HPD in the Workplace: When Your Colleague’s Need for Attention Becomes Your Problem

PERSONALITY DISORDERS • April 6, 2026

LAST UPDATED: APRIL 2026

Last reviewed: June 2026 by Annie Wright, LMFT

In short: HPD in the workplace is a personality-driven pattern where a colleague’s pervasive need for attention and validation produces chronic drama that disrupts professional environments and depletes the people around them.

When the Spotlight Steals the Show: HPD’s Workday Drama

The conference room lights hum softly overhead, but the energy feels charged, taut like a live wire. Sana sinks into her chair, already bracing herself. The department director strides in, eyes scanning the room as if confirming the audience is ready. Within moments, the meeting has shifted. It’s no longer about urban planning schedules or project updates. It’s about the director’s latest “vision,” delivered with a theatrical flair that leaves little room for interruption.

Sana, a 38-year-old urban planner and a composite drawn from many years of this work, curls her hands into fists beneath the table. She’s seen this act before. The performance that demands everyone’s admiration, the sudden crises conjured from thin air, the subtle digs at anyone who dares to eclipse the spotlight. It’s exhausting and unsettling, a pattern that repeats itself every week, turning the workplace into a stage where drama is currency and attention is everything.

This is HPD in the workplace. A storm of neediness and manipulation wrapped in charm and charisma. Unlike the romantic contexts where histrionic personality disorder often shows up through emotional exaggeration and seductive behavior, at work it takes a different shape. The colleague with HPD isn’t wooing a lover. She’s commanding the room, turning routine meetings into personal showcases. She manufactures crises around deadlines, pulling others into her emotional whirlpool. She builds alliances quickly, then dismantles them just as fast, with a whispered betrayal here or there.

Take Ji-won, a 36-year-old attorney and another composite drawn from many years of this work, who’s been managing the fallout from her senior partner’s political crises for three years. Every six weeks or so, the partner spins a new storm. A sudden conflict, a dramatic shift in priorities, a sharp critique designed to reassert dominance. Ji-won’s inbox overflows with urgent emails, her calendar disrupted by last-minute “fires” that need putting out. She’s driven and ambitious, but the constant energy drain chips away at her resilience one week at a time.

The HPD boss plays a different game. Her warmth is as unpredictable as her punishment. She needs to be the most important person in every room, the center of every conversation. When attention wanes or shifts, her response turns punitive fast. Undermining colleagues, withholding information, sowing confusion just to regain control. For women like Sana and Ji-won, this dynamic is more than a workplace annoyance. It’s a relentless psychological tug-of-war.

What I see consistently is that driven women often step into the role of unofficial manager of this chaos. They absorb the emotional fallout, cover for erratic behavior, and try to hold the team together at their own expense. The cost is real: exhaustion, diminished confidence, and sometimes a quiet, corrosive doubt about their own worth.

Recognizing these patterns is the first step. Understanding that HPD behaviors at work come from a deep, often unconscious need for attention, not simply poor professionalism, opens the door to more strategic responses. In this post, I’ll walk you through practical strategies to protect your boundaries, communicate clearly, and know when to involve HR, all while holding onto your own ambition and integrity.

What Is HPD in Professional Contexts?

What I see in session is that Histrionic Personality Disorder (HPD) shows up differently at work than it does in personal or romantic relationships. The core pattern, an intense need for attention and approval, stays the same, but the way it plays out gets uniquely complicated in professional environments. A colleague with HPD tends to make every meeting about her, dominating conversations with stories or crises that pull focus away from the team’s actual agenda.

This behavior often looks like manufactured drama: deadlines that feel urgent only to her, exaggerated reactions to routine problems, interpersonal conflicts that seem to require her personal intervention. She might build alliances by flattering certain coworkers or managers, only to tear those relationships down later through gossip or passive-aggressive digs. This kind of triangulation can destabilize teams and create ongoing tension that outlasts any single incident.

When the person with HPD is your boss, the dynamic shifts but stays difficult. Her performance of warmth and charm can feel intense and even captivating, but it’s unpredictable, and it can get replaced by coldness or punishment fast if she feels her spotlight is threatened. She needs to be seen as the most important person in the room, and any attention taken away from her, whether by an employee’s success or a routine managerial decision, can trigger a punitive response. That makes it hard to maintain consistent professional boundaries or expectations.

