight into emotional intensity, rejection sensitivity, and burnout Honest reflections on love, friendship, creativity, and work with ADHD A compassionate approach to therapy, tools, and trial-and-error living A path toward self-acceptance, visibility, and designing a life that fits your brain Above all, this book offers relief. Relief from shame. Relief from comparison. Relief from the exhausting belief that you must become someone else to belong. Darcy Michael’s Principles on Attention Seeker is for anyone who has ever felt too much, too different, or not enough at the same time. It is for those ready to stop shrinking, stop apologizing, and start living fully visible, on their own terms. You were never too much. You were always enough.
