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.
Is trauma dumping a form of abuse? 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.
Lastly, it's important to acknowledge that trauma bonding isn't the same as trauma dumping, which is when we overshare overly personal information with friends, family, or strangers. Being a victim of trauma bonding is a state of emergency, not oversharing.
Tips to Avoid Trauma Dumping
Keep a journal. Journals are a safe place to express your negative emotions. Practice mindfulness or meditation. It alleviates stress and changes your perspective, often making problems seem more managable.
Trauma dumping refers to persistently oversharing traumatic experiences with people who may not be ready or willing to receive this information. Trauma is a sensitive topic. While some conversations bring intimacy and healing, others may breed more trauma. It's not always clear when bringing up trauma is appropriate.
Trauma dumping can also mean toxic oversharing and can be manipulative and abusive. While one can feel better “trauma dumping” over social media, it can also cause some negative impacts. Other coping mechanisms can protect your mental health and online friendships.
“It's when someone unexpectedly off-loads their traumatic thoughts, feelings, energy and experiences onto someone else.” Many of us will have been in situations where friendly meetups have felt co-opted by someone else talking only about their problems, without leaving space for anyone else to express their feelings.
Trauma dumping is defined as unloading traumatic experiences on others without warning or invitation. It's often done to seek validation, attention, or sympathy. While some initial relief may come from dumping your trauma onto someone else, the habit actually does more harm than good.
The fawn response is when an individual tries to avoid or minimize distress or danger by pleasing and appeasing the threat. Someone responding in this way would do whatever they can to keep the threat, or abuser, happy despite their own needs and wants.
Trauma dumping is the act of sharing traumatic information with another person. People consider it "dumping" because the listener does not consent. It also usually involves large amounts of content at one time. The word “trauma” can apply to a whole range of experiences.
There are three main different types of dumping: persistent, predatory, and sporadic.
Illegal dumping also can have environmental impacts by polluting our state waters (including ground water, streams, rivers, ponds, lakes, etc), damaging our soil quality, affecting our air quality from open burning activities and negatively impacting wildlife.
While venting can be helpful, Emotional Dumping can violate boundaries, create resentment and cause us to be stuck in cycles without awareness. For many people on the receiving end, Emotional Dumping is a form of connection that can leave us feeling drained, unseen, or resentful.
It is possible, real, and valid to experience PTSD after an abusive relationship. Living in a toxic relationship can take an extreme toll on mental health, and the negative effects of that relationship often last far after a break up.
Having social anxiety
Those who struggle with social anxiety are typically more prone to oversharing. When you feel anxious around other people, it can easily lead to rambling. You might also start oversharing because of low self-confidence or the need to please people.
Trauma is a factor that can cause overthinking. People who have experienced trauma are more vulnerable to overthinking. For example, childhood abuse or parental neglect can alter an individual's brain to stick in a constant hyper-vigilance state.
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.
Venting is a healthy way to share negative emotions and reduce stress. But with trauma dumping, you overshare in a way that makes the listener feel overwhelmed or ignored.
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.
You see, some people, because of their own shortcomings, frustrations, disappointment, and anger, carry their negativity like garbage trucks carry garbage. And, when their container of negativity gets full, they have no choice but to dump some out.