When I was a teenager, and into my twenties, I would 'perform' distress. I would externalise my internal state. I was seeking attention and validation for my distress, but I didn't want an actual solution.
When I overshot and found myself hospitalised, in some kind of therapy or treatment, or otherwise under supervision or surveillance, I would stage a 'miraculous' (but not too miraculous) 'recovery' to get the fudgers off my back, and then return to my lower-level acting out.
I would do this into AA: having 'breakdowns' in meetings, storming out, causing disruption and trouble. When people offered actual solutions, however, I would become evasive, haughty, and defensive.
People in AA were great. They stopped reacting pretty quickly once they realised what was going on. They were also boundaried: when the charade was over, I was forgiven, but I wasn't going to have a second bite of the same cherry: I'd have to try with someone else. Once the cherry was bitten, it was twice, thrice, permanently shy. People were no fools.
Only when people stopped giving me attention in response to my performative distress, and I started to run out of people to ask to help me, did I really buckle under and buckle down.
This is a common phenomenon in AA. How often does melodramatic sharing give way to guardedness once the solicitous attention of others after the meeting has been secured?
A parent asked, 'Why is my child so traumatised?' The TV super nanny answered: 'He's not traumatised; you're traumatised. He's in control.'
It's been a long journey, learning not to instrumentalise my own emotions as a way of controlling others.