Practical strategies for working with or managing a colleague with HPD start with clear, written communication and documentation, so confusion or manipulation has less room to take hold. Minimizing emotional engagement helps you avoid getting pulled into her crises or drama. It also matters to maintain your own strategic visibility, keeping your work and contributions clear and acknowledged, so you don’t get overshadowed or undermined. When behavior crosses into disruptive or harmful territory, involving Human Resources becomes necessary. Framing HPD-related behaviors in institutional language, things like “interpersonal conflicts” or “communication challenges,” keeps the conversation focused on solutions rather than labels.

Driven women often find themselves absorbing or managing these dynamics because they tend to carry more than their share of emotional labor at work. They may cover for or smooth over a colleague’s outbursts, worried that confrontation will hurt team cohesion or their own career prospects. Recognizing this pattern is the first step toward setting boundaries and protecting your professional well-being.

The Neurochemical Stage: How HPD’s Drama Plays Out in the Workplace

Time and again, I watch this play out with clients working alongside colleagues who have Histrionic Personality Disorder (HPD): the core traits of the disorder show up differently than they would in romantic or social relationships, yet they’re rooted in the same underlying drivers. Paul Babiak, PhD, an industrial and organizational psychologist and co-author of Snakes in Suits, has written about how people with personality disorders like HPD engage in what he calls “organizational manipulation patterns.” These colleagues don’t just seek attention. They orchestrate drama to hold their place in the spotlight, turning routine meetings into stages for their own performance.

Unlike the more intimate dynamics of personal relationships, the workplace creates a public stage where an HPD colleague’s need for validation takes on a strategic edge. You might notice someone who consistently redirects conversations back to herself in team meetings, or one who manufactures a crisis around a deadline that everyone else finds perfectly manageable. This isn’t accidental. Robert Hare, PhD, a forensic psychologist well known for his research on psychopathy and related personality patterns, has described the reward circuitry involved in this kind of attention-seeking, and that helps explain why the pull toward drama can feel compulsive rather than calculated. The unpredictable swing between warmth and coldness from an HPD boss or coworker keeps everyone else uncertain and focused on her, which is exactly the point: her emotional needs get met while she keeps control of the room.

For driven women, who often carry the emotional labor of managing workplace relationships, this dynamic can be especially exhausting. The constant need to monitor a colleague’s volatility means absorbing emotional fallout that has nothing to do with your own professional goals. Your attention isn’t just pulled away from your work. It’s drained by the ongoing effort to keep the peace or avoid setting off a punitive reaction. That’s why clear, strategic communication and firm boundaries matter so much here.

Practical strategies include documenting interactions carefully, so you have an objective record if you ever need to involve HR. Keep your communications clear and professional, and minimize emotional engagement so you don’t get pulled into the drama. Maintain visibility with your supervisors so your own contributions get recognized despite the disruptive presence nearby. If you do need to escalate, describe patterns of manipulation, workflow disruption, or breaches of professional conduct rather than clinical labels, since HR departments are rarely equipped to work with diagnostic language.

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When Drama Becomes the Daily Grind: How HPD Shows Up for Driven Women at Work

The women who come to me often describe the telltale signs of histrionic personality disorder (HPD) playing out in ways that look nothing like the romantic or family contexts we usually associate with it. At work, the need for attention and manufactured drama turns into a relentless performance where the HPD colleague becomes the center of every meeting, every email chain, every project crisis. Ji-won’s senior partner has a knack for creating a political crisis about every six weeks. Ji-won has been managing this fallout for over three years and is, frankly, exhausted. The partner’s unpredictable swings from charm to cold dismissal keep the whole team on edge, and Ji-won often ends up covering the emotional and practical mess left behind.

This pattern isn’t limited to bosses. Sana describes how her department director turns every meeting into a theatrical show. The director’s need to be seen as the most important person in the room leaves little space for anyone else to contribute. Sana has started dreading work in a way she never used to, worn down by the constant performance and the punitive reactions that follow whenever attention shifts away from the director. In these situations, the HPD colleague or boss doesn’t just seek attention. She manufactures crises, fans the flames of conflict, and seems almost energized by the chaos of alliances formed and quickly broken.

