Emotional dumping is an act of unconsciously sharing your feelings or perspective without an awareness of the other person and their emotional state or needs.
You Think You're Venting, but You Might Be Trauma Dumping. Maybe when you're talking to a new colleague, you overshare details about a fight with your partner. Perhaps a friend mentions a health struggle, and you interrupt and tell a long story about your mother's battle with cancer without letting your friend talk.
Emotional offloading allows our children the opportunity to express their emotions in a safe space. Knowing that mom, dad, grandma, grandpa and care providers will be there to listen and understand, will validate their feelings and will allow them the time they need to heal.
Talk to someone, a friend you trust, or an expert. Sharing lightens the burden. Create a ritual that helps you distance yourself from the guilt. Repeat a positive affirmation, or simply sit and self-reflect.
With venting vs. dumping, the venting couple is sharing their emotions. Still, in the dumping situation, the person doing the dumping is not concerned with the other person's feelings at all. It is a one-sided partnership with no room for a mate to get support or express themself.
Signs of Emotional Dumping
You feel like your friend or loved one does not listen to you or take your advice. Your feelings are ignored despite being communicated. You feel more like a therapist than a friend or member of the family. Your conversations feel toxic and weigh heavily on your mind.
But, trauma dumping usually isn't a mutual interaction; it's a toxic kind of communication that involves one person getting their emotional needs met at the expense of someone else. Over time, this can create one-sided and strained relationships, sometimes one of the telltale signs that a relationship is toxic.
Trauma dumping isn't necessarily abusive, although it can cross the line into emotional abuse when someone uses it on purpose to exert power over you. Meanwhile, someone sharing trauma without considering how it affects you may feel unpleasant to be around, but they aren't actively seeking to control or manipulate.
Nicole LePera, holistic psychologist shares, “emotional dumping is an incredibly common (often addictive) pattern of re-living a past emotional experience in the present. Usually, most people aren't aware of the reality of doing this. They're seeking connection. This is because emotional dumping isn't solution-seeking.
What is Toxic Venting? Toxic venting feels like an attack on someone's character. Whether you are the one venting, or you're listening to someone else do it, this communication makes the other person out to be “the bad guy.” This type of bad-mouthing becomes an intense form of gossip.
“Breathing is one of the best strategies for managing your mental state while being dumped on by someone else,” she says. After you've escaped the overwhelming situation, devote some time to restorative self-care. Moffa suggests moving your body by taking a walk, exercising, or simply shaking or dancing it out.
Most of the time, trauma dumping is not purposefully abusive or manipulative. It's more common for a dumper to be so involved in talking about their traumatic experience that they are unaware of how their story is impacting their listeners.
Being open and honest is always the best solution to any problem. Explain to your loved one how their emotional tirades affect your own emotions. If the other person never lets you have any input, bring that to their attention. If they often scoff at the advice you offer, remind them of that.
There are three main different types of dumping: persistent, predatory, and sporadic.
Trauma dumping (also referred to as “emotional dumping” or just “dumping”) is when a person overshares their painful experiences with an unsuspecting person to get sympathy or validation. Venting crosses into trauma dumping territory when it becomes harmful to the person listening.
"It's usually unconscious anxiety that they're venting and just start dumping onto another person as a way to release the energy and frustration, and getting that out can seemingly help a victim of some sort of trauma," she says. There's a fine line between venting and dumping.
To be clear, vulnerability is not self-serving
This means you must be thoughtful about what you share, when you share it, and why. That means: Don't overshare and dump your emotions on other people without purpose or thought. That's emotional dumping or projecting, not vulnerability.
Sharing trauma without permission, in an inappropriate place and time, to someone who may not have the capacity to process it. That's trauma dumping. It's become so commonplace on social media, our kids may have come to accept it as normal.
While venting can be a natural part of working through our negative emotions, does it become toxic at a certain point? It turns out, it can. And that's when venting becomes trauma dumping — the act of oversharing your emotions in a way that becomes harmful to the other person.
Being broken up with can lead to feelings of hurt and rejection. Even if the breakup is mutual, it's still natural to struggle with difficult feelings, like anger or depression, at least for a while. As painful as the decision can be, there are healthy ways to deal with a breakup and get over a breakup.
Gently, let them know that it was hard for you to support them and be a good friend and that it was causing you mental anguish and stress. Don't blame them for the end of the friendship or make them feel bad for going through a tough time, but instead take ownership of your decisions and your choices.