Attention-Seeking Behavior as Recognition-Deficit Wrong Attractor: The Drama Escalation Loop, Chronic Crisis Architecture, and the Return to Grounded Recognition

Attention-seeking behavior — the chronic pattern of generating drama, crises, or performance to capture others' attention — is here formally reconceptualized as a wrong attractor W_AS in the landscape of grounded recognition. The healthy ground state S^0 is defined as grounded recognition: the capacity to have one's needs for attention, connection, and being-known met through authentic relationship and genuine self-expression, without requiring performance or crisis escalation.

W_AS is constituted by a recognition-attention confusion: the individual pursues attention as a proxy for recognition (being genuinely known), but attention without recognition does not satisfy the underlying need, producing satiation decay and behavioral escalation. The drama escalation loop is the primary basin mechanism: as each attention-capture succeeds only temporarily, the threshold rises, requiring greater intensity of performance or crisis to achieve equivalent attention.

Nine formal propositions characterize the recognition-attention gap, the hunger loop paradox, the satiation decay and escalation ratchet, drama escalation as basin mechanism, developmental installation through early neglect or inconsistent mirroring, the hollow attention paradox, social media as industrial-scale basin amplifier, distinction from clinical presentations, and return paths through authentic self-disclosure and secure attachment cultivation.