What I see consistently is that the core HPD pattern, an urgent need for attention, emotional exaggeration, triangulation, translates into a genuinely toxic workplace dynamic. The colleague who monopolizes meetings, the one who invents last-minute “emergencies” around deadlines, or the boss whose warmth and punishment swing without warning, all of it makes the environment emotionally volatile. For driven women like Ji-won and Sana, who often become the unofficial fixers in these situations, the emotional labor gets overwhelming fast. They absorb the fallout, manage relationships, and try desperately to keep the workplace functional while still meeting their own responsibilities.

Practical strategies become essential here. Documentation is key: recording incidents factually protects you against unpredictable swings and potential gaslighting. Clear, concise communication reduces misunderstandings and limits the space for emotional dramatics. Minimal emotional engagement means keeping your boundaries firm without feeding into the behavior. When you do need HR, frame it in terms of workflow impact, lowered team morale, or unprofessional conduct rather than diagnostic language.

Driven women often carry this weight because their ambition makes them the natural go-to people for crisis management. They want the work done right and the team functioning smoothly, so they step in to absorb the chaos. But that emotional toll builds toward burnout, especially when the behavior goes unaddressed for months or years. Recognizing these dynamics helps women reclaim their energy and hold boundaries despite the drama.

Staying Grounded in the Spotlight: Managing HPD Patterns in Professional Spaces

Across the years I’ve spent working with clients and organizations, I’ve noticed that histrionic personality disorder (HPD) often looks different at work than it does in romantic or familial contexts. The core pattern remains: a deep need for attention, a tendency to manufacture drama, a knack for pitting colleagues against one another. But instead of the intimate, one-on-one dynamics you might expect, HPD at work plays out across meetings, email threads, and power structures. The colleague with HPD is often the one who hijacks every conversation, making every meeting all about her. Deadlines become crises. Alliances get built with intensity, then suddenly torn down, leaving the rest of the team scrambling to pick up the pieces.

When the HPD pattern shows up in leadership, the stakes climb even higher. The HPD boss can be unpredictably warm one moment and cold or punitive the next. Her need to be the most important person in the room usually means she responds harshly when attention shifts away from her. This creates an environment where driven women, who are frequently the ones managing or covering for these dynamics, feel the emotional and professional toll most acutely. They absorb the instability, smooth over conflict, and often sacrifice their own needs just to keep the peace or protect the team’s goals.

Practical strategies for working with or managing a colleague with HPD require a mix of clear boundaries and strategic communication. Documentation becomes your ally here, since detailed records protect your work and set a factual baseline against the drama. Clear, concise communication minimizes misunderstandings and closes off openings for manipulation. Emotional detachment matters too. It’s not about shutting down your empathy. It’s about refusing to climb aboard the emotional rollercoaster she’s built. And when you involve HR, frame the behavior in institutional language, “interpersonal conflict” or “unprofessional conduct,” rather than personality labels HR is rarely equipped to handle.

The toll on driven women in these environments runs deep. They take on the emotional labor of managing HPD colleagues, not because they want to, but because the culture around them quietly expects it. Recognizing these patterns and putting practical boundaries in place isn’t just about protecting yourself. It’s about reclaiming your professional power.

Both/And: The Complex Dynamics of HPD at Work

What I see consistently is that the impact of Histrionic Personality Disorder (HPD) in the workplace is both similar to and distinct from what happens in romantic relationships. Sana describes her department director as someone who turns every team meeting into a personal performance. This pattern, the relentless need for attention, the manufactured drama, the shifting alliances, mirrors the core of HPD but plays out in a uniquely professional, often more insidious way. The HPD boss, like Sana’s director, swings between charismatic warmth and punitive coldness, always needing to be the center of attention and reacting harshly when her spotlight dims.

The Both/And framework helps us hold both realities at once. On one hand, HPD behaviors can be deeply disruptive, exhausting, even toxic to a workplace culture. Ji-won has spent three years managing the fallout from her senior partner’s political crises, a role that has left her drained and overextended. On the other hand, these behaviors grow out of complex psychological needs and fears, not simply willful manipulation or malice. Holding both truths at once lets driven women like Ji-won and Sana approach these challenges with clear boundaries and genuine compassion, protecting their own well-being without losing sight of the human struggle underneath.

In practical terms, working with or managing an HPD colleague takes a strategic mix of documentation, clear communication, minimal emotional engagement, and strategic visibility. Keeping written records helps contain the chaos when a crisis inevitably arrives. Communicating expectations with precision cuts down on manipulation. Minimizing your emotional reactions keeps her drama from hijacking your own focus. None of this is about “playing games.” It’s about building a stable, predictable environment inside a genuinely unpredictable situation. Knowing when to involve Human Resources matters here too. HPD-related behaviors often sit right on the line between personality differences and workplace violations, and framing your concerns in institutional language, team performance, communication breakdowns, policy violations, helps HR respond effectively without pathologizing the individual.

As Dr. Theodore Millon, PhD, Professor Emeritus of Psychology at Fielding Graduate University, has put it, “In workplace settings, addressing personality disorder traits requires balancing empathy with firm boundaries to maintain professional integrity.” For driven women working through this terrain, holding the Both/And means acknowledging how complicated HPD behaviors really are while still prioritizing your own mental health and career goals. It’s not about fixing your colleague or your boss. It’s about managing your environment with clinical clarity and practical strategy that honors both your ambition and your well-being.

The Systemic Lens: HPD Dynamics Within Workplace Structures

What I see consistently is that Histrionic Personality Disorder (HPD) manifests differently at work than in romantic or personal relationships, but the core pattern stays the same. The need for attention, the drama, the strategic triangulation, they’re all still there, just repackaged for a professional setting. The colleague with HPD might be the one who dominates every meeting, turning it into a stage for her own personal narrative. She creates crises around deadlines, not because of any actual risk, but to draw focus back to herself. She’s a master at building alliances and then dismantling them, which keeps the environment unstable and centered on her presence.

When the HPD personality holds a leadership role, these behaviors get even more complicated. The HPD boss swings between warm, charismatic engagement and punitive coldness, a performance built to keep everyone guessing and, crucially, keep the spotlight fixed on her. She needs to be seen as the most important person in the room, and anything that threatens that, an achievement by a subordinate, a focus shift onto another issue, can trigger a disproportionate response. This creates a toxic dynamic, especially for driven women who often find themselves trying to stay professional while absorbing all the emotional fallout.

Looked at through a structural and gendered lens, this dynamic gets compounded further. Driven women in professional environments frequently take on the invisible labor of managing, absorbing, or covering for these disruptive behaviors. That labor rarely gets recognized or rewarded, yet it eats up emotional and cognitive resources that matter for their own career growth. Research by Dr. Joan C. Chrisler, Professor of Psychology at Connecticut College, points to how women in workplace settings often become “emotional laborers,” managing not just their own work but the emotional climate created by others, including colleagues with personality-disorder-adjacent behaviors.

Practically speaking, working with or managing a colleague with HPD calls for clear boundaries and real strategy. Documentation matters most here: record interactions, especially when a colleague’s crises hit deadlines or team dynamics. Clear, concise communication helps prevent misunderstandings and limits room for manipulation. Minimizing emotional engagement protects your well-being, and so does building your own strategic visibility. Make your contributions known in ways that can’t get overshadowed by her theatrics. When these behaviors escalate or seriously disrupt the workplace, involving HR becomes necessary. Frame the behavior in institutional language, performance, deadlines, team impact, rather than diagnostic terms, which tend to carry stigma and lack clarity in organizational settings.

Looking at HPD in the workplace through this wider lens reveals not just an individual’s patterns but the broader structures that let these dynamics persist. It’s a reminder that the burden often falls on driven women who end up managing not just their own ambitions but the emotional turbulence created by colleagues with HPD. Addressing this takes both personal strategy and institutional awareness, so we can build healthier, more equitable professional environments over time.

Histrionic Personality Disorder (HPD)

HPD is a personality disorder marked by a pervasive pattern of attention-seeking behavior, emotional over-expressiveness, and a need for approval.

In plain terms: HPD means someone often acts dramatically or seeks lots of attention to feel important or secure.

Finding Your Ground: Healing and Moving Forward Amid HPD Dynamics at Work

What I see, session after session, with clients working through the turbulence of Cluster B personality patterns at work is a pattern that’s both familiar and uniquely challenging compared to romantic contexts. The colleague with Histrionic Personality Disorder (HPD) isn’t just seeking attention in her personal relationships. She transforms the workplace into a stage for constant performance. She makes every meeting about herself, manufactures crises around deadlines that don’t need to exist, and skillfully builds alliances only to tear them down, leaving confusion and exhaustion behind her. Recognizing these patterns is the first step toward reclaiming your professional space and your emotional well-being.

When the HPD figure is your boss, the dynamic shifts but the core need for attention stays the same. This boss might swing unpredictably between warmth and punishment, always needing to be the center of the room’s spotlight. Any moment that doesn’t revolve around her can trigger a punitive reaction. That performance of power can feel destabilizing, and it leaves driven women especially vulnerable. In many professional environments, driven women end up absorbing the emotional labor of managing these dynamics, smoothing over chaos, covering for unpredictability, managing the fallout, all while trying to hold onto their own focus and productivity.

Practical strategies become essential tools for both survival and healing. Documentation is your anchor: keep clear, factual records to protect yourself from manufactured chaos. Use direct, concise language, and don’t get pulled into the emotional back-and-forth that fuels the drama. Minimal emotional engagement isn’t about coldness. It’s about protecting your energy by setting boundaries around what you take on. When you do need HR, frame the behavior in terms of workflow, team cohesion, and professional standards rather than labels or diagnoses. It’s not about “fixing” your colleague. It’s about protecting your own integrity and mental health.

Sana, five months into naming this pattern out loud for the first time, still hasn’t decided whether she’ll stay in her role. She keeps a small notebook now, dated entries only, facts without adjectives. “I used to write down how I felt,” she told me recently. “Now I write down what happened. It’s strange how much calmer that makes me.” The notebook doesn’t fix anything. It just gives her somewhere steady to stand while she figures out what comes next.

Healing in this context means reclaiming your boundaries, your voice, and your sense of safety at work. It’s about recognizing that you don’t have to carry the emotional weight of someone else’s compulsive need for attention. The path forward isn’t easy, but it’s genuinely worth walking. You can learn to work through these relationships with intention and real care for yourself along the way.

To the driven women reading this: you’re not alone in this struggle. The emotional labor you carry is real and it’s valid. Taking steps to protect your well-being doesn’t make you less kind or less capable. It makes you wise. Rebuilding the proverbial house of life^™ means learning that your energy is not an infinite, renewable resource for other people’s performances. Together, we can untangle the chaos and find a way to thrive, even when the spotlight feels like it never turns off.

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This article is educational and isn’t a substitute for individual therapy, diagnosis, or mental health treatment, and it isn’t HR or legal advice. If what you’ve read here resonates, I want you to know that individual therapy and executive coaching are available for driven women ready to do this work. You can also explore my self-paced recovery courses or schedule a complimentary consultation to find the right fit.

Warmly,
Annie

Related Reading

Kernberg, Otto F. Borderline Conditions and Pathological Narcissism. Jason Aronson, 1975.

Millon, Theodore, et al. Personality Disorders in Modern Life. Wiley, 2011.

Levine, Stephen B., and Victoria L. B. Campbell. Handbook of Psychotherapy for the Treatment of Personality Disorders. American Psychiatric Publishing, 2007.

Ronningstam, Elsa. Narcissistic Personality Disorder: A Clinical Perspective. Jason Aronson, 2005.

References

Peer-Reviewed Research (Vancouver)

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2. Linehan MM, Wilks CR. The Course and Evolution of Dialectical Behavior Therapy. Am J Psychother. 2015;69(2):97-110. PMID: 26160617.
3. Somma A, Adamo M, Emanuele Y, et al. Personality disorders among insomnia patients. Compr Psychiatry. 2018. PMID: 30312885.